I'm glad to see some people being satisfied with the smaller Farmertec saws. It's easy to find great reviews of the 70cc, 90cc, and 120cc stuff being used and abused in milling applications but there hasn't been much info available on how the 60cc under are holding up. I've also kicked around the idea of getting a top handle for limbing, but I'm not really sure I'll like it any more than a decent 50cc saw like the 026/260.
As far as firearms go, I actually use the same mental process that I do with chainsaws. What am I getting for what I'm spending? I currently run a lot of Athlon optics on my more accurate (1/2 moa or better) rifles, and I'm very satisfied with them for the money that I spent. That said, if I were going to spend big money on a guided hunt, I'd first put a Nightforce optic on that rifle, and I'd probably spend a few hundred on a new base and rings as well. Not worth it for plinking at the range, hunting whitetail locally, or shooting prairie dogs out west, but if I'm going to plan on spending $10K or more on a guided hunt, I'm going to also spend the money to upgrade the necessary equipment so that I have the confidence that it will perform when I need it to. I appreciate the fact that companies like Athlon and Vortex offer such great warranties, but when I've invested that much into a trip, the last thing I want to have to do is use somebodies warrantee. I use this approach for most things in life. I have hand tools and power tools that are cheap and disposable because there's a good chance they will get lost, or I'm going to abuse them in a way that even a top quality tool won't last. I have other tools that I spent good money on because I absolutely NEED them to work when I grab them. When the Chinese ZAMA carbs in my Stihl saws started giving me problems, I realized that I have enough saws on hand that I really don't NEED every one of the to work like it was brand new every time I reach for it which makes it worth the effort for me to research and try blue saws as the need arises.
Met a guy that ran a 4 guy tree service that had a small mountain of blue saw carcasses. He justified buying them in the multi packs direct from china and would run them until they broke...about 4-6 months then he threw them in the pile and opened another one from his pallet vs buying stihl at a cost of 4 of the blue version. He said they were under powered vs stihl but the end cost justified the method because every so often he would fix one using two others and often purchased new stihl carbs and clutch drum kits for them to keep on hand. I asked about bottom end longevity and he said some just come apart from crank or bearing failure but often it is the plastic tank/handle that fails from leakage at the seams, vents or they just crack. Most tree service groups around here run one 362 around large equipment or ms 17-180s for groundies...our local stihl dealers falsely condemn "low compression" on used out of warranty equipment in for repairs to sell more new units.
