Featured Battery Chainsaw

Love it, thank you for the link Stevo

 

Stevo, great review, I agree with your comments. We bought 1of these with a 5 amp/HR battery. First time out started with 50-100mm trees, then started looking at bigger stuff. We have cut down 450mm trees with this. You need to change attack vectors pretty often, but it is do-able. Fresh trees are easier than old dry stuff.

 

450mm! Sounds like a new record! heh yeah that might take a while but if you're not doing it all the time then that's ok.

I've been doing a heap of work with it lately. I did a 250mm tree last week. Chopped it all up and did a couple of loads in the ute to the dump. I like being able to do it at 7am without the noise of a petrol chainsaw annoying the neighbours.

 

Victa have just released an 82V battery series of gardening gear that was demonstrated to me by a Bunnings storeperson. It was highly promoted by him on account of the power it can output, rivalling its petrol counterparts. He even mentioned a 3 year warranty on the battery, which I wonder about the conditions placed on such a warranty. Plus, there was recently an 80V variety of equipment Victa had (apparently produced by Kobalt) that was promised to be a line of longevity for tradespeople to trust in, and the line was quickly discontinued, leaving all the buyers with a dead end product. Would it be this way with the 82V series, nobody knows. Tough decision to buy when it costs $800 for the mower alone and there is such uncertainty. But the equipment does look impressive...

 

I had a try at someones Ryobi battery mower. It worked ok. It seems to have enough power to keep your "already nice" grass in shape, I'm sure it'd be fine for small yards. The only issue I had was that the outside plastic body seemed too low and scraped along the grass making it hard to push and turn. I didn't have much time to investigate that further.

I'm sure the Victa would work ok, though as you say.. who knows how well the whole battery range will go, which may be limiting.

 

I've also got the Ryobi 18v Line Trimmer and a Drill. That way I can share the batteries between tools. 90% of the time I use the batteries on the drill.

The Line Trimmer is awesome too. I've had a couple of petrol line trimmers, and while they're pretty powerful and can destroy anything, I always found them a pain to maintain and start ( I tend not to maintain things that well). I'd spend 10 minutes trying to start the damn thing.

I whip around the yard with the Battery Line Trimmer in 10 minutes and it's an easy job, not a major task.

 

Stevo, we bought the line trimmer as well. What a great piece of kit, we bought the 2 solid plastic 'blade' attachment as well, great on tufted grass, useless on small scrub though

 

I've had a look at the 82V mower again, it appears to have power beyond its lower voltage predecessors. Maybe they're getting good at doing it by battery power, more so than Ryobi's 36V offering but the 80V variety from Victa was discontinued abruptly for no apparent reason and there is always that risk that a line can lose its support when consumables are needed form the company for them to be of any use.

How do the other 18V tools fare? The pole trimmer and the hedge trimmer? Does the pole trimmer have enough to get through a 40mm branch for example? I saw the design of the pole trimmer. It is a little cumbersome to lengthen/shorten.

 

David, i didn't know you cold get different attachments for the trimmer, i'll have to have a look.

Ash, I just looked, there's a 18v Ryobi Pole Hedge Trimmer, but it has a max "Path" diameter of 17mm, so I assume that means 40mm wont fit in the blades.


I have a tree down from last nights Cyclone Debbies high winds. Looks like the chainsaw is getting a workout this weekend.

 

...I've just stepped deeper into the Ryobi 18V (One+) abyss.
This time i bought a cordless jigsaw.
It seems for me that every time a corded tool goes toes-up I go buy the equivalent in the cordless Ryobi range.

I will sleep sound tonight knowing my range is expanding.. <evil laugh>