Chainsaw help

[PILOON]

My guess would be that U want a shielded ignition.
Typically small aircraft use shielded plugs with a braiding over the plug wires.

I think that a small cage made from copper screening that enclosed the areas that have the spark plug and high tension lead would in all probability do the trick.
Naturally that screen needs to be well grounded to the saw body.
What you are wanting is to shield RFI and EMI and a 'cage' will do that.
One problem is many newer saws have a lot of plastic covers/shields.
For those I suggest that HD foil self adhesive 'tape' (well grounded/bonded) should do the trick.

 

[newbury]

How about NOT operating a chainsaw anymore? Seems like the wisest move....

Yup.

What is the need for a "chainsaw"?
What size wood are you cutting?
How portable does it have to be?

Besides a few hydraulic saws and the electric plug in saws there are a lot of battery operated saws. The new lithium battery portables will cut small firewood fairly well, but I wouldn't want to try 20" wood.

 

[patrick_g]

[QUOTENo, there are no stray electrons running around. It's an electromagnetic field.]

But don't those electro magnetic fields get started by electrons ?[/QUOTE]

Not a hard and fast requirement or said another way, it depends. For one example, a photon is propagating EM fields. (See also the Poynting vector.)

As is typical this thread has lived up to the standard set by the average thread on TBN, way off track (but lots of fun) after a few well intentioned exchanges.

Maybe we need a place for such good natured banter. Again, thanks to all who responded. Maybe I will just buy a serious quantity of Primacord and forget the chain saw.

Patrick

 

[Egon]

Young ambitious fellars are what you need to attach to the chainsaw handle. They have no problems with stray EMF.

 

[patrick_g]

Young ambitious fellars are what you need to attach to the chainsaw handle. They have no problems with stray EMF.

Egon, An excellent suggestion that would have been back in the day but in this litigious society in which we are immersed if the young ambitious feller so much as scratched himself with the blade I'd be sued for everything I have times 2 or more most likely.

20 years ago one of the long time local cattlemen with whom I became friends warned me to be very careful when hiring any help as there were guys who would work long enough to get a check with your signature on it and then be "injured" on the job. Everything would go downhill from there. There are plenty of lazy ne'er do wells looking to "win the lottery" at your expense. I have been fortunate to have had only 3 helpers over the 20 years I have owned this ranch and they were all honest hard workers I would gladly employ again. I was lucky and careful, probably mostly lucky.

Regarding the Faraday cage suggestion that was made. Coax with decent braid or heliax with the shield bonded to the body of the engine is the equivalent of the Faraday cage. (Been awhile since I have thought about Gaussian pill boxes.) Shielded plug wires do a decent job. I have never flown a recip A/C that had RFI problems with the radio gear (voice or navaid) and as VHF comms for aviation is AM and significantly more prone to RFI than FM, it would have been noticed.

When I was in USAF/SAC I met a sgt who was a ham with a mobile station in his station wagon. He shielded all his high tension wires with coax or tinned braid, including the outside of his distributor. Terrific QRN reduction. Two of my pickups are diesel so I don't have self inflicted RFI problems in my mobile ops. I only do FM from the gas fueled pickup so it doesn't have RFI problems.

Patrick

 

[Egon]

Your making this difficult Patrick.

The next suggestion would involve an electric chain saw and generator.

 

[patrick_g]

Your making this difficult Patrick.

The next suggestion would involve an electric chain saw and generator.

I bought an electric chainsaw from Harbor Freight and have a small portable genset which powers it just fine. It says on the box the saw came in, "Not for use by people with pacemakers." However, the MFG of my ICD says electric chainsaw is OK a minimum of 2 ft from the ICD. I had given the saw to Nancy but may use it in light of the 2 ft thing. As you may recall from when we visited you, I have a fairly large "wingspan" so holding the saw at least 2 ft away should be doable.

The downside is the bar length and horsepower. I have saws from 16 inch Macs up to a 32 inch Husky.

The electric is N O T going to substitute for the 32 or even my 18 inch Husky. I will try shielding the plug wires and compare RFI signal strengths before and after using my ham transceiver as test gear. It is a SDR (Software Defined Radio) basically an analog to digital converter fed by the antenna. The attached computer does all the DSP (Digital Signal Processing) the function of which used to be done in capacitors, inductors, transistors and such. It then displays the received data in real time on the computer monitor much like a spectrum analyzer. If I can get sufficient dB of attenuation I should be able to use the gas fueled units. If not, then the electric and or an axe or crosscut saw will have to do.

Nancy wants to travel more and decent help being unavailable at affordable rates for herd sitting in our absence, I have hauled the herd to the Southern Oklahoma Livestock Auction and leased my pastures to a local father and son who are cattlemen with expansion plans. I even sold them my barn full of big round bales for feeding the herd they will bring over. The first noticeable effect is reverting from a farm and ranch policy to a homeowner policy with equal coverage saves over $4000/year in premiums.

Nancy says I can keep my western wardrobe and boot collection and still call myself a cowboy. The big difference will be that I will not need me to go out on my tractor to put out bales of hay in all sorts of weather. That will be THEIR job.

Patrick

Patrick