Best cordless electric chainsaw recommendations?

Hi All;
Back to tell you about my latest interaction with the wonderful folks at EGO warranty department.
My 7.5 amp battery that came with my mower, started acting up! It quickly progressed into a flashing red light!!! Oh No!
I checked the warranty and battery's are covered for 3 years.
My mower battery and charger were purchased May 2017 !!!
A call to Ego and a little time on the phone.... my brand new 7.5 amp battery is already shipped and I should have it in a few days!

Their warranty is rock solid ! They stand behind their product 110% !

Thomas,

I will contrast your experience with mine and my Kobalt batteries.  Apparently Kobalt has known issues with their batteries dying early, and one was mine.  I took it in for replacement, but Lowe’s wanted the whole package—battery, tool and charger!  I left a little disgruntled.  I had no idea which tool that particular battery goes with.  There are a number of factors that really make me want to switch platforms.

Unfortunately, the chainsaw keeps me solidly in the present format as the chainsaw is pretty good, and has bucking spikes—something EGO does not.  I guess that for me there is no perfect trimming electric chainsaw out there.  At this point I can give out a B+, but not yet an A.

Eric

Hey Eric,  Not sure of your fabricating skills or how Ego secures the bar to the body, but as simple as bucking spikes are, couldn't one be made to fit the bill?

Good thinking Gerry!
Eric; I will inspect my saw tomorrow and see what it looks like.
I'll take photo's if I think its do-able.

Thanks Thomas, I sincerely appreciate that effort.

Eric

thomas rubino wrote:Good thinking Gerry!
Eric; I will inspect my saw tomorrow and see what it looks like.
I'll take photo's if I think its do-able.

I thought about this as soon as I had my 16" Ego out of the box, but haven't tackled it yet, and probably won't any tine soon..

It seems doable on this model, but not as simple as I had hoped it might be..

I have a couple of EGO tools, a hedge trimmer and a weed whacker, and like them both. Having more than one cordless tool that uses the same battery is definitely helpful, especially when the batteries are expensive, which EGO's are. I considered adding their chainsaw, but the price turned me off. Instead, I have a 40V Greenworks 16" that does a great job and works very much like my 16" Stihl gas-powered saw -- just a bit slower. I had to replace its oiler after a few years (which was a pain), but it's worked well since then. A brushless motor is definitely desirable in cordless tools, giving more power than a similar sized motor with brushes.

This spring I got a Ryobi ONE+ 12" brushless saw (from Home Depot), partly because it uses the same battery packs as my other ONE+ tools. I don't use it for felling full-size trees, but a sharp chain lets it cut like a champ on small trees and limbing.

By the way, I bought a pair of the larger batteries (4 amp-hour?) on sale last year, and one of them conked out this spring. It was on warranty, and Ryobi quickly sent a replacement. (I opened the bad one for inspection and found one cell looked rusty. I don't think I ever got it wet, so it must have leaked internal fluid.)

I have tried both electric and the usual one, can't really choose the best one. The electric one is very nice, but I also love the classic one, it hits different. I use them quite often, I have some trees to cut and I also have bushes in my property that I like to cut in a square form. I was very lucky because before I used to borrow a chainsaw from a friend, but recently decided to buy my own one, very happy about the purchase. Money spent well and in an awesome thing.
I spent a day to look for this site https://bestchainsawadviser.com/remington-chainsaw-reviews/, which was the one I checked when I was purchasing my chainsaw (I always prefer reading reviews before deciding to buy something), I hope it will be useful.

I notice that DR has a battery chainsaw. Does anyone have experience with it?  I am having trouble finding quality reviews of it on the net.

D Nikolls wrote:

John Wolfram wrote:

D Nikolls wrote:I had at peak 7 batteries, 2x 3AH and 6x 2AH. I would runout of batteries way before doing all the bucking I wanted to do, ie a pickup load.

I really like my electric chainsaw, but I certainly agree that if your purpose is cutting wood to split and burn - rather than cutting to clear out a space - then gas is the way to go. For smaller jobs where I'd spend more time trying to get the damn gas saw to start then I would spend actually cutting, then electric wins hands down.

