Stupidest chainsaw mistakes?

I wonder how many tales there are out there. My two:

1) Lent my Chinky "Tarus 4500" saw to my cousin, to cut small wood for the fire. Spent about an hour with her going over safety, good practice, chain brake usage, etc. She came back from the weekend at the cabin and gave it back, saying it "didn't cut very fast at all".

She'd been cutting with the chain brake on, using it as the front handle.:censored:

2) I bought an 020T from Ebay. On arrival, the bar oil tank was completely dry and unused, it looked like new. I emailed the guy and asked him about it.

He thought it was a front fuel tank, and had never needed to cut enough in one day to warrant using it. He assured me however, that the saw had had the bar and sprocket replaced "quite a few times", but the chain had never been replaced. Happily I got it shortly after the bar and sprocket had been replaced, and it oils perfectly when used for oil! The old chain would struggle to cut paper.
"Front fuel tank". :censored:

I'm waiting for someone to come on here and say they cut their leg or arm off?

Sam

A while back someone had posted how they borrowed a trailer to gather some wood and they used the black sidewall of the tire to test the chain oiler. Saw twitched and cut up the sidewall, if I recall they were a long way from home with no spare. I'm still laughing about that one!

My worst chainsaw mistake was finding this site. I used to be perfectly happy with my one saw.

Had a customer bring in a McCulloch he bought at BigLots, he had been using it a month, and it never did cut well. I looked, and said that the chain was
on backwards.

I put it on the right way for him, and I noticed that the backside
was worn round, he really did use it for a month that way, hard.

That guy was thrilled when he tried it, came back in ecstatic.

What a determined little fellow he was.

I put a chain on backwards once, but noticed and fixed it before I tried to cut anything.

Chris

Brian S said:

My worst chainsaw mistake was finding this site. I used to be perfectly happy with my one saw.

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:agree2:

Torquin said:

I put a chain on backwards once, but noticed and fixed it before I tried to cut anything.

Chris

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I pulled a new chain out of the bad chains bin that had clear marks that it had been run backward.

oke:

PatrickIreland said:

I wonder how many tales there are out there. My two:

1) Lent my Chinky "Tarus 4500" saw to my cousin, to cut small wood for the fire. Spent about an hour with her going over safety, good practice, chain brake usage, etc. She came back from the weekend at the cabin and gave it back, saying it "didn't cut very fast at all".

She'd been cutting with the chain brake on, using it as the front handle.:censored:

2) I bought an 020T from Ebay. On arrival, the bar oil tank was completely dry and unused, it looked like new. I emailed the guy and asked him about it.

He thought it was a front fuel tank, and had never needed to cut enough in one day to warrant using it. He assured me however, that the saw had had the bar and sprocket replaced "quite a few times", but the chain had never been replaced. Happily I got it shortly after the bar and sprocket had been replaced, and it oils perfectly when used for oil! The old chain would struggle to cut paper.
"Front fuel tank". :censored:

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What is this world coming too? Man alive. Wow! A front gas tank for them longer cutting jobs. Unreal! I was telling my wife the other day that the amount of stupidity in this world has gone up. It almost as if humans got in the way of natural selection and the dumb ones are making it to adulthood and reproducing. Can't they see the obvious markers on the gas and oil tanks that distinguish the two! They are at least suppose to read the owners manual before cutting ( which helps with this distinction), I am sure a dealer went over the safety procedures. Sounds like that guy is lucky he sold it before something bad happened.Lucky he sold the saw and he isn't in the injuries and fatalities forum instead. Sorry for the rant, but stupidity bothers me.

I guess my stupidest chanisaw mistake was about 4 years ago, I was renting a didn't have a place to store any of my stuff, at the time all I had was Dads old 038, Mom's neighbor to the south was a drug addict who had been arrested before for breaking into houses. In the spring I left my beloved 038 in an unlocked garden shed and when I went looking for it in the fall it was gone. Sadly the police were unable to do much more then make a police report, as I couldn't nail down a firm time as to when it disappeared. The neighbor is lucky that he is the kind of guy to sell it rather then use it, cause if I caught him using it, I would have a story of cutting off arms for you guys here.

