Some sawing, logging and skidding pics and videos ......

[Slamm]

How those 441 cm compare to the 460 muffler modded vs muffler modded. I have a 576 auto tune husky and ive been using alot lately .I like it alot compared to the 460 s i have. i hardly use my 460 s 660s or 390 huskys anymore.

I don't know, the last 460 I ran was when I ran another guy's stock and ported 460 and they weren't that much more powerful than a mildly ported 441 and got horrible fuel mileage and had bad AV and air filter cleaning everyday, so I'm done with 460. Not saying they are a bad saw, but their time is over from a technological point of view.

In my opinion the 441 CM Muffler Modded is just a pure pleasure to work with, women and children can start them and while they may be a second or more slower in a full 28" bar of cutting, you will never notice it in the woods, as there are always vines to trip over and other such things that take up more than such minor time frames. That said, its not that much slower if it is in the first place, and it is a very comfortable saw to use, and therefore you can and will cut much longer than you will a 660 or 460.

I have found the 441 platform to be tougher than the 460/660 rubber mounts, I have personally broken those rubber mounts with my hands and abuse pulling on the saw ........... to this date the only thing that has ever broken a 441 is trees falling on them. My first 441 was mildly ported and drank a large slug of water the day before I went over to Wiggleworth house and it never did run right from that date forward and had to end up putting a new carb on it, and I had a big bore kit that was ported run for 2 days of logging and then blew the top of the piston off. In my opinion none of those issues are the fault of the saw. Therefore in 5ish years of owning upwards of 6-8 and selling off 20 more, I don't know of one failure to run with them, and the warranty is in my name on most of those saws, so if there is an issue, I would know about it. I get no calls. The Stihl dealers that I have talked to about them say they sell them and then never hear from the operator again, because they don't have any issues with them.

The 441 CM is the same platform but has some computer brain thingy and it has performed flawlessly for me. Starts very easy usually 2 pulls is the max when cold and 1 pull all day long after that. When or if you run them out of gas, just put them on choke and 1 pull and let idle for 5 seconds while walking to the tree and they will keep on running, no more 20 pulls just to get it going again.

When I run a 441 CM with a muffler modd, I don't really care if porting could make them faster, I'm just really happy with them as is. I'm not against porting them and I will eventually when I can spare the time from them, but they are fast enough that I don't need faster, to make my money. Its like knowing the 461 is coming and it can be faster, but we know its not more comfortable to operate and it doesn't have Mtronic so I don't really care about that 461. Speed is only one "postive" going for that model, the 441 CM is no slouch in the speed and power department and has several other advantages that save time and effort daily.

Sam

 

[Slamm]

Here are a few stumps that I made today.

Decent Cherry tree, has a few issues with the grain, but should be one nice grade log.

Low stump

Low stump

Had to cut this one higher, because someone had wrapped woven wire around the base and I couldn't get it kicked down all the way.

Low hickory. I hate hickory, like cutting bundled T-posts.

This big, ugly red oak had wire in it ........... I didn't see it until I had already cut a face much lower on the other side.

Here is another nice red oak.

 

[tilenick]

I do love it when this thread comes up to the top. It makes for some great reading I only get to cut real wood about two times a year and its my favorite "vacation". Your job looks like great fun, thanks for sharing again.
Nick.

 

[385XP]

I don't know, the last 460 I ran was when I ran another guy's stock and ported 460 and they weren't that much more powerful than a mildly ported 441 and got horrible fuel mileage and had bad AV and air filter cleaning everyday, so I'm done with 460. Not saying they are a bad saw, but their time is over from a technological point of view.

In my opinion the 441 CM Muffler Modded is just a pure pleasure to work with, women and children can start them and while they may be a second or more slower in a full 28" bar of cutting, you will never notice it in the woods, as there are always vines to trip over and other such things that take up more than such minor time frames. That said, its not that much slower if it is in the first place, and it is a very comfortable saw to use, and therefore you can and will cut much longer than you will a 660 or 460.

I have found the 441 platform to be tougher than the 460/660 rubber mounts, I have personally broken those rubber mounts with my hands and abuse pulling on the saw ........... to this date the only thing that has ever broken a 441 is trees falling on them. My first 441 was mildly ported and drank a large slug of water the day before I went over to Wiggleworth house and it never did run right from that date forward and had to end up putting a new carb on it, and I had a big bore kit that was ported run for 2 days of logging and then blew the top of the piston off. In my opinion none of those issues are the fault of the saw. Therefore in 5ish years of owning upwards of 6-8 and selling off 20 more, I don't know of one failure to run with them, and the warranty is in my name on most of those saws, so if there is an issue, I would know about it. I get no calls. The Stihl dealers that I have talked to about them say they sell them and then never hear from the operator again, because they don't have any issues with them.

