My cousin called the other day and asked if I could help him over at his son's house. He had a bunch of trees that he wanted to take down and some that he was concerned about if they might fall on the house. We walked around the house and ended up taking down 10 trees that were diseased, damaged, or just plain in the way. They are familiar with small saws as my cousin has owned a Stihl 180 for many years and I work on it for him when he has any issue with it. Pretty much just routine maintenance. He's been wanting a new larger saw and they ended up getting a MS261 M-tronic saw earlier in the week. He had trouble locating one, and the two Stihl dealers I frequent have been out of 261s for a while. Anyway it was fun to get out and safely drop several trees. I have been trying to show them safe methods of cutting trees and I'm sure with some more experience they'll get comfortable in dropping trees near the house. We had to get the bull rope out on a few of them as the woods at the edge of the property is pretty thick and almost any direction to get them down was gauranteed to get hung up. A few of them were leaners and two of those had to go about 60 degrees away from the lean. One of the large leaners could drop straight into the lean so I used a plunge cut to set the hinge then backed out through the holding wood to avoid a barber chair. We had a 4" maple get bent over when one of the large trees dropped in the woods so I used that as an example of what a barber chair is and why it's so dangerous. I wish I would have gotten more action pix while working, but when I'm in the zone, I tend to stay there... Here's some pix of the carnage: Flush cut all the stumps after the pix were taken.
I thught i faint cries of "TIMBER" yesterday. Guess i wasnt hearing things! Good work sir in the cutting and educating. Give a FHCer a chain saw and get out of the way. Ive heard the 261 is scarce in dealer stock...covid??? One new one for sale on FBM and the seller mentioned that. How is your wife doing MAF143 ? I know she had been very ill.
My cousin called all over and located an ACE hardware that had a few in stock. Most dealers here are out of stock on the 261. He had wanted a 20" bar on it, but they were out of 20" bars as well. I'm sure Covid is the reason being used. My wife is doing pretty well considering. She still gets tired quickly and they are debating whether or not to take her completely off oxygen yet. She has had some wacky symptoms that are hard to pin down since she had Covid. Her sugar levels are all over the place, no rhyme or reason. Usually high in the morning and if she drinks a can of Coke, one day it will drop to normal within an hour and the next day it might sky-rocket to 250. ??? We're puzzled and the Doctors really aren't sure yet what's going on and they're so busy with REALLY sick people that if you aren't unconsious it's hard to get their attention. We aren't pushing too hard yet about it because we're still in the super grateful stage that she at least got to come home, unlike so many others. She is actually out shopping right now and is not wearing her oxygen. She stays masked and washed up well because she is scared she may bring it home to me. (She's a keeper)...
