Cut Big Wood for Small Money

Continuing the practice of blogging about inconsequential matters, I am about to divulge a couple of helpful tool-related things.

First, it looks like the lives of old car batteries all over the world may be extended in the future. Someone somewhere has invented a device that takes worn-out batteries and makes them usable again. It’s not a gimmick. It works.

I have done nearly nothing since the pandemic started, and I am only now coming out of my catatonia. I am trying to fix things I shouldn’t have allowed to have problems in the first place. I let the batteries in my truck, farm tractor, motorcycle, and garden tractor run down, and I had to do something.

The motorcycle and farm tractor responded to ordinary charging. The garden tractor did not. Putting a charger on it for a day would get it to the point where it started, but if I stopped the engine, I couldn’t start it again.

I got myself a NOCO Genius. This is a strange device that will charge various types of batteries and repair certain batteries that resist charging due to abuse. It’s about the size of a tender you would use on a car in storage. It has two leads with clamps. It will charge any kind of 12-volt battery, it will also charge 6-volt batteries, and it will often successfully repair 12-volt batteries.

The Genius did not work on my friend Mike’s AGM motorcycle battery. He had forgotten to attach the tender’s leads, and the battery had gone dead. We tried the Genius but got nowhere.

The Genius revived my garden tractor’s battery. I had to charge it conventionally in order to get the Genius to realize it was there, and after that, the Genius took over. The repair cycle lasted 4 hours, and after that, the tractor started repeatedly. Will it last? Not sure yet.

The Genius also worked on my truck’s batteries, although, to be honest, I didn’t try the conventional charger, so it might have worked, too. I didn’t feel like wasting my time. I gave the batteries a repair cycle, and then I left a conventional charger on them overnight. No problems yet.

Here’s what I wonder: should I use the Genius prophylactically? All of my batteries are getting old. Maybe I should give them a repair cycle once every few months, sort of like shipping Keith Richards to that clinic in Switzerland where he gets an annual total blood transfusion. I should do some research. If I can get 8 years out of a battery instead of 4, why not do it?

Here’s the other tip: whenever you install a light bulb with a threaded base, you should grease the threads lightly with Vaseline.

I have ceiling fans, and a couple are pretty cheap. Each of the cheap ones has 4 deep shades attached to it, and each shade contains one bulb. The bulbs on one started fizzling, and I decided to take a bulb out so I could identify it and replace it. When I started turning it, it turned and turned. The socket came loose from the shade, with the bulb stuck inside it.

I eventually managed to get the bulb out, but that left me with a lamp which was not in great shape. I didn’t know whether the wires had been broken by the twisting, and the socket flopped around loose in the shade. I was concerned that even if the wires worked, I would never be able to install another bulb.

Mike and I fixed the lamp. He removed the lamp unit from the fan, and I repaired it. I learned that the sockets in the fan were held in by right-hand threads, which is very stupid, because the bulbs also had right-hand threads. When I put torque on a bulb to remove it, I also put torque on the threads that held the socket in the shade. In a situation like this, when the bulb doesn’t want to come loose, you can end up unscrewing the socket instead, which is what I did.

Obviously, the shade should be attached to the fan with a left-hand thread. When installing bulbs, you don’t put enough clockwise torque on the socket to loosen a left-hand thread attaching the shade to the fan, but when you try to loosen a stubborn bulb, you may apply more than enough torque to remove the socket.

I Googled around, and I learned there are special greases for light bulb bases. They prevent bulbs from seizing in their sockets. I also learned Vaseline works just as well, and most American houses already contain Vaseline. From now on, I plan to use it.

I have some LED bulbs on the way from Amazon. Home Depot could not match the price.

Taking a fan lamp shade off the fan and reinstalling the socket is not fun at all, so my advice is to do anything you can to avoid loosening the socket. When I reinstalled the socket, I tightened it pretty good, and on one of our trips, my wife made me take a jar of Vaseline for dry skin, so I shouldn’t have to reinstall any more sockets. Assuming I can get the bulbs out of the other cheap fan when they fail.

I still have dry skin, and I’m not sure where the Vaseline is. Don’t tell the wife.

I might as well toss out one more tip. I learned there are Chinese companies making credible clones of high-end professional-grade Stihl chainsaws. Pro Stihl saws are great tools. You can’t get anything like them at Home Depot or Tractor Supply. A pro saw will make short work of things a homeowner saw will take a long time to cut.

No, I am not excited about buying more Chinese stuff, and it would be nice to support companies that invent things instead of imitators, but you need to hear me out.

1. I would never buy a $1300 Stihl chainsaw (or any other kind of Stihl chainsaw), so suggesting I go with the real thing is just plain dumb. It will never happen. Yes, I could get a used one, but it would take a long time to find it, and God only knows what would be wrong with it. Since I would not buy a real Stihl, I am not costing Stihl money by going Chinese. In fact, I would be making them money, because I would probably replace a few of the Chinese parts with OEM.

2. My biggest homeowner-grade saw is a 20″ Echo with a 59cc motor. It’s very nice, but I get some big, nasty downed trees here, so it can be quite slow. The Stihl clone would have 92 cc’s and a 28″ bar, and they scream through big logs. A larger saw would be a big help.

3. The patents on the original Stihl saws have expired, so I wouldn’t be supporting IP theft. If you want, you can go out tomorrow and start an American company making Stihl clones, and Stihl won’t be able to stop you. Expiration is a patent’s most important function, because the purpose of a patent is to get new inventions into the public domain. Using other people’s unprotected ideas is not immoral or illegal.

For about $360, you can get yourself a monster Stihl-like saw that will do a phenomenal job by homeowner or farmer standards, and all the parts are replaceable and easily sourced, so if you have a problem, you will be able to fix it. In fact, as noted above, you can replace iffy parts with Stihl parts.

You can spend more and get a Chinese saw with upgraded non-Chinese parts if you’re really worried about China quality.

You can also buy a parts kit and assemble your saw yourself, learning a lot in the process and saving maybe $80. If you build the saw, which supposedly takes less than a day, you will presumably develop the ability to repair it if it breaks, and that should calm your Chinese-warranty concerns.

The two Chinese companies I know of are Farmertec and Neo-Tec. Farmertec’s Stihl clones are called Holzfforma saws. I guess some Chinese guy thought that sounded German. People who have used both saws say neither is better than the other. Each one has pros and cons. Both are a whole lot better than Home Depot saws.

In some Youtube videos, the Chinese saws cut slower than Stihls, but a guy who did the intelligent thing and did tests using the same bars and chains found no significant difference. Testing using two different chains is ridiculous. Chains get dull fast, and when they do, cutting slows down.

I may build a saw. It sounds like fun, and given the problems my mid-grade saws have given me, I would like to know more about fixing saws. It would be great to have a saw that would cut a big oak log without me having to walk around and cut from both sides.

A Stihl would last me 50 years, because I’m not a pro. What if a Farmertec only lasted a quarter as long? Gee, that would be awful. I would still be dead long before the Stihl became cost-effective.

As long as I’m talking about chainsaws, I should let you know I have learned that premixed gas–the stuff that sells for $40 per gallon and promises no carb clogs–isn’t completely reliable. Sometimes it clogs saws. I thought I’d toss this information out for people who are trying to fix dead saws and who are convinced the gas isn’t the problem. Sometimes it is.

More inconsequential matters will be discussed here as they present themselves.