Brand new Homelite chainsaw every spring. (Funny story, homelite lovers don't click)

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redmanlcs

Burning Hunk
Nov 20, 2017
165
West Virginia
Now this was after the era of the legendary xl12's, both red and blue. For what they were, they were good. From then on they were basically junk per everyone in my family, friends I know, people I speak to. They all agree, homelite is/was a crapbox.

Take 1980's and 90's with this little old widow that had a few sons that cut her firewood. Money was tight. Everything she got, she got on credit and paid bills monthly out of her pension. Every spring she would go to town and buy a saw at the local hardware store that gave credit. All they had to offer were homelite's. Now the reason she had to buy a new saw every year wasn't because of the quality of the saws DIRECTLY. Let me explain:

She would buy a new homelite saw and give it to her sons. When they grew tired of the saw not starting, running like crap, or any other problem, they would trade it off for something else, usually a worn out sthl or husky that was 10 years old, along with a couple cases of beer to boot, which to them was way better than a new homelite. They succeeded every year cutting enough wood to get them through. After they cut up enough wood for the winter, they would trade the worn out sthl or husky for another couple cases of beer and wait until spring for the brand new homelite chainsaw. For the first few years these guys would wait for the homelite to give them problems but soon discovered it was no use. They could get a little better trade on a clean, new, never used saw so they ended up not even giving the saws a chance. Their mother would raise such a fit when she discovered the new saw was gone, but the guys always reassured her that they was the ones having to use the saw, don't worry we will get the wood in, and they always did....... as long as she got the brand new homelite for them every spring.
 
They could have had a lot more beer and wood if they'd hung on to a couple of the old Huskies and learned to take care of them. They were trading exclusively to people who didn't know anything about saws in the first place if they were using homelites as currency, so they should have had a pretty good collection after a few years...

If they just wanted a fast way to turn $150 into $15, carrying a bad consumer saw out of a hardware store works well... but why not just ask Mom for $15 to get a carb rebuild kit and let her keep the other $135? Didn't they like her? In that case, why didn't they just tell her to get her own damn wood?

So many questions are raised... ;lol
 
Growing up and never leaving the farm, and dealing with an obstinate opinionated is an acquired trait. It's funny how just about anything could be gotten used to and normalized. But once a guy lives down town, and gets citified, or off to war, or wherever, then goes back, uhm, dad, ma, wth, there are better ways. If the hog falls into the corn mash, don't just keep cookin the still---