These are the rascals. Using terms like “bad” and “rascals” I’m expressing how I don’t like my chainsaws recently.

The blue boy is my newest chainsaw. I picked it up cheap, and though not too powerful, it is electric and can be used for cutting smaller pieces of wood when I don’t want or need to use the bigger chainsaw. The orange boy is bigger, more powerful but also smellier and noisier.

I picked up a huge pile of wood over the last week and then we had 4 days of rain so I couldn’t cut it into more manageable pieces. Once the rain stopped, I went to work. Or so I thought. The blue boy worked fine with the smaller pieces for over an hour until it started to smoke. Smoke coming out of a machine is never a good sign from my limited experience and knowledge. It’ll probably be better after it cools down a few minutes I thought. Nope. OK, it just needs a longer rest. Nope. On to using the orange boy.

I gassed it up and got to work cutting up wood. Or so I thought. Smoke coming from the wood being cut, and burn marks on the wood are never good signs when using a gas chainsaw, at least from my limited experience and knowledge. This problem seemed pretty easy. It needs a new chain! I picked one up and as I ran out of time yesterday decided I’d continue the task today. Nope.

Today was cold. Not really cold, but cold. Especially the wind. After putting on the new chain and cleaning the chainsaw (orange boy) - something I hadn’t done in a while - I got ready to do some cutting. Nope. One hour of pulling on the rope to start the chainsaw became one hour of pulling on the rope. My arm ached. The chainsaw sat. After throwing the wood back onto my wood pile (that released some stress!) I stormed back into the house. I now had two chainsaws out of commission. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I decided to check on blue boy, but no, it still wouldn’t start. 30 minutes later, after taking it completely apart and plugging it in, it was spinning away, laughing at me. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Arlen! How could you be so stupid?” Well, stupid I may be, but orange boy and blue boy do not know how close they came to experiencing something I like to call Mr. Sledgehammer. Oh, sure, I would have regretted the loss of money, but I would have had the briefest moment of satisfaction.

With blue boy back to work, I decided to check on orange boy one more time. Nope. Orange boy can have it’s fun for today. But come tomorrow, if orange boy does not go back to work, it may be time to reconsider a discussion with Mr. Sledgehammer.