Sometimes, I think to use a piece of equipment properly, you have to get accustomed to it, and sometimes, you have to beat it up a little bit or almost destroy it in this case. I’m speaking of my chainsaw, a Stihl chainsaw. My brother purchased it for us because we’ve been actually sharing a chainsaw. After all, neither of us used it very much until I came to town.
This chainsaw is a stihl MS311 with a 25-inch blade. It’s a workhorse of a chainsaw. It’s not a chainsaw that you can use all day, or at least I can’t use all day because I’m not accustomed to the weight.
Anyway, I’m in the woods working on my small house. I was coming in yesterday to get everything set up. I heard there was a big storm a few weeks ago, so a tree had fallen across the path. I Used the new chainsaw to cut it. All went great.
That same day I started cutting small trees to make a clearing for a storage building. Everything was going great, As I used the chainsaw, I managed to pinch the blade, but I was able to get it free and kept cutting. I guess I should have stopped to adjust the blade because, apparently, it was loose. A little while later the blade came off. I attempted to put it back on. Didn’t work. I finally got it on but I used it later when I was at the house where I grew up. I wanted to take some pieces of siding to use in the house I’m building in the woods. They were not very big trees and one happened to pitch the chainsaw blade. The blade once again came off. I wasn’t able to get it back on because, apparently it just wouldn’t fit in the groove in the bar. I used a manual saw to finish cutting.
I brought it back to the house in the woods and attempted to fix it because there were lots of trees here that I planned to cut on this trip, and others I cut before before I left during the proor trip. I purchased a blade earlier when I went into town. I left it in the truck and did not think to replace the one on the saw. Back at the house in the woods, I decided to try and switch to blades. I think maybe I damaged the blade, which was keeping it from going in the groove on the bar. I used the new blade, and as it turns out, that was it, a bad blade, ths new one fit, it went back together, and I’m back on track thus far.
I have to be careful about remembering to Tighten both of the nuts on the saw to keep the blade tight. One of the nuts vibrated off earlier, that’s why I went to town this morning. I didn’t remember to check the nuts earlier or didn’t think of checking it because the saw that I previously didn’t have nuts to tighten. It was a fast-start chainsaw. So, to tighten the blade on it, you would turn a lever. There were no nuts to tighten, so I didn’t think about actually tightening both nuts because who knew? But now I’m back on track, so hopefully, this is it, and I’ve gone through my learning phase. And now I can start cutting down these trees to put up my storage container. Because that’s something I really need to do.
