Any experiance of these..

[lee74]

Hi

 

Went into a macinery dealer to get some prices for a new saw and got chating and the guy that I was speaking to was raving about the Mitox and Active brands of saws (both brands do other stuff as well, mowers strimmers etc)

Will be using the saw for felling and logging.

 

So, are they any good or should I stick to Stihl and Huskys

 

Also have found a 260 for just under £450 is this a good price

[gensetsteve]

260 is an old model speak to jonsie his ad is on the right will do best deal.

The others sound chinese personally would not touch them with a barge pole.

[Cut4fun]

Active is from Italy Links and info in this thread. Active Italian made chainsaws

[spudulike]

I have no experience of these saws but in my experience, Husqvarna, Stihl and Jonsered have climbed to their respective position in the market place for a reason - good solid well built and widely supported chainsaws and other equipment. Dolmar/Makita are also worth a mention!

 

I can still get spares for 30 year old saws - that is what it is all about

 

I doubt whether the MItox saw will make it over two years. I recently serviced some Zomax saws - they were absolute rubbish and won't ever buy another - the chainbrake was very weak and badly made, the recoil was poor and started to crack, the cylinder looked poorly made with burning around the top cover by the spark plug and it leaked oil - the love was not there.

 

So unless someone else has had a fab experience with Mitox, I would personally avoid them - just my opinion after servicing both new an old saws from the top three! Oh - the residual cost in Stihl and Husqvarna is very high on re-selling them as used!

[agg221]

I think broadly speaking there are three classes of saw use:

 

Firstly, there's the day-in, day-out saw, which is the key tool of the trade for the user. These get worked to death and are probably worn out and changed in about 3-5yrs. Here you need quality for reliability and performance. If it breaks, you can't earn a living. You can overcome this by having multiple saws, but each extra saw is more tied up depreciating capital. Poor quality means more down-time as it breaks more often and more frequent changes of saw when you wear them out. Poor parts availability means more down-time waiting. Poor performance means each job takes longer, and is less comfortable to do. Hence you really need good quality and parts availability, so Stihl and Husquvarna score.

 

The second category is the occasional use saw which does a very specific job. This might for example be the 088 with a 4ft bar that lurks in the back of the shed and comes out once every couple of years for a really big job. These aren't going to ratchet up the hours, so probably won't even be broken in by the time the warranty is up, but you really do need good long-term parts availability as they'll be well worth fixing for a very long time, the main components being only lightly worn. Chainsaw milling often falls in this category - it's not something many people do every day. Here you want models with very long production runs as it means there are plenty of machines out there so it's worthwhile producing the spares even after the production run ends, either OEM or not. Here, Stihl definitely score (can't speak for others as I don't know them so well) - you can still get the parts to keep a 40+ year old saw running. It's also worth considering buying secondhand in this category, as the same reasons mean the last owner probably didn't work it too hard.

 

The third category is the homeowner or general gardener with a handful of trees to do. Here, the saw may not get more than a few hour's running use per year, so it will effectively go on forever. If it dies after 10yrs they won't complain (equates to less than a month in a full-time work environment) and they struggle with the idea that chains can be changed and sharpened - I've seen saws thrown away because they're blunt! In this category, anything goes to a budget, although some people do appreciate quality and will buy Makita/McCulloch etc as they are likely to not break on the first job.

 

The above are a bit absolute, but I certainly wouldn't want to buy a saw that I intended working hard or keeping a long time unless I had confidence in the original build quality and the likelihood of getting parts. Without even seeing the makes you mention to assess the quality, the latter point would be a significant concern.

 

Alec

[lee74]

Thanks for the info guys, looks like I will stick with a Stihl or a Husky.