By Nancy Leasman
It was the last day of 2024. I hadn’t had a workout in the woods since October. Blame my body, the cold temperatures, the holidays. All true but poor excuses. I needed one more day in the woods.
I had dutifully done my morning exercises and spent 5 minutes warming up on the exercise bike. It was 24 degrees outside. The transient sunshine, not seen in several fog-bound days, beckoned. I put on an extra layer of denim and grabbed a hat. I zipped into my extra thick hooded sweatshirt and grabbed some rubber-palmed gloves. I considered boots but opted for my gum shoes since there was only an inch or two of snow.
As I stepped outside, I felt the nip of the wind and noticed the gray clouds to the north. A polar vortex was predicted to unleash colder temperatures later in the week but for now, the weatherman and I agreed, this was just a breeze.
In the shop, I put oil in the chainsaw’s oil port and inserted the battery. I hoped it was charged. It hadn’t been used since the cutting of the Christmas tree which wasn’t really all that long ago.
I picked up a few fallen birch branches and trudged up the hill through the woods to the nearest brush pile. A flicker of movement at the bottom of the woods caught my eye. I like to imagine that the three deer were welcoming me back to the woods. In reality, I had disturbed them with my noise and they were making their escape.
I worked in an area that I had cleared before. Ironwood trees, while very hard wood-wise, don’t seem to be long-lived. They grow in clusters and fall over in singles, doubles and triples. Their upper branches also get hung up with each other and other trees.
I realized I’d missed the puzzle solving and decision making of how to safely disentangle fallen and leaning trees. The weight of the ironwood also reminded me that I hadn’t required much more of my arm muscles than house cleaning and knitting (though spending roughly 200 hours creating a fisherman knit blanket with two pointy metal sticks is no small feat). My thumb and trigger finger on my right hand got an extra workout too since the chainsaw stopped frequently. When it stopped, I’d push the safety button with my thumb and pull the switch with my index finger, repeatedly. The saw acted as if the battery wasn’t fully charged and yet, if I held the blade at a particular angle, it seemed to work better. I took the housing off and cleaned out some debris but that didn’t make much difference. It’s possible that I’ve worn out a chainsaw! Ask Ron, the one who sharpens the chain’s teeth, and he’ll tell you I wore out a few chains; but the saw itself?
When I went back in the house, I went online to ask the manufacturer of my well-used yellow saw if one might wear out a saw.
Of course it was a bot who (that) answered my questions.
It told me, “The typical estimated life of a Lithium-Ion battery is about two to three years or 300 to 500 charge cycles, whichever occurs first. Rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries have a limited life and will gradually lose their capacity to hold a charge. This loss of capacity (aging) is irreversible. As the battery loses capacity, the length of time it will power the product (run time) decreases.”
I wanted to know how the saw behaved with an aging battery. Stopping and starting seemed likely, unlike when a battery was truly drained and it refused to power the saw at all.
The bot wanted to know if I wanted to chat with a real person. That seemed like a nice invitation but first it wanted me to answer a few questions as to the nature of my query. When it asked for the product number, I retreated. I think I know what’s wrong. I wore out a chainsaw.
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