Gee gents, all the alcohol talk may put me back in rehab
Anyways, have been at it again for about 40 hours over the last couple weeks.
Have now finished one half of the property and am starting to make a dent in the other, equally large side. This side however has smaller (on average) stumps.
Also went back to the scraggy row to finish some stumps off but also decided to drop a few more of the trees that were left there.
Fair few tricky ones here and a lot of canopies hooked together. These were the trees I left last time as I had assessed them as being too difficult at the time. Was using the pop upped 7900 for the stumping and the 353/5100-S for the felling side of things as most of the cutting was in small wood.
The 353 is certainly a nice little saw but has one major flaw in situations like this...
That's right, outboard clutch and apart from cracking the clutch there was no way to get the bar off due to a pinched tip. Ah well, just use the 5100-S and cross my fingers that the little Husky doesn't get squashed! It was fine and fell out the cut as I dropped 4 limbs all at once.
I'd been using .325" semi chisel on both the 5100-S and 353 as the Husky came with .325" when I bought it. Not too bad for limbing etc but once again when the going gets tough .325" just won't hold up.
I have come across a few runs of smaller trees where Termites have moved in dragging sand and crap all through the stump and under the bark.
It makes short work of 3/8" semi chisel, that'll own .325" which doesn't stand a chance.
After using the pop upped 7900 with the now sold Makita's top end I think I've finally nailed it with the tuning etc. It's running as hard (or harder) as ever since I pulled the top end and rebuilt it with a new Caber ring. Compression feels stronger too although I haven't tested it yet but doubt the guage will show higher numbers than on the Makita (200psi).
I also received 3 new HD filters from Kyle at Edge & Engine (great service once again mate) after the last one was obviously leaking somewhere - despite looking very hard I never found where it was damaged. Once again nothing has gotten past this setup since running a new filter
I also got from Kyle some Forester and Dolmar work gloves. Both are great gloves and well made.
I'd also forgotten just how good the little 5100-S is. It is a great little saw and is substantially more gusty than the 353. Out of the three 50cc saws I own I would rate them as follows...
1) MS261
2) 5100-S
3) 353
The 261 hasn't seen much work lately as I've been using the 353 just to see what all the fuss is about with the balance etc (same as 346XP). Certainly nicely balanced but all three 50cc saws I own balance well in my opinion.