On the difference between gasoline and electric chainsaws

Around the time I moved in last year I realized I was going to need a lawn mower, and also that (for the first time in my life) I was in a position where owning power tools made sense. I hate dealing with gasoline and internal combustion engines and the house has solar panels, so electric was the obvious way to go for a lawn mower. After some deliberation I settled on Ryobi, which fit my needs (and budget) as a DIY-er rather than a professional tradesman. I've been pretty happy with the self-propelled mower I got, along with a number of power tools for woodworking.

One thing I didn't have much need for was a chainsaw, due to there not being many large trees on my parents' property. In May, however, someone I know in Puna who'd heard I was getting into woodworking through a mutual friend reached out to say he'd had some trees come down during some stormy weather in March, and asked if I wanted some of the wood if I'd come cut it up. I said yes to free wood, and while I started out using his landlord's gas chainsaw I knew I'd eventually need one of my own to cut the wood further when I got it home. And that's how I became the owner of a 16" Ryobi electric chainsaw, and had opportunity to try both gas and electric saws recently.

The difference in volume is the obvious point of comparison; I've never been fond of what I can only term the aggressively angry whine of a gas chainsaw revved up. The electric version isn't silent, but the noise it produces is primarily from the chain moving around the blade, and it is a lot quieter – you barely need hearing protection at all.

A less obvious difference is how an electric chainsaw is always ‘on,’ essentially. With a gas chainsaw you have to explicitly start it. This can be an involved process if it hasn't been used in a while, and at minimum requires giving the starting pull-cord a couple of pretty good yanks. It's a point of friction, so you'd rather not do it too often – yet once it's running you want to minimize time spent not cutting, since it's burning gas while idling. This inherent tension makes cutting up a fallen tree tricky since it's an iterative process: you usually can only make so many cuts before needing to move the now-separated branches out of the way so you can reach more parts of the tree. (To be fair, this is based what I encountered doing it solo ­– someone to help move branches out of the way would alleviate this somewhat.)

With an electric chainsaw, however, it's trivial to make a single cut, move a branch, make a cut, etc., in ways that would be really inefficient while burning gas. If I were a professional lumberjack or arborist I'd probably still have reason to be using a gas chainsaw, but for occasional home use like cutting up a single downed tree it's a much more pleasant experience.

Anyway, we'll see what comes of all this cypress wood I've acquired. The trees were clearly healthy and just went down in the storm, as they were still sopping wet when I cut them up even months after falling. From what I've read they'll need to dry for some time before I can really use the wood, but I'm looking forward to eventually making use of them. Future projects, perhaps. A hui hou!