OT: Hydraulic powered chainsaw

[lugnut]

About every two years our Power Company comes around and if there are any trees in their right-away (under the power lines) they cut off the tops about 3 or 4 feet below the neutral wire. They have been doing that to my Crimson King Maple tree since we bought our house 20 years ago. Now the tree was about 50 feet wide and only 25 feet high.
So this year when they came I ask if they would just cut the whole tree down and they agreed to do it. They cut it down, chipped all the branches and limbs and cleaned up the mess, For Free. Cleaning up the leaves each year was getting to be more work that I could handle.
Now about the Hydraulic saw : It was a pole saw with a 7 or 8 foot reach and a 13inch blade. Powered by the hydraulics of the bucket and boom truck. That thing had more power than any saw I have ever seen. The guy was cutting 8 and 10 inch limbs like they was paper and it was fast. From the time they parked the truck under the tree until they had it all cut, chipped and cleaned up was just a hour and fifteen min. One guy cutting and one guy feeding the chipper. That chipper was awesome as well. It was chewing up those chunks of branches as fast as he was throwing them in.
Now I don't have to rake those big old leaves this fall. 😁

[IanPendle]

As well as being very powerful for their size, they have another advantage - they can be used underwater.

[Arcane]

It's been a very long time since I last used a hydraulic chainsaw, back when I worked as a Lineman. After gas powered ones, a hydraulic powered one was pure bliss. No fooling around with mixing gas and oil or storing the fuel and it was so easy to start, just plug the hydraulic lines in and pull the trigger. Quiet too which was nice. Also safer because you never had a moving chain unless you pulled the trigger and it stopped instantly when you released the trigger. For use out of a bucket there was no comparison between the two.

[plunger]

I saw a documentary about cutting old forests underwater using a hydraulic chainsaw in a newly flooded dam in Brazil. Very interesting.

[Black Forest]

This is a hydraulic chainsaw I made for my excavator. It works great. I now can rotate the saw to cut at angles also.

https://youtu.be/1PFG6jLU5cY

[Sparky_NY]

This is a hydraulic chainsaw I made for my excavator. It works great. I now can rotate the saw to cut at angles also.
https://youtu.be/1PFG6jLU5cY

Nice job building that ! When I seen this thread I thought of the hydraulic chainsaws I have seen on firewood processors and also those mounted on excavators used for forest clearing. There also the ones with hydraulic powered circular blades, equally impressive. Those are amazing how fast they cut a large log, almost scary to watch and the sound makes the hair on your neck stand up !

Here is a video that shows both in action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ3VtwVw-E4

[TGTool]

I've had two very different chipper experiences. Our next door neighbor had a tree service, and one time with a bunch of branches down he came over with the truck and chipper and helped clear it out. Besides wearing the safety equipment (ears and eyes) he explained the best technique for feeding the chipper. That is, you had your branch in hand, you'd sling it into the rollers and continue a pivot almost 180 degrees. The reason was that it sucked the trash in FAST and if you stood still you'd be whipped badly with the small ends of the branch. That worked really well.

So sometime later he'd moved and we had more stuff to chip so rented one from the local rental outfit. No need to sling and pivot, you could poke a piece in and stand with your coffee while it thought about chewing it up. When I took it back I commented and the rental outfit said, yeah, they'd slowed the feed way down. I can understand that for safety reasons with the inexperienced, but a nice side benefit for them was was that you needed a lot longer to chip the pile.

[reggie_obe]

Line crew will also have a hydraulic powered sawsall on the truck for cutting crossarms and braces used to reinforce poles that have been struck by vehicles.

[eKretz]

This is a hydraulic chainsaw I made for my excavator. It works great. I now can rotate the saw to cut at angles also.
https://youtu.be/1PFG6jLU5cY

Nice job! You mentioned having added capability to angle the saw - does the rocking mechanism turn with it so that you can still feed the saw in a straight line then? Pretty slick setup.

[Black Forest]

Nice job! You mentioned having added capability to angle the saw - does the rocking mechanism turn with it so that you can still feed the saw in a straight line then? Pretty slick setup.

No at the moment the feed is all done with the excavator arm controls so that makes cutting at anything other than 0 degrees of 90 degrees difficult. I will mount the rotating device between the hookup to the excavator and the actual saw and include a downfeed cylinder regulated by the pressure of the saw motor. Meaning if the pressure in the line to the saw motor goes up the downfeed will go down. That will eliminate having to have a separate control for the downfeed. I have it all figured out but haven't gotten to it yet.

[The Metal Butcher]

This is a hydraulic chainsaw I made for my excavator. It works great. I now can rotate the saw to cut at angles also.
https://youtu.be/1PFG6jLU5cY

You impress me, sir.

[reggie_obe]

This is a hydraulic chainsaw I made for my excavator. It works great. I now can rotate the saw to cut at angles also.
https://youtu.be/1PFG6jLU5cY

Perfect for the zombie apocalypse. Operator totally avoids any blood spatter.. A longer bar may be needed to handle crowds.

[RB211]

Well, I’m confused. I bought a nice Stihl chainsaw. The engine is NOT the problem, but the damn chain stretching and needing constant tightening, and sharpening fairly often. No, I wasn’t digging trenches in the sand with it. Yes, used plenty of bar oil as well. I can only assume that shrub oaks really are hell on chainsaws.

[Doozer]

I was trimming one of my trees where a branch was touching the 13,800 volt line
that runs across my property. Is I was almost all the way through the cut with my
chainsaw, I felt the tingle from the current passing through my chain saw and
through me ! ! ! All this while I was on a fiberglass ladder. Scary stuff.

--Doozer

[Mike Burch]

I've seen a large hydraulically-driven circular saw on a road-maintenance machine. Instead of cutting trees away, it was happily slicing though a rock that had been exposed in the bank beside the road. It was cooled by a guy with a fire hose. The noise was unreal.