I have the opportunity to purchase a new saw for my town's hiking trails volunteer group. Our current saw is a mid-1990's Craftsman. It cuts okay, but breaks down quite a bit and is a pain to start when it's hot. Due to the inferior quality of this saw, I've been using my own saws for trail clearing volunteer work. I actually don't mind using my saws for this purpose because I know these saws inside and out, so I don't have to worry about being 2 or 3 miles out on a trail and having a saw crap out on me.
The new saw will be used for trail maintenance and also storm clean-up. I'd like to get a light weight saw, but the other issue is (especially with storm clean-up) is we frequently have 20-30 inch trees (pine, oak, maple) come down across our trails, so the saw will probably have to pull at least a 20" bar with authority.
The final issue is that, because we're an all-volunteer group, sometimes maintenance is lacking: volunteers are pressed for time, so they want to show up, grab the saw, do whatever cutting is needed, and then the saw gets put away without being cleaned, no chain sharpening, etc.
Because of this, I want to get an m-tronic or auto-tune saw. I'm having a bit of trouble finding out what models from Stihl have the m-tronic feature and what Husky models have auto-tune. There's not a hard cut-off on the budget, but I'm hoping $700-$800 will do the trick.
Can I get some feedback from the group about what saws I should be looking at?
Thanks.
The new saw will be used for trail maintenance and also storm clean-up. I'd like to get a light weight saw, but the other issue is (especially with storm clean-up) is we frequently have 20-30 inch trees (pine, oak, maple) come down across our trails, so the saw will probably have to pull at least a 20" bar with authority.
The final issue is that, because we're an all-volunteer group, sometimes maintenance is lacking: volunteers are pressed for time, so they want to show up, grab the saw, do whatever cutting is needed, and then the saw gets put away without being cleaned, no chain sharpening, etc.
Because of this, I want to get an m-tronic or auto-tune saw. I'm having a bit of trouble finding out what models from Stihl have the m-tronic feature and what Husky models have auto-tune. There's not a hard cut-off on the budget, but I'm hoping $700-$800 will do the trick.
Can I get some feedback from the group about what saws I should be looking at?
Thanks.