Best Chain saw for under $1200.00 to buy for cutting trees once a month or so, not every week?

[fields_mj]

To be fair, I did not shop around, I know & trust this guy, so I just bought it.
Glad you can get a better deal, I would have guessed that thing would be higher north of S.C.
It maybe that your county has more used splitters, supply & demand.
But what do I know this is my first one, at sixty I was still using an ax to split wood, if my son use it for ten year it will be worth it.

I'm in Indiana, so yeah a little north of you To be fair, I'm a tight wad. I've always done all of my splitting (mostly Hickory) with a maul and ax. I had been looking at getting a used one for years, so I had a pretty good idea of what I should be able to find if I was patient. When my shoulder started bothering me, I started checking craigslist adds every few weeks. Over the summer I found a 26 ton MTD on the north side of Indy for $475. Not the best brand by any means, but it had been garage kept and well maintained. Its worked great for me ever since, and I haven't had to have my rotator cuff repaired yet

 

[fields_mj]

True. But I prefer to cut rounds no wider in diameter than the full usable bar length from one side, which would be about 2" shorter than the nominal bar length. 18" is still pretty darned heavy. I recently cut some 23" green hickory; I just used my tractor bucket for that one. I don't need a herniated disc.

Same here, but there's a difference between what I prefer to do and what I have to do I have big saws available with bigger bars, but unless I'm cutting a lot of stuff that's over 24", or I just want to run one of the big saws to get some hours on it, I make do with an 18" bar. I actually take it a step further and try to keep from using the nose of the bar to do much of the cutting. I've found that the cut slows way down as soon as the nose gets buried in wood.

Somewhere around 20" is where I draw the line on lifting hickory onto the splitter. I used to cut everything (mostly hickory and Locust) to 24" long, and was dumb enough to lift those into the truck by hand. Now I cut and store everything in 7'- 8' logs until I'm ready to burn it, and move it all with forks on a loader. That really cuts down on how many cuts I'm making in the woods which makes me much more willing to stretch the reach of my 18" bars. When it comes time to buck and split them, I'm at the house so the big saws are right there as needed. If it's going to be a challenge to lift the rounds by hand, its easy enough to grab something with a 28" bar, buck them, and then noodle them into halves, quarters or what ever is needed.