Brian S said:

A while back someone had posted how they borrowed a trailer to gather some wood and they used the black sidewall of the tire to test the chain oiler. Saw twitched and cut up the sidewall, if I recall they were a long way from home with no spare. I'm still laughing about that one!

My worst chainsaw mistake was finding this site. I used to be perfectly happy with my one saw.

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Yup, me too.

Just talked to a neighbor the other day that borrowed a saw from his boss that had the chain on backwards...He told his boss it needed a new BLADE and he just laughed, then told him he put the chain on backwards to screw w/ him...

I've never made a mistake...























































Gary

Probably my biggest one to date is getting made with the 55V and sending it flying out the garage door and 1/2 way across the road...now I get to buy parts to fix what broke when it hit the ground so I can try and fix the rest of the crap wrong with it....:censored:

GASoline71 said:

I've never made a mistake...

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Yeah, it was an accident with a beer can that cut off your leg and arm, wasn't it? I remember the day well... those ringpulls are NOT to be messed with!

When I was about 16 or 17 I was tired of borrowing my dads 026...he was probably tired of me borrowing it too...I wanted my own saw so I bought a super clean Craftsman used off a buddy's dad. The saw itself didn't have a speck of dust, dirt or grime on it and the paint was immaculate, but the chain on this thing looked like he was trying to cut granite. I figured for $60, the saw was clean and it came with a case, I wasn't gonna complain about the chain. He SAID it ran great but didn't have any mix to fire it up...well I didn't know any better so off I went happy as a clam. That was mistake number one.

Too many consecutive mistakes to count: after purchasing the saw I went straight to the store and bought a couple new chains and a file. I was planning on taking my new saw out the next day to cut wood with my dad and I wanted to be all prepared. So I show up the next morning, all excited to show off my new Craftsman to my old man, get her all filled up (with dads gas and oil, I didn't have any money left after buying the saw/chains/file) and start pulling. After about 4 or 5 pulls the cord comes out of the saw. No big deal I think, dad can start cutting and I'll have this thing together in no time cutting side by side with him. This is where it really went downhill. I pull a little cheapo tool kit out of my truck and start pulling this saw apart. When I get all the bolts off the side cover, trying to go as fast as possible so I can start cutting with pops, I rip the side cover off to fix the pull cord. Bad idea. When I ripped it open springs and clips and all kinds of parts I wasn't expecting flew out of this thing all over the hillside. I was just like the kid in A Christmas Story when he dropped the lug nuts...in slow motion I went, "Ohhhhhhhh f:censored:k!" It must have been loud enough for my old man to hear cause when I looked up he was shutting down his saw and heading towards me. He took one look at all the pieces scattered around and said, "How's that new saw treating you?"

To this day, well over 10 years later, I have never gotten that saw running.

About twenty years ago i ran over a top handle craftsman saw with the truck. Pretty much trashed the thing. it was about wore out anyway. Now i always put the saw in the back of the truck never on the ground near the truck.

I am new to chainsaws so I haven't made too many mistakes yet but there is plenty of time for them to happen.

I guess the worst thing I have done so far was forgetting to take the long reach adapter off my compression tester when I was testing my 361. Put a little dent in the top of the piston . It didn't seem to affect anything though.....

I went to step down from a small platform with my 455 rancher and slipped, I fell on the front handle and cracked a rib! OUCH.
I had switched it off first!

I just had a howler with my FS250 strimmer, I had dirt in the carb so I cleaned it last night and it wasnt running great tody, Turns out I put the diaphram and gasket on the wrong way round DOH!

Twenty-five years ago, my first chainsaw was a yellow John Deere (Echo). When it ran, it cut great. I ran out of bar oil, and being lazy and uninformed, I put 80/90 gear oil in the oil reservoir. Well you can probably guess what happened next. It worked fine that day, but next time it wouldn't oil. Turns out the gear oil dissolved the oil line!!! It is funny now, but it wasn't back then.

scotclayshooter said:

I went to step down from a small platform with my 455 rancher and slipped, I fell on the front handle and cracked a rib! OUCH.

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I'd rather have read that you dropped a Husqvarna from a great height!
But, it is a good story anyway, I'm sure your rib didn't think so though!

Worst that has happened to me is getting an oily leg from a MS200T with a badly inserted filler cap!