High Limb CS-48 Rope-and-Chain Saw

Comment: A Super idea - here's a way to cut a limb that is too high to climb to and/or too thick to use your pruning saw on.

That's about as far as it goes - the way it's *supposed* to work.

Unfortunately, there are several problems actually making the concept work:

Getting the saw up there - yep, there is the "throwing bag" - which if you have a good, accurate arm and handle the loose rope well - will get the saw over the branch. However, if your aim isn't so good, or if there are several branches in the way, or too many twigs, etc - it can take several (many) tries to get this to work.

Another user mention that the device for "flipping" the blade right-side-up is iffy at best. This is especially true (again) if there are twigs near where you want to cut that prevent the blade weight from flipping the blade.

Anybody who's cut branches off of trees knows that occasionally a saw blade gets "pinched" and stuck. That's a big pain on the ground - but when it happens with this tool, the stuck saw blade is up to 25' overhead. Whatcha gonna do now? If you're lucky enough to have the branch sawed through enough that it's started to come down, you can grab it and pull and bounce on it and it will probably break free bringing the saw back to earth. Another user mentioned that his chain broke when this happened. If the branch won't break off - then you either have to climb anyway (if you even can) or - you get to leave your expensive saw UP in the tree and you're worse off than you started.

Finally, anybody who knows about pruning limbs off of trees that you want to keep knows that it takes THREE cuts to do this properly - and that one of them needs to be made from bottom of the branch to keep the bark from tearing. That's just impossible with this tool. So resign yourself to a very messy, unprofessional job.

So - buy this tool if you're OUT of other options - and resign yourself to the fact that you may STILL have to climb to finish the job and get your saw back down. I have used this tool to make 5 or 6 cuts - but every one of them had problems, and only one of them looks like a decent pruning job. The rest look like an amateur did it. I still had to climb for most of those cuts.

Comment: WARNING: This should be considered a TWO MAN saw to prevent a limb from falling on the user and killing or injuring. With two people, they can safely position themselves from being directly under the limb. Do not walk under a partially cut limb!

Make sure you pull the chain side with the flipper up first, its a little tricky setting the teeth against the limb but pulling the chain back down a little two times or three times will flip the chain teeth over. I had to change out the supplied 25' ropes because I was cutting a limbs 40' up, use a rope that doesn't stretch. I pulled up a nylon string first for that height. I also changed out the rinky-dink snap.

The web handles really help a lot, but as you get near the end of the cut make sure you are not wrapped up in the rope, and that the web can come off your hands quickly so you don't get pulled into the limb as it falls.

I cut several 6"-10" live and dead limbs successfully.
Don't bother purchasing the shorter model chain, as you will need all the chain length you can get once you start the see-saw action.

Comment: Somewhat to our surprise, this very simple tool does what it is intended to do, albeit not neatly. We needed to prune several large diameter (up to 6") limbs on a 70 ft-tall gray pine to open a view on our property. Having pruned away those I could reach with our 11 ft telescoping chain saw (Stihl HT-101)and then the next level up using the Stihl while on a 16 ft extension ladder (I don't recommend that experience to anyone!), there were still several higher up that I could not reach. I found the "Rope & Chain saw" on the web, with Amazon having the best price. While skeptical, I purchased it and my wife & I went to work. Since the limbs were 25+ feet above the ground, we attached the throwing bag to a thin nylon string, using that to pull the rope over the limb. Getting the throwing bag over the limb and in the desired location was the toughest part. All the limbs and the trunk of this gray pine bristle with small diameter (3/4") limbs that blocked the throwing path to the large limbs we needed to cut. It took many many tosses for each limb. But once we got the rope & chain saw up there it cut through quite quickly. There was only one problem. As other reviewers have experienced, the chain gets bound in the saw kerf as the limb begins to drop under its own weight. We used a two person technique in hope of avoiding binding the chain, spreading out from the tree to lower the chain's angle of attack (we had to add length to the ropes). Regardless, the limb managed to trap the chain as we sawed through. We were able to dislodge the chain in each case, but with some effort and anxiety. Of six large limbs removed by this method, only one came out with a clean cut. The other five ended up with torn edges on the lower side of the cut. Kind of ugly but acceptable to us as the tree is 250+ feet from our home and the cuts are way up the tree and not particularly noticeable. In summary, a simple tool, that works as advertised. While I wouldn't use it on a "specimen" tree where clean and precisely-placed cuts are required for appearance and the health of the tree, for rough pruning it sure beats the expense of a professional arborist.

Comment: Read the reviews here and thought we'd give this a try on an eight inch limb that was over 20 feet off the ground. First of all, the Amazaon order was delivered in two days which pleasantly surprised us. I used the throw bag that came with it and attached a heavy string and tossed it over on the second try. Other reviews said this would be difficult to position, but we pulled the chain up and the teeth were positioned perfectly. I thought this would take hours but my wife and I sawed through the limb in less than 10 minutes! It really bit into this ash tree. Near the end it stuck a couple of times, but we got it free by changing the angle of the ropes. Quite frankly, I figured it wasn't going to work but the result made it was well worth the money! We are in our sixties so I probably would have broken my back climbing a ladder with a chain saw. I was happy with this product.

Comment: Circumstatially handy... Not very useful in and of itself for limbs above 20' and limbs having smaller diameters. Smaller limb diameter encourages the chain to catch or bind in the cut. That said, I have made quick and safe work of two five inch thick limbs at 20-25' in height. Decent tool. Do not ignore instructions.