I tested this electric chainsaw, and it's the gift that will win you Father's Day
When I first moved into my house about 10 years ago, there were two arborvitae that greeted me on either side of my front door. Fast forward a decade, and what were once reasonably sized shrubs were now overgrown menaces, crowding the pathway to my home.
As much as I am loathe to cut down any greenery, they had to go, but it's not easy to take down a 15-foot plant, especially one that's so bushy.
Since I'm not a lumberjack, I didn't need anything too fancy or massive — just enough to cut through some thick branches and 2-3-inch trunks.
I found the perfect tool for the job.
For the task, I checked out Stihl's smallest and lightest chainsaw, the MSA 60 C-B. It weighs just 9 pounds, has a 12-inch guide bar, and will run for up to 40 minutes. Here's three things I learned when I took it for a spin around my yard.
The smallest and lightest battery-powered chainsaw offered by Stihl, this model has a 12-inch guide bar and weighs just 9 pounds when outfitted with a battery.
Weighing just 9 pounds with battery, the chainsaw was very easy to operate and carry around; I could hold it at arms' length for extended periods of time without issue as I chopped down limbs and then cut them into smaller pieces.
My town is particularly picky about gas-powered lawn tools — it banned gas-powered leaf blowers a few years back — and while there's no prohibition against chainsaws, I didn't want to disturb my neighbors with a noisy two-stroke engine.
Now, an electric chainsaw isn't exactly quiet, but it definitely isn't as loud as a traditional chainsaw. If anything I'd say it's around the same noise level, and maybe even a little quieter than an electric leaf blower. It helps to wear ear protection, but you could probably get by without it.
I found Stihl's estimate of 40 minutes to be about accurate for the MSA 60 C-B's battery. It was more than enough time to cut down the arborvitae and then cut its trunks into smaller pieces.
When I was done, I was still itchin' to chainsaw more stuff; I even started eying my neighbors' property for wayward limbs. However, the battery gave out soon thereafter, so if you've got a larger project, you may want to invest in a second battery.
What says "Happy Father's Day" more than a device that can remove a limb, arboreal or otherwise? Stihl does make larger chainsaws, but this 12-inch model is perfect for the dad who needs something to tackle the occasional downed limb and to tap his inner Paul Bunyan.
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The myopia of my resentment precluded me from knowing one way or the other. Opinion: Another person I love has died. I've developed a horrible fear of death. There is pain in caring for someone in the cycle of addiction One of the greatest cruelties of caring for someone with addiction is the cycles of grief before they're ever truly gone. I spent days, weeks, months, stuck in the spiral of bargaining. What if I could think of the perfect thing to say to him to pull him from his own pattern, addiction, and bring him back to reality? What if I could accomplish what all his other friends and family couldn't achieve – what if I could be a hero in his story? Who was to blame? What could I do? But those perfect answers, perfect lines of thought, perfect lines of action never came to me. And then he died. There was no closure. There were just questions I had no answers to and the ache of loss – sore and throbbing and made no less cruel by the passage of time. 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