I think bucking, in moderation, will be practical with a better setup. The dewalt 2AH batteries were especially shitty; despite them launching a whole new line(flexvolt) for these higher powered tools, they neglected to use high current cells in them. Where the 3AH batteries would give maybe 30 cuts, the 2AH would give more like 10, instead of the 20 one would expect, as the cells simply could not handle the current draw.


Will see how the 16" Ego I just picked up does for this... I tried the 18" first, but the chain tensioner sucked. The tensioner mechanism is different on the 16" saw, seems much better at first use. Unfortunately, you give up both the LED light and more annoyingly the variable speed trigger. The ergonomics aren't great either. But I will forgive all that if it will hold tension and do a reasonable amount of work!

So far the 16" Ego is definitely better than the POS dewalt, but far from perfect.

As a torture test, I limbed and bucked a big doug fir into milling sections with it; only a few cuts beyond limbing, but this tree was way beyond what should be tackled with a saw like this. By the last cut, it was around 26" diameter.

This went fine; not super fast, but zero trouble with the saw other than annoyance at the lack of bucking spikes.


I felled three alder and bucked the sound one into firewood a few days later. These were appropriately sized for the saw, being around 15" at the felling cut. While bucking the alder, the saw froze up; it had jammed itself solid with shavings. I had to remove the chain and clean out the sprocket. It happened a second time before I finished. Not too pleased about that.

D Nikolls wrote:
I felled three alder and bucked the sound one into firewood a few days later. These were appropriately sized for the saw, being around 15" at the felling cut. While bucking the alder, the saw froze up; it had jammed itself solid with shavings. I had to remove the chain and clean out the sprocket. It happened a second time before I finished. Not too pleased about that.

If you had to speculate what caused this, would you say it was the alder wood in particular that caused the jamming, moisture level of the wood....?

Gerry Parent wrote:

D Nikolls wrote:
I felled three alder and bucked the sound one into firewood a few days later. These were appropriately sized for the saw, being around 15" at the felling cut. While bucking the alder, the saw froze up; it had jammed itself solid with shavings. I had to remove the chain and clean out the sprocket. It happened a second time before I finished. Not too pleased about that.

If you had to speculate what caused this, would you say it was the alder wood in particular that caused the jamming, moisture level of the wood....?

Since the issue didn't come up when working on the fir, I am guessing it had to do with the chip size; the green alder being so much softer, the chips were larger. Combine this with the narrow kerf that all battery chainsaws share...

I seem to recall having this come up with the dewalt as well.

Seems like a better design around the sprocket is needed.

Thank you for the feedback. I rarely cut any alder so its good to know its fine with fir if one of these saws ends up in my shopping cart one day!

D Nikolls wrote:

Gerry Parent wrote:

D Nikolls wrote:
I felled three alder and bucked the sound one into firewood a few days later. These were appropriately sized for the saw, being around 15" at the felling cut. While bucking the alder, the saw froze up; it had jammed itself solid with shavings. I had to remove the chain and clean out the sprocket. It happened a second time before I finished. Not too pleased about that.

If you had to speculate what caused this, would you say it was the alder wood in particular that caused the jamming, moisture level of the wood....?

Since the issue didn't come up when working on the fir, I am guessing it had to do with the chip size; the green alder being so much softer, the chips were larger. Combine this with the narrow kerf that all battery chainsaws share...

I seem to recall having this come up with the dewalt as well.

Seems like a better design around the sprocket is needed.

I bucked some dry wood today without issue. Alder, grand fir, maybe a bit of pine.

It occurs to me that another point of overlap with the dewalt and the ego is that the lack of bucking spikes put the saw *right* against the log much of the time; it seems like this would likely increase the percentage of chips making their way into the sprocket area instead of spraying out.

Vinson Corbo wrote:Because I invested in the DeWalt brand of tools, and a handful of batteries, I bought the 20v chainsaw made by the brand. I don't regret it, its tool-less and gets the job done without issue. It will cut up a downed tree no problem, but I wouldn't expect to outcompete a gas saw. Unless you invest in the large 60v batteries for the 20v tools That might have this saw last a long time. Might need two 20v batteries if its about 12 inches or more diameter. Won't cut much larger than that without an upgraded chain and bar, up to 16 inches. Its great to for forestry and orchard work by pruning and cutting up things less than 12 in diameter. It will go quite a while on things less than 10 inches or less, will likely need to fill up on oil before changing battery. There are probably better brands, but can't go wrong if you have the batteries and invested in the brand already.

