Thoughts on Holzfforma saws

I ordered a Holzfforma G466 saw with a 36" bar. Since my CS-620P does 70% +/- of my cutting, it's hard to rationalize spending $1,200 ‐ $1,600 on a saw that will be rarely used. Having a bunch of big stuff to cut in the next month, I can run it hard over the next month & see how it survives. It could well be a mistake, we'll see. From what is on the web, it should be OK. I will share my experiences .

 

Wow, a 7' DBH tree is biggest I have ever heard of beyond what they cut a century ago. Sheesh, that is a monster.

 

You have said this 3 times it’s a fact!

3 times people have said I know someone that does

 

This talk about what the pro’s use really makes me shake my head. I have seen/heard more pro’s burning up saws than I ever could have dreamed. It’s crazy how many “pro’s” have no clue about saw tuning or maintenance. You can be a pro and still not have a clue what you are doing. I have worked with them before. It is truly scary. I was almost killed because of their fluckups on the job and I left. One guy pushed a brush pile into me with a skid steer while I was limbing a tree. I’m not sure how he didn’t break my legs. Another guy dropped a tree top on me after telling me the coast was clear to walk under. Another guy dropped a top on me. One guy almost shoved me into the chipper with a brush pile he was pushing with a skid steer. The list goes on. They didn’t pay attention, didn’t really care, and just wanted to get paid. Not all tree workers are like that, but the ones I have worked with were very careless. They wanted me to teach them how to work better and make $1M+ in a year, but they wouldn’t listen to anything I said. They had the mindset of “faster is better”.

Showing up to the job with a dull chain, gear not ready, and coffee mugs in hand is not a show of skill, knowledge, or professionalism. They would sit on the front yard of the job, files in hand, trying to get the chains sharp, but nobody knew how to file. They ran used diesel oil in the saws and everything was black and soaked in used engine oil. The bars and chains were junk. The saws barely ran. There was smoke coming off the bar when they would try to make a cut.

These were all licensed tree services with trucks, chippers, and equipment. Very busy, but not skilled. They got lucky more often than anyone would have expected.

This is a pretty good description of your average tree service, at least around here. I’m sure it is similar in other areas. They ran whatever brand of saw they could get at a discount. One guy even made friends with an echo rep and said it would be great advertisement for echo if he had 2-3 echo saws in every truck. That was NOT a good advertisement for echo.

My brother picked up some work with a logging crew. I told him to watch his back and be extremely careful. The other crew members almost killed him several times because they were not paying attention or didn’t care. We had a talk and he quit the next day. It was not long after that we heard one of them was injured or killed.

There are guys who think they have to use xyz brand to be a “real logger” and look tough, and there are guys who use what works and don’t care what color it is or what others think. Some guys go through saws like candy and some run the same saw for 20 years.

We have all seen joe schmo homeowners with expensive pro saws and no clue. They just bought it because it was expensive or the sales guy pushed it. Some of us have seen real pro’s with clones. Maybe they just want a beater saw for rough patches where they don’t want to risk a high dollar saw.

Pro saws attract thieves like the plague, but nobody wants to steal a piece of chite clone. If I was doing tree work in town, I would 100% run clones. Cheap to replace when they get swiped. You can buy a herd of clones for the cost of one pro saw.

If you are one of those tree crews that don’t take care of equipment, run clones. It could save you thousands every year.

They say you “can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”, and it’s true, buy you can still make a pretty nice wallet. A clone might not be on the same level as a pro saw, but it’s not horrible either. Swap a few parts and run it.