Can’t be my sparkling personality.
I stood in front of a mirror this morning and realized with a start that every stitch I was wearing, excepting long johns and boots but including undershorts, socks, coat and even the hat, were handed to me by other people. Often for no apparent reason.
Yesterday a neighbor asked me, “Do you like summer sausage?” I told him yeah, I like summer sausage.
…dunno what I’m gonna do with three pounds of it, though…
Today’s a fairly pleasant day except for strong wind. We’re supposed to get a storm tonight followed by a few days of all-day freeze, so I figured I’d take a few minutes and check out that new electric chainsaw that arrived as an unexpected gift last weekend.
I filled the oil reservoir this morning, but my bar oil was so thick from the cold I figured I’d better leave the saw indoors while I went on the regular Monday water run to town.
I let the saw lose its cherry on a little juniper branch in the yard that’s been bugging me…
And that went really well. Much better than the Sawzall would have done it. So I got sparky and took it up the ridge to a big dead branch that sticks out next to my driveway. This branch has been on my “as soon as I gas up the chainsaw” list for some time, because one of these days I was going to slide on some ice and that branch was just going to absolutely shank the Jeep.
…But no more.
That branch was a little too much. The saw cut it, but it pretty clearly wasn’t having a good time. In fact I think there’s an amp limiter on board because the saw stopped twice for no really good reason. But it cut the branch.
In the process of that I got to thinking maybe the bar oiler wasn’t working. This saw has a manual oiler, which I’m sure brings the price way down and probably isn’t a massively important element on a saw that’s clearly meant for light-duty use. That being so, I haven’t seen a manual oiler on any real chainsaw made in the last forty years or so, and I consider bar oil a pretty important thing. Bars and chains are expensive.
On a real saw, you test the oiler by pointing the tip of the bar at the ground and firewalling the throttle, looking for the chain to lay a line of oil on the ground. This one didn’t do that. The chain did seem at least slightly oily, though…
So I brought the saw inside and took the bar cover off, and worked the bulb on the manual oiler. And sure enough, it does leak a little oil onto the chain on command. So that’s good.
When I moved out to the boonies I did hope, not too hopefully, to be able to live on a sort of gig economy. Honestly that isn’t working so well at present. I’ve lost my big monthly payday and I’ll soon lose the smaller one. Bartering and scrounging were always part of the plan, and that pays for a remarkably large percentage of my necessaries. I never expected the blog to pay for itself, in that people who like the blog just send me stuff sometimes, and to be honest I think it’s funny as hell that that actually has become a substantial percentage of my income.
A few people are after me to apply for social security and I suppose eventually I will. Right now I don’t actually possess sufficient official ID to do that, and getting that ID straightened out is proving to be a chicken/egg problem. But we carry on.
I certainly have lots of summer sausage…
Google the term: “Summer Sausage Stew”. Follow directions. Enjoy.
The limiter is probably a temp limiter on the motor.
Summer Sausage dehydrates nicely.
I’m certain LB and Ghost will be glad to help with the Summer Sausage problem.
Given that winter is of limited duration, severe winter temps even shorter, and your chainsaw use during winter probably of even more limited duration, I wouldn’t make a big batch, but adding about 25% by volume of kerosene to a quantity of bar oil should improve its flow rate <20-30F.
Petroleum-powered saws possess an advantage your battery-driven one does not: burning gasoline produces heat which eventually spreads to the bar oil tank, solving the problem, at least until one refills the bar oil tank from a jug that's been sitting outside (which is why, once well warmed by the vehicle heater, it's wrapped in a couple of towels and kept in an insulated cooler; a couple of warm bricks in the cooler helps, too).
That summer sausage would take some of the ‘bland’ out of lentils – or split peas.
LB probably would offer add’l suggestions about the ways that SS could be put to use.
Matt above beat me to my suggestion, though I’m not sure how oily that particular sausage is. Dehydrate some, freeze some smaller portions and whittle it down, portion at a time. If that doesn’t work, maybe doggie treats ?
The instructions with my Remington corded electric chain saw are quite specific about NOT using “chain saw bar oil” but rather 30-weight motor oil. It has the little thumb-pump thingie, and the instructions say to use it liberally. Seems to work.
…dunno what I’m gonna do with three pounds of it, though…
Oh c’mon! That’s only 2 servings….
That’s interesting, Kentucky, and sent me to the manual. This one does recommend bar oil. As to motor oil: “As a temporary substitute, a non-detergent SAE30 weight motor oil can be used.”
But as somebody up above did say, and I thought of mentioning it in the post but I was going too long, the thing about bar oil in a real chainsaw is that the engine produces quite a lot of heat. The oil reservoir is generally snuggled between the cylinder and the muffler, so a lot of that heat gets soaked up by the oil. You don’t have to worry about cold oil that won’t flow. I’d never considered that an electric chainsaw doesn’t have that advantage, and so allowances must be made. You have to warm up the oil when using the saw in winter.
That summer sausage will dice up, fry up and go nicely in some scrambled eggs in the morning.
I have summer sausage in my eggs pretty regular.
OG