Vinson, thanks for the information. I am also invested in the DeWalt brand of tools and have been looking for someone who has the DeWalt Battery Powered Chainsaw. Will be adding to my birthday list this year.

D Nikolls wrote:

D Nikolls wrote:

Gerry Parent wrote:

D Nikolls wrote:
I felled three alder and bucked the sound one into firewood a few days later. These were appropriately sized for the saw, being around 15" at the felling cut. While bucking the alder, the saw froze up; it had jammed itself solid with shavings. I had to remove the chain and clean out the sprocket. It happened a second time before I finished. Not too pleased about that.

If you had to speculate what caused this, would you say it was the alder wood in particular that caused the jamming, moisture level of the wood....?

Since the issue didn't come up when working on the fir, I am guessing it had to do with the chip size; the green alder being so much softer, the chips were larger. Combine this with the narrow kerf that all battery chainsaws share...

I seem to recall having this come up with the dewalt as well.

Seems like a better design around the sprocket is needed.

I bucked some dry wood today without issue. Alder, grand fir, maybe a bit of pine.

It occurs to me that another point of overlap with the dewalt and the ego is that the lack of bucking spikes put the saw *right* against the log much of the time; it seems like this would likely increase the percentage of chips making their way into the sprocket area instead of spraying out.

Paying more attention to this, you can literally see the chips getting forced behind the sprocket cover when bucking with the saw against the tree. Hold it a couple inches out and most of them spray elsewhere.

Makes me even more annoyed that both Ego and Dewalt were too cheap to put real spikes on..

The milwaukee saw has metal spikes, but they are very dainty.. not sure if they would solve this.

We bought an echo two years ago. Aside from replacing the chain, it has worked very reliably. It can cut small stuff for quite a while on one battery, and the 16 inch bar can handle larger logs too. It is nice to be able to get the right chains at the local Big box store without fuss.

I use a corded 12″ 20 volt Dewalt DCCS620P1 electric chainsaw and it is great, I already had all of the batteries and bought the bare tool online and it’s perfect for little stuff.

Eliot Mason wrote:
My local extension office puts on a huge and successful Tree School every year (draws people from all over the state).  Every year there is a Chainsaw Safety for Men class - and a Chainsaw Safety for Women class..

So in the chainsaw safety department, I come across potential firewood that frequently enough has a bit of wire fencing grown into the side of the tree trunk.  Clearly, it would NOT be a good idea to hit this with a chainsaw, but has anyone tried using a reciprocating saw just to 'cleanly' (completely!) remove the offending fence/wire piece so that the section can be cut afterward safely with a chainsaw?  Are there other methods for removing such chainsawing concerns that readers have used?  Thanks!

Of course, I try to cut where the metal isn’t.   If that isn’t possible I cut either around it or through it with a rip saw.

John Weiland wrote:

Eliot Mason wrote:
My local extension office puts on a huge and successful Tree School every year (draws people from all over the state).  Every year there is a Chainsaw Safety for Men class - and a Chainsaw Safety for Women class..

So in the chainsaw safety department, I come across potential firewood that frequently enough has a bit of wire fencing grown into the side of the tree trunk.  Clearly, it would NOT be a good idea to hit this with a chainsaw, but has anyone tried using a reciprocating saw just to 'cleanly' (completely!) remove the offending fence/wire piece so that the section can be cut afterward safely with a chainsaw?  Are there other methods for removing such chainsawing concerns that readers have used?  Thanks!

Yup. A GOOD saw and a long “demolition” blade are great for sections with wire or if you need to cut into the dirt.

Thanks for these helpful responses. A good reciprocating saw demolition blade sounds like a must-have item in the toolbox!

Having one demolition blade guarantees it breaks on first use.   If you have 2 blades, the first one will last forever.