Shinn the Writer

Exoneration

 

It was three months ago that my “Homeowner” article lambasted a small, handheld chainsaw manufactured by a company called Wood Ranch. It simply didn’t work. Well, it turns out that it does, and quite well thank you very much. I would recommend it to anyone who needs such a beastie and isn’t a mechanical moron like myself.

 

A little background: toward the end of last summer, I started a project to clean up my back yard, which was principally aimed at pruning back some overgrown shrubs in the main area, and to cut down some unwanted growth behind my garage. My existing tool set was not quite adequate to handle some of the larger limbs that needed to go. All I had was an old hand saw. This saw’s compact size made it fairly easy to get into the spaces it needed to go, but often the resulting angle made it hard to generate power to the back and forth strokes sufficient to make the cut. The limbs in question were often an inch thick or more. Some were up against a fence, compounding the problem.

 

In the midst of this project, I chanced to see a series of advertisements on the internet (Facebook) for a small, hand chainsaw from a company called Wood Ranch. The product looked very legitimate, coming in at under $100 for the base model. It was powered by a rechargeable battery, seemed to have all the needed safety built in, and was billed as having the capacity to cut up to five-inch limbs.

 

I’ve actually had overall good success buying such things. I was outright scammed only once, attempting to buy a Bose multi CD changer – the price was really good yet believable for an item that dealt with on-the-way-out technology. Total scam and for the money it wasn’t worth fighting it. But other things had worked great. The H2O mop, a screen door panel that “zips” down the middle with magnets, and others have served me well.

 

I took a chance. As my article of three months ago chronicled, It was a bit of a struggle to put together, but with the aid of a video (that said there was but one way to install the chain) I got it assembled and battery charged and everything was great except that it didn’t cut.

 

I called the company and found they were totally responsive and sympathetic. They would get back with suggestions after talking with their tech people. Their reply had no suggestions and they offered me a full refund. But then they found that I hadn’t followed up until after the one-month return window had passed. They were right. I had been far too slow to call them.

 

I looked at the video again and noticed something odd. If I looked closely, the orientation of the teeth on the chain was the reverse of how I had interpreted the explanation. Was it possible that there were actually two ways to install the chain, one correctly and the other rendering it worthless? It turned out this was indeed the case. I removed the safety guard to make it easier to reinstall the chain, and indeed, the chain slipped on in the reverse direction! But now the guard wouldn’t go back on properly. Wood Ranger apparently never considered that the customer might try to remove it, although I only had to remove one screw to do so.​