By Steve Maxwell


Using a chainsaw probably won’t do much to boost your reputation as a quality contractor, but looks can be deceiving. Nothing cuts lumber, ICFs, plywood, SIPs and OSB faster. For those times when precision takes a back seat to speed and depth of cut, a chainsaw makes a lot of sense – especially an electric model. Sure, electrics are mickey mouse for felling timber, but they’re more than enough machine for those occasional-but-important big rough cuts you’ll face sooner or later on most projects.

To get a better sense of the saws we’re talking about, I took apart a Craftsman 16” model. At $120, it’s cheap enough to justify for occasional use, and readily available across Canada. It’s also a surprisingly good little saw, built better than I would have expected. It delivers power roughly equivalent to a 30-something cc gas saw – more than enough for construction tasks, yet without the noise, fumes and hassles of carrying both mixed gas and chain oil.

As you’d expect with a saw meant for general consumer use, the Craftsman comes with an anti-kickback safety chain, and there are two reasons this matters. Kickback is a sudden jumping back of the saw when the cutters near the tip grab or bind with the sides or bottom of the cut. Kickback can cause serious injuries, especially on a saw like this one that has no automatic brake to stop the chain if kickback happens.

The presence of extra metal protrusions between the cutters of a safety chain make kickback less likely, though there’s a trade off. Safety chains also cut more slowly – about half the speed of a regular chain all things being equal. If you find your electric saw isn’t cutting fast enough through beams or other deep cuts (even with a sharp chain), and you’re familiar with chainsaws and know how to avoid kickback, then have the saw fitted with a conventional chain. Cuts are a bit rougher, but much faster.

Electric chain saws are similar to their gas-powered cousins in some ways, including the system for lubing the chain. Without oil, any saw chain gets hot and will eventually seize during a cut. The Craftsman saw has a small automatic oiler that lubes the chain through a passage behind the place where the bar attaches to the saw body. Oil gets fed into this passage through a 3/16” diameter transparent yellow tube that connects to an oil pump less than 1/2” in diameter. This pump draws from a semi-transparent plastic reservoir, powered by an oscillating plunger mechanism that works on the simplest of principles.

The spring-loaded tip of the pump has a tiny, domed end, and when the saw is assembled, this end rests against an undulating rim of plastic on the inside face of the main ring gear. As this rim of plastic spins while the saw operates, the undulations rise and fall in relation to the domed end, moving the pump plunger back and forth and pumping oil. Despite the tiny size and plastic construction, this pump delivers enough suction that you can feel and hear it when you push the plunger back and forth with your finger.

This saw is reminiscent of gas models in other ways, too. The chain is driven by a six-tooth sprocket that looks just like the ones on my gas saws. The only difference is that this sprocket isn’t connected to a centrifugal clutch. Being electric, the tool doesn’t need one. The chain simply stops and starts with the motor, unlike a gas saw that keeps ticking over between cuts when you need the chain to stop. Just be prepared to have an extension cord with the right kind of end on it. The shrouded plug-end coming off the saw is partially enclosed with a rubber boot for weather protection, allowing only small, standard extension cord ends to connect to it.

The motor on the Craftsman has the kind of standard, open design you often find on tools that don’t need to be particularly compact or light. Brushes are held against the commutator by a spring-loaded metal arm, and they include a feature that’s appearing on more tools.

Whenever a new tool motor is first turned on, the contact zone between brushes and commutator isn’t perfect. This mismatch continues until the brushes fully seat with the surface, and during this time it can lead to excess arcing on the commutator, pitting metal that should remain smooth. To speed the all-important brush seating process, more and more tool manufacturers are applying a grooved surface to the contact face of carbon motor brushes, instead of the traditional smooth one. Grooves cause much more rapid initial wear on the brush surface, speeding break-in period and leading to longer motor life.

Despite its mostly plastic construction, the Craftsman does have proper bearings where it counts. There’s a race of ball bearings where the main shaft extends to engage the drive sprocket and a set of roller bearings at the other end.

Despite their reputation, chainsaws really are the best tools for some tasks. Decent electric models are also cheap and easy keepers, making them a pretty good bet if you’re the kind of builder who sees the value in being tooled up for whatever comes along.

Chain Reaction
Rob Dearing, a contractor on Manitoulin Island, Ontario, saw the need for a chainsaw long before he began using the electric model that now earns its keep in his tool trailer. “Sometimes you have to make a really wide deep cut, and nothing beats a chainsaw for that. Whatever you do,” warns Dearing, “don’t take these tools for granted. “They look like toys but they’re just as powerful as a plug-in circ saw, and they’ve got a lot more teeth whizzing around all out in the open.”

Most recently, Dearing used his electric saw for notching out rafters to accept 2x4 braces that support an eaves extension. The extra-long cutting depth of a chainsaw is also perfect for sawing all the way across ICF forms after they go up, punching out door and window openings through sheathing, cutting engineered beams, rough demolition work, creating holes for roof vents, and crosscutting landscape timbers. Dearing’s even used a dedicated electric chain saw for cuts through big bones while butchering beef and deer. “Use it only for meat, keep it clean and use cooking oil for the bar. It works great.”

Chain Again
The Prazi beam cutter is a hybrid saw chain and bar attachment that turns a worm drive circ saw into a deep-cutting power tool for beam work and SIPs construction. This especially useful tool has been around for a while, but the Prazi isn’t the only chainsaw-type tool that makes sense for contractors. Something called the Head Cutter (www.bigfootsaws.com) is another option.

It’s a heavy-duty, swiveling metal shoe that clamps to the bar of any chainsaw – electric or gas – allowing much more accurate crosscuts than are possible with a hand-guided saw. The hefty swiveling mechanism also lets the saw tackle beveled crosscuts with surprising accuracy, even on the largest wood beams, glulam and LVL components.

In tests that I’ve run, the Head Cutter is faster and more accurate than I expected. Pencil your cut lines along the side of the shoe rather than the chain itself. All those flying chips make it impossible to see exactly where the chain is cutting.

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