Cutting small trees with sawzall vs chainsaw

Red Squirrel

I have some small trees that I already cut down by hand but I want to cut into logs and a power tool will be much faster. I'm debating between buying a sawzall, which will be versatile for other uses, or buying an electric chainsaw. Obviously the chainsaw is better for that, but will a sawzall work ok? These aren't that big of trees. The biggest trunk was maybe 8 inchs thick at very most.

sixeightten

With a good 12 inch blade, a sawzall will cut that in about 60 seconds. A good blade will set you back about 4-5 bucks. We recently built a pole barn and I used the sawzall to cut off the tops of the 6x6 posts. Much more versatile than a chainsaw.

jbfan

I think lenox makes blades for green wood.

The blades have teeth just like a bow saw.

I use them all the time, just to keep from digging out the chainsaw, but my sawzall is battey powerd and goes anywhere.

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oh'mike

That's the type of blade you need--standard blades bind up in green wood.

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gma2rjc

I used my sawzall to cut out 3 Yew shrubs to about 6" below ground level. It worked great. But as previously mentioned, get the right blade. It took me a long time to get them cut out with a regular blade meant for cutting wood (I didn't know there was a special blade available).

GottaFixIt

I've used both on plenty of occasions.

The recip saw (with the blades like mentioned above) tends to jerk the wood back and forth quite a bit. Probably not as much of a problem if they're already down, but trying to trim smaller limbs doesn't work so great. This is a 12 amp Dewalt, BTW.

The chainsaw is much faster. It dominates for this purpose -even the cheapo 120vac, 12" bar I used to use. But of course, this is really it's only purpose.

I can't imagine not owning a good recip saw, I'd say go with the recip saw. Keep in mind, they're more susceptible to bind, so get a good setup that won't let the wood pinch the blade.

Mikelite80

Sawzall if small and infrequent trimming. Chain saw if regular tree trimming is in your furture

A decent sawzall is probably one of the most usefully tools you should have around the house. Like others have said they make special blades just for pruning. But get one of each blade cause you'll find uses for it. Of course keeping a well tuned gas chainsaw is always the best way. I can have a branch cut long before you can find the battery, if its charged, find the right blade, etc. Its a uni-tasker as Alton Brown would say, but it does its job and does it right.

Red Squirrel

Cool think I will go ahead and go with the sawzall then. I'll check out the available blades and go with the bow saw tooth ones.

DrHicks

Good move. It'll be important to get that "big tooth job." I have one, and am amazed what I can saw through!

Rehabber

I own 2 chainsaws, a Stihl MS460, and a Stihl 034 super, both GREAT chainsaws. For small stuff I use my Dewalt sawzall in orbital mode with the 12" blade for green wood. It works great.

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cbzdel

I have used my sawzall to cut down small trees and even large plants

One time I was out of wood blades and even made it work with a metal cutting blade

DrHicks

That's kind of like cooking steak in the Crock Pot.

Tizzer

Sounds like a good excuse(I mean reason) for buying a new tool.

Ron6519

Black and Decker used to sell a pruning blade for use in a sawzall. The teeth had an aggressive rake to them and worked pretty well for small projects.

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Red Squirrel

That's how I see it. The chainsaw could be nice, but I would probably not use it as much as I could use a sawzall.

Too bad it's supposed to rain for most of this long weekend, was going to do this project, guess it will wait... and so much for leaving the dead trees outside to dry.