JTAbq
New Member
I have been lurking on here for a while now, I own a Stihl 290 with an 18” bar that has been a good saw but I decided to upgrade this year. My budget was around $500. I went to my old Stihl dealer and he didn’t carry Stihl anymore but now was a Dolmar dealer. He was trying to sell me the 5100. It seemed like a nice saw but I had never heard of Dolmar before so I decided to do some more research. That is how I found you guys and the wealth of knowledge that exists on this site. After a bunch of reading here, I decided a Home Depot rental saw was the way to go and I could always upgrade to the big bore kit in the future. I called all the Home Depots in the area and none were for sale. I was told by two of them to try back in the spring. The early stages of what I hear is CAD was kicking in and I decided to go with the 5100. Went to the shop and the 5100 had been replaced with the 5104. A different sales guy this time and he couldn’t tell me what had changed. They had no literature on the new saw and instead he tried to sell me the 510 saying that was closer to the old 5100 I left frustrated and feeling like I was being duped. More research, I haven’t been able to find any real info on the 5104. Last week I was out of town for work and stopped buy their Home Depot to check on a rental for sale. There she was! A new Makita 6401 in an open box, somebody had ordered and returned it. It was brand new everything was wrapped and looked like it hadn’t been touched. The manager sold it to me open box for $475.