The Search for the Holy Grail of Production Carpentry - The Skilsaw 16 inch Sawsquatch Chainsaw
The Skilsaw 16 inch Sawsquatch Chainsaw straight out of the box.
It’s big.
It’s scary.
And if you squint your eyes hard enough, it resembles a tall mysterious hairy freaky dude in the Northeast American territories…
It’s the Skilsaw 16” SAWSQUATCH Chainsaw!
Now before we see where this ranks on the love, kill, or 😘 scale, I need to explain why this 56-toothed beaver chew surgeon has stumbled onto my tool kit. The ups. The downs. And is it worth considering?
If you have ever doom scrolled the social platforms, you’ll inevitably will come across the Sawsquatch. Usually chasing the holy grail of carpentry production; batching out a set of stair stringers.
It’s an ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ moment. And it will set in your head, that you have found the mystical beast to accomplish such a laborious task.
But there is a catch. If you continue your research, you will notice that these legends of the carpentry social world, never use it again… with no rhyme of reason.
And that’s why I am here.
Because if you ever batched a set of stringers for composite decks, you realize how much work a 12” OC layout can eat into a day.
Let’s start with the bad:
The cuts make beaver chew and barked edges, look like craftsmanship. At its core, it is a chainsaw. Clean cuts will never be a result. This is well documented, and generally the biggest compliant. So for batch cutting, this is really only for unseen lumber.
The machine needs more handholding. If you’ve dealt with a chainsaw, then you know you need bar oil. Teeth need to be sharpen. The chain tension checked. You need to be careful of how you set the machine down. But what it offers in speed, makes up for these small inconveniences.
The chain binds on most cuts. Because of how thick the teeth are, and wood preferring to stay as it originally grew, I found myself having to remove more lumber to proceed, on anything not a crosscut.
Leading to the bar deflecting on any cut not a crosscut. And what part of a house has zero crosscuts? Stringers of course. This may be due to the direction of the cut. The grain of the lumber. How many boards are being torn into at one time. But I noticed on my 2nd set of stringers, that the top two boards nearest the strongest connection to the bar, were perfect compared to the following boards. Luckily, the blade deflected away from the meat of the lumber, or I would have been screwed. But this would be the top reason why I will never use it again for stringers, unless I can confidently confirm I can do it with a little more gained experience.
The cut produced by the Skilsaw 16inch Sawsquatch Chainsaw. It is not the cleanest produced cut.
Now what about the good?
Batching crosscuts. This is where I see production framers use this the most. And the results are worth it. The trick, is to set the boards up. Not lay them down. With clamps to help hold them vertical. On an individual board, it cuts like you would expect. With each individual drop, giving a brief second of relief for the next board. But when cutting through multiple pieces, the teeth seems to work harder.
It adds a level of badass to the jobsite. Adding ‘macho’ to the project is a thing. There is no denying, that its ridiculous appearance, adds to the level of awesome.
When stacking lumber to be batched for joist, I will stack the lumber vertically and held by a clamp.
With more bad than good, you may then be asking where it stacks to a project’s need?
Well… if you’re a framer. I think it’s a no brainer for cutting joist.
It has sped up the process of an individually demanding task. While you can see the increased production as a profit rocket, you can also use it as an opportunity to slow down on other processes requiring more attention. Delivering a better end result.
For all other needs, I can’t recommend this. At least not yet. I would be too afraid of the rough cut for appearance boards. And there is to much risk with any other cut besides a crosscut.
If a rough carpentry project ends up on the job list, this will be tagging along. But for now, the search for the holy grail of onsite stringer batching will remain a mystery.