The 441 CM is the same platform but has some computer brain thingy and it has performed flawlessly for me. Starts very easy usually 2 pulls is the max when cold and 1 pull all day long after that. When or if you run them out of gas, just put them on choke and 1 pull and let idle for 5 seconds while walking to the tree and they will keep on running, no more 20 pulls just to get it going again.

When I run a 441 CM with a muffler modd, I don't really care if porting could make them faster, I'm just really happy with them as is. I'm not against porting them and I will eventually when I can spare the time from them, but they are fast enough that I don't need faster, to make my money. Its like knowing the 461 is coming and it can be faster, but we know its not more comfortable to operate and it doesn't have Mtronic so I don't really care about that 461. Speed is only one "postive" going for that model, the 441 CM is no slouch in the speed and power department and has several other advantages that save time and effort daily.

Sam

thamks sam thats what i was wondering.seems too be about how the 576 autotune is really works good

 

[Slamm]

This is a post for the rookie ......... God help him. I try to teach them through Osmosis, but after some time you just have to let them do it themselves. Its painful to watch them and be around them, but if you don't take the time to show them, you won't have any replacements.

First Gun Cut.

First Face Cut.

First Bore Cut ........ on a nice grade ash that was leaning pretty good to boot.

Happy fella ........... he is happy inside, LOL.

 

[deye223]

sam you've been using the 28" ES lite bar for a long time how do they hold up

compared to the standard ES bar for durability especially in the rails

D

 

[Slamm]

sam you've been using the 28" ES lite bar for a long time how do they hold up

compared to the standard ES bar for durability especially in the rails

D

Funny you ask ........... I finally blew up a tip on one. Its only the first or second Stihl Tip that I have destroyed, and it wasn't really its fault. I had taken the rakers down just an extra swipe, because I was just cutting red oak and poplar trees which cut like butter and then I came to a nice leaning hickory and for the life of me, I couldn't get the bore to start right, basically the tip just got its guts rattled out, LOL.

That is just a fail of me more than the product, but its just a tip and not really related to the "Light" aspect of the bar. So that said, the rails are as hard if not harder than standard Stihl rails and have great life. I think I've only used 4 bars to date and have a lot of wood cut with them, around 300,000 board feet or more and all that has happened is two have had their rails closed by Chainbar.com and these next two are getting close to needing the rails closed and I just blew up a tip ....... thats pretty cheap for that amount of wood cut. All of them have the sides caved in from getting squished by fat trees sitting on them or getting pinched. I bent one pretty bad an sent it to Chainbar.com to get straighted at the time I sent those two in to get rails closed. I mean it was bent like a banana and twisted, when a tree sat and then went the complete wrong way.

Long and short of it for me is, things have gone terribly wrong is you see me in the woods with a normal, heavy bar of any brand and not a Stihl ES Light. For a cutter and felling trees, there isn't anything else you can bolt onto a saw that helps put more wood on the ground than a Stihl ES Light Bar.

Sam

 

[Slamm]

Should include the truck in the photo's every now and then, 288,000 miles.

I love Poplar Trees, several grade logs per tree and easy to cut, and they do what you tell them to do.

This is from the top of that last stump. Its a long tree.

Hard leaning Red Oak.

Clean Bore Cut that Red Oak. (this ES Light Bar tip is going to die in about 20 trees after this photo)

Poplar that had two clean parts to it. The lower portion was obviously hollow, made for getting it down faster, LOL.

Yum, Yum Poplar.

 

[Slamm]

(Notice the ES Light Bar and saw are different in the next photos than the one that I blew the tip on earlier sometime today)

If I had cheerleaders in the woods with me, they would have been cheering on this one.
I got a chicken hearted sycamore to swing from where the wedge is pointed to the property line in orange tape and it was leaning hard with a typical banana bow over that flagged line. I bumped it around 5 times before I set it down there on cue.

Sycamores are kinda hard to get to do much because they just break off and have little integrity. I would have used the skidder, but it rained and it was too wet to run machines today, so I just cut.

From the top of the stump.

A typical easy poplar.

This poplar was much easier to swing around off the property line. The wedge is pointing to where the lean was, and obviously I got it to go the other direction, its not 180 degrees, but it was pretty decent. I was showing the nephew what can be done without machines if you have some know how and a little time.

 

[Slamm]

Here are a couple of crappy trees I cut for charity for a graveyard nearby.
Hollow, heavy leaning red oak with all of the branches on one side.

