speaking of dull chains on project like dismantling the deck (and cutting up railroad tie retaining walls) were you paranoid about hitting nails & spikes? Nothing can ruin your day quicker! Sometimes I wonder if any loggers have gotten over the nails I put in trees with tree forts and home made hunting tree stands I made when I was a kid.
you can sharpen chains a cylindrical shaped file. My stepdad did a lot of logging in the winter months when he worked at the sawmill/wood products shop when I was in high school. Thus, with continuous use chains dull quickly but once you get good at it you can sharpen them up with no problem in a matter of minutes.
Nice work on the tear down - we usually go at those with a sawz-all fitted with a demo blade, and maybe a circular saw. It's a bitchin' saw @steve2^4 , but mine's bigger
yeah... we use it for cutting stone and asphalt. chopped through bricks a couple of times to cut doorways out with it as well.
speaking of "proper tools" my son is using a machete to trim the vegetation surrounding his yard today. He's renting a house in an older part of Augusta so there are decades worth of kudzu, greenbrier, virginia creeper and other plants in the yard. He has a tactical tomahawk too (with the pointy side for puncturing car doors & tires and whatnot) for the thicker shrubs, but I think he still has that here at home. Weed wackers are great for trimming typical lawn grass & weeds, but they will go through a lot of string trimming a lot of tough brush - thus the machete.
unfortunately the house he is renting is right smack dab in the middle of the city - no goats allowed. But the wall o' kudzu does provide a nice privacy fence at least until around December when the leaves die off for the year. And of course birds and other critters have security which is always a plus.
on the campforge "manly and/or cool tools & equipment" subject I did get to try out my saw blade attachment for my extendable fiberglass branch cutting pole! The tree (maybe a green ash) has some tough, tough wood! At one point when I almost had the branch cut it snapped & folded over itself into a weird angle - I had very little leverage to cut the rest of the way through. I mean I had a strip of bark and the very outside layer of the branch which was about one inch wide and 1/4 inch thick. So basically like a couple of wooden rulers stacked together worth of wood. So my son and I managed to get a grip on the lowest part of the branch and hung on it to break it off. Our combined weight was about 31o pounds and despite swinging & hanging on the branch it would,...not....break...off! Finally we went to Lowes where a bought a Little Giant ladder. I love it! It can be used an extension ladder or an indoor A-frame ladder for reaching high ceiling fans and whatnot safely. And the ladder is folding too for easy transport and storage - hence the name. So now I could get a little more height and much needed leverage to finally saw through that last tiny bit of branch that could hold 310 pounds like it was nothing. While cutting more (but thinner) branches I got to use my son's brand new machete. He sharpened one edge to razor sharpness and the other edge is a saw blade (sort of) serrated edge. It has a wide guard and he put grip tape on the hilt so it's about as safe as a machete can be - lots of fun to use too!
You don't buy the goats, you rent them. They come out for a day or so, eat the kudzu, and their hooves kill the roots, so they're unlikely to come back. Sheep also work well, and can be rented, like these guys did: https://www.news.gatech.edu/2014/11/06/little-sheep-goes-long-way-managing-kudzu
aaaannnnd.......I just purchased yet another yard care product! I "loaned" my weed wacker to my son, but do I really want him or myself tote it back and forth? So I bought myself a battery powered weed wacker. It's a RYOBI (cordless of course since it has a chargeable battery) and I love it. So why cordless? I've used - but never owned - gas powered weed wackers and my experience was less than positive. Sure they are great for heavy duty commercial use, but that's overkill for my yard. So nice not having to be limited by the length of my cord or needing to keep track of my gas supply. It has an 18 volt lithium battery which charges up pretty quickly. I would recommend this product!
I had to think about that for a second. That said I was surprised to see battery powered chainsaws. But a chainsaw with a cord.....a very, very long cord....would be a whole lot of fun logging in areas with a lot of thick underbrush.
when my lawnmower finally gives up the ghost I might get a battery powered mower. One of my neighbors has one and it's quiet as can be. But I'll have to do do some research first on the pros and cons.
I went the opposite direction and bought a reel mower. No gas to keep around, no batteries to keep up on, and very quiet. Just hit the blades with wd40 when finished.
I've had reel mowers before, but here was (for me anyway) the downside: if you live somewhere like here in Georgia where the grass grows very fast in the warm/hot weather and the grass grows faster than you can cut it, a reel mower will push the grass over before it cuts it. It might rain every evening for weeks at a time. And if you have bahai grass in your area it's a guarantee that bahai will pop up almost overnight and reach ten inches tall within 48 hours or so. That said once you get a yard "picture perfect" with only the type/species of grass you want and if you can cut it fast enough reel mowers are fine. But if you don't get off work until 6:00 PM and it starts raining at 4:00 PM for several days straight you're hurting. You can cut the regular lawn grass but you'll have to hand pluck or weed wack the much longer bahai grass when you are finished.
pine straw? Also are those palmettos where the grass ends? I see those now and then when I'm hunting.
that's what I meant - I think the pointy plants are palmettos or some similar plant. Saw palmettos/wild palmettos grow here and there where I hunt here at Fort Gordon. It's on the outside edge of their natural range so I rarely see them. I'll never see a bunch of them like in this picture, but they are all over Florida. Of course you can buy them to plant as ornamentals to grow most places in Georgia.
I recently bought a Stihl 181 C-BE. It cuts fast as hell, the easy start is a dream, but I can't get it to start when it's a warm engine. It cranks up fine cold, runs great...but then if I turn it off for a bit, I can't get it to start again. It tries to start, but stalls out. I'm hoping it's bad gas. The gas I've been using has been in the gas can for over a year. At least I've got a two year warranty.
