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When my sons birthday came around I found out that, he wanted a chain saw as his previous saw had bit the dust. I frequently borrow his tools as we live next door and quickly realized if I purchased a chain saw for him, I could use it too.
I checked with local chain saw repairmen and asked for suggestions as to reliability and how often a particular saw came in for repairs. We live in a rural setting with a large piece of property so the typical price leader models offered by Home Depot and Lowe's were cheaper but not sturdy enough for our purposes. Several repairmen suggested purchasing an Echo or a Poulan with a 14 inch blade which is actually the length of the bar that holds the chain in place while cutting. A larger model should be used if the saw is to be used for heavy or commercial woodcutting.
We would only need a saw for removing a tree that might fall across our roads or cutting the one to two cords of wood that we use for auxiliary heating and for family fires. The Echo CS310 seemed a good match. It has a 30.5 cc Power Boos Vortex engine and offered an easy start feature that I figured would allow the wife to start it. Not that that is going to occur unless I happen to be pinned under the fallen tree in question.
I would suggest that the Echo Chain Saw CS 310 is good choice from the field operations standpoint in as much as the bar will need tightening as you work and the chain tensioner, a device on the side of the saw that allows you to keep tension on the chain, is relatively easy to use.
All chain saws are going to involve work and noise to more or lesser degrees. The Echo Chain Saw CS 310 is not as loud as my old saw but earplugs are necessary to limit the noise. The salesman told me that Echo had built a new "vibration reduction system" on this model but in actual use it still had enough vibration to make the operator want to set it down every once in a while.
The saw weighs about 10 pounds with gas and oil on board. It holds 8.5 ounces of fuel and the same amount of oil. The automatic chain oiling system for the chain bar seems to be quite adequate and does not put so much oil that it throws the excess all over the place.
Moreover, if something should go wrong with the Echo Chain Saw CS 310 you have a 5-year warranty to send it back. Unfortunately, it does not come with an automatic cutting and stacking feature.
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