Big Oak. I have a 6 minute video of cutting it down, but I can't get it to upload. Its not very exciting.

Karen, dragging out one of the 265 trees we pulled out in 3 days, 96 of them were between 3/4's and 1 mile away from the landing.

Here I was staging them with the CAT518 Swing Boom for the 540B Grapple to shuttle the long distance to the landing. Obviously most of them were gone by the time I figured I'd take a photo.

A big red oak.

Here are all of the toys in one spot.

 

[Slamm]

Equipment:

A few neat photos here, there are 265 trees in these photos and they will likely average in the 400 board foot range:

This is tonight, we were marking up the grade and mat logs and cutting limbs and knots off.

Sam

 

[tilenick]

That's some strong work Sam.

 

[Slamm]

Thanks, I think this is some of the highest board footage per acre that I think we've ever been in. Still have more to pull out, but we're going to get some of those logs on the trucks and get them out of here to make room. The one cutter is cutting at another job and next week we'll likely start another guy cutting on another small tract to get them on the ground and ready for the skidders.

Sam

 

[tilenick]

I like the equipment. I have run some in my past jobs, but not logging. The biggest was occasionally a big John Deere articulated loader to load a tub grinder at my old landscaping job as well as a 2950 JD with a post driver on it along with other equipment for landscaping. Now I do tile work for a living and i only get to "log" for firewood a couple times a year for my grandma. I'm jealous. Keep up the good posting and the good work.
Nick.

 

[Stihlman441]

Nice work and post again Sam,thanks for sharing.

 

[Slamm]

Nice work and post again Sam,thanks for sharing.

Thanks Andrew, we are trying to get caught up on a lot of work that didn't get done this summer due to other none wood related endeavors, but now we're back to logging and trying to get caught up. It got too wet at the bottom land job so that one still isn't done with more acreage under contract behind the next landowner.

Here is today's photo's.

Did a combination of chainsaw and hydraulic buck saw "bucking" today. Karen ran the 441CM with a 28" bar and I ran the Prentice 280 with a CTR 42IP Buck Saw. Colton ran the CAT 518 Swing Boom Skidder. Today was my first day running a loader with a buck saw, so it was a little bit slow, but I got the hang of it pretty quick.

This morning after a couple were cut up.

Here you can see where Colton drives to drop off either the bigger butts or the whole tree for me to pick up with the log loader and either stack or buck and stack.

The pile grows. Karen brought the saw over for me to sharpen. She bucked up for at least 7 hours with only 4 sharpenings (full skip, semi-chisel ---- Stihl ---- 98% Oak ---- a lot of experience not hitting dirt, LOL)

This photo is for those that log for a living ............... under typical logging conditions..................... which are typically crappy. You see we have asphalt all the way to the loader, even the skidders gets to use it. Rough life I know, LOL. I lined up everything so that the log trucks will be on it too. The owner wants us to tear up the asphalt as much as possible because its all getting pulled out by an excavator.

Colton is dropping off some cut off sections that were going to be for firewood. I'll back the dump trailer nearby some day and load it up for firewood. The pile of logs is growing. Ties and blocking on the left and grade on the right.

This is what we were up against today. We cut and stacked about 24,000 board feet...... it was different.

 

[Slamm]

Now things are really getting stacked up. This is from the cab.

Getting higher..... I wouldn't stand too close to it, LOL. The two stacks to the right are grade logs and 16'/18' Mat Logs. The stack to the left is ties/blocking.

Gets dark early, we all had fun.

I forgot why I took this photo, but then I remembered, note the location of the buck saw ..... note the location of the saw chips. Brings on a whole new meaning of cutting speed. Its handy bucking up with a hydraulic motor backed with 160hp Deere engine, LOL. The chain is (God help me) Oregon 3/4" pitch semi-chisel, 96 links of it. I gotta see if Stihl makes any 3/4". Windsor does, not sure how it holds up. This chain doesn't even look likes its been used at this point, and the oiler isn't working very well. It literally doesn't matter if its cutting air or 36" log its fast, LOL.

Later,

Sam

 

[Stihlman441]

So Sam i assume these logs go to a mill for pressing ? into ?.

 

[Slamm]

So Sam i assume these logs go to a mill for pressing ? into ?.

Railroad ties and pallet lumber is the low grade.

The higher grade logs will go for flooring and better lumber.

In all of those logs, there is only 18 grade white oak butts and of those 6 are veneer, those are going to a difference buyer.

Sam

 

[missouriboy]

Great job! Best thread i have read on here yet. You guys cut the same way i was taught to. I would love to work for a outfit like yours.