Oh, I Chop Down Trees, Wear High Heels.... (Black & Decker Scorpion 400W Handsaw)

Member Name: Nibelung

Product:	Black & Decker Scorpion 400W Handsaw
Date:	30/08/04 (3436 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonable price for a tool of limited application

Disadvantages: Limited cut langth

THIS TREE, MY LAD, IS AN EX-TREE

I live in a conservation area, so anything you do to a tree, has, at least in theory got to be approved by the council. However, in our garden, we have what I'm reliably informed is called a Siberian Crab-Apple tree. Or at least we did, but since it hasn't leafed or borne fruit for at least three years (when it did before), what we actually have is a nasty gnarled blackened wooden object that sheds brittle bits, which you only find with the mower or spills blood every time I catch my head on it whilst mowing the grass.

So I'm sorry Hounslow Council, it's coming down before it does someone a real injury.

Of course, the wherewithal to cut down a full-grown tree isn't the kind of thing that this DIYer has in his arsenal. Having resolved to leave the last eight feet of main trunk in place - the ivy entwined round it looks rather nice, the major boughs to be cut can't really be any thicker than 4 or 5 inches at the very most, narrowing down to a thumb's width.

AVOIDING A SELF-INFLICTED 'BOBBIT'

My first thought was to hire a chain saw -? nah, too expensive, and money down the drain. If I'm undertaking something new, I tend to buy a tool for the job in hand, and then I've at least got it to use again.

My second thought along the same lines was to BUY a chain saw - nah, VERY expensive, and anyway, there's something about using a chain saw that sends my blood running cold, and my 'wedding tackle' retreating to within a suitable body cavity for safety. I thinks it's the ease with which you can cut an appendage off in a moment's lapse of concentration, plus the fact that the top edge of the blade is equally capable of whisking a finger away as is the bottom edge.

It was sometime around making a similar statement to the nice man in N&J Tools, Brentford, when the Black & Decker KS890EK 'Scorpion' saw was pointed out to me. Yes, it was £20 cheaper than the cheapest chain saw, and my testicles could relax to their normal jaunty devil-may-care position.

It also looked as if it could do more than chop up logs too.

WHAT YOU GET

Included with the saw itself, you get a tough black carrying case, making even me look like I know what I'm doing. This has space to house the three blades included in the £57.86 price. Each serves a different purpose, but of most interest to me was the Scorpion 'Thick Wood' blade, which looks like a conventional handsaw blade, albeit a short one. Fearing that I might get half way through the job in hand before blunting the blade, I bought another at £12. The other two blades are a 'curve cutting blade', a kind of cruder jigsaw blade for big jobs like cutting the aperture in a kitchen worktop to drop a sink unit in, and a metal cutting blade.

The mains lead is commendably long compared to the skimpy metre or so that you usually seem to get with power tools. At least this lets you climb a step-ladder without dragging the weight of an extension lead up there with you, although a house ladder would be something else.

It would appear that according to my invoice, I get a two-year warranty too.

FEATURES AND OTHER DATA

It is designed to be used two-handed, although as you can imagine, this doesn't lend itself to working safely up a ladder. Fortunately, the switching on and off can be done with one hand, there being a safety catch which you flick with your thumb and a speed/on-off trigger which falls below your remaining* fingers. Once the safety catch is used to release the trigger, there is not need to continue gripping it, unless you release the trigger fully.

*Remaining? I hope that's not prophetic in any way!

Speed is controllable by squeezing the main trigger from a theoretical Zero strokes/minute up to 5,500. Unlike a jigsaw, this one has a very short stroke of 1 cm.

The whole thing is powered by a 400-watt mains motor, drawing 1.8 amps.

AS A JIG SAW

To use the machine as a jigsaw requires it to be tilted through 90 degrees, compared to its conventional 'Oh, I'm a lumberjack' position. To maintain a steady angle, a large moulding swings down to become a 'foot'. It can jigsaw through board some 5 cm thick, which would see off most kitchen chipboard worktops. The blade isn't dainty enough for intricate work since you can only turn a jigsaw tightly if the blade has very little back-to-back measurement. This one is about 1 cm in vertical width, which would leave hefty burn marks (and a smell to go with it) if you attempt the DIY equivalent of a hairpin bend.

Because using it standing on its head, as it were, makes access to the safety catch near impossible, there's a repeat version falling easily to grasp at this angle.

AS A METAL SAW

This only requires the fitment of an alternative blade - it still operates at the same angle as the normal wood saw. It is only recommended that you cut mild metals up to 3mm in thickness. I'd also add that ear-protectors (along with the more obvious goggles) are used, especially in a confined space as this can make an awesome racket.

AS A WOODSAW
This is where I come in. The Scorpion saw blade is recommended for use on soft wood up to 10 cm thick, (about 4"), and although some of my boughs were thicker than this, they weren't MUCH thicker than this, and anyway, they are quite often ovoid in cross-section, which means that you cut the slimmest part, but for a greater depth instead. The instructions don't say anything about how deep the wood can be!

In use, I still found this a fairly arm-aching affair, but nowhere near as bad (or dodgy) as having to work two-handed with a bow saw, whilst teetering on a ladder. I adopted a kind of sawing action, which might sound silly since it's powered, but it seemed to work faster like that, no doubt partly down to the fact that this clears the cut of saw dust quicker than any 1 centimetre stroke of the blade can. Actually, a sawing action makes sense even on thin cuts, as this evens the wear along the length of the blade without leaving one sad little blunt bit nearest the saw.

Blade wear seems reasonable for the kind of wood I'm sawing, especially bearing in mind it doesn't stop with felling the thing. It's then got to be chopped up into logs, which must mean hundreds of cuts.

Noise levels are reasonably low too.

CHANGING BLADES

This is a simple procedure. You simply press a button on the side of the main casing, which allows the blade to pivot downwards, from where it can be disengaged from its mounting and pulled out.

FINDING STUFF OUT THE HARD WAY

I don't think anyone would think of cutting from the underside of a projecting bough, even if they were able to stand well clear with the saw at arm's length. This leads to the saw blade becoming stuck in the cut as the weight of the bough hinges downwards.

However, cutting from the top isn't quite the bed of roses you'd think either. It's obviously the place to start, but I still ended up with a stuck blade on more than one occasion. Fortunately, you can disengage the blade, leaving it behind, as described in the last paragraph. The problem lies with the fact that not all boughs are about to break in a vertical direction. Some of them are loaded up with branches in an asymmetric way, which leads them to twist as they fall - it makes sense to lighten the load if you can reach by getting as many of these off in the first place, but of course, if they're beyond ladder reach, they come down with the main bough in question. After a while, i.e. just before I'd bloody finished, I got quite adept at judging how much of a slant from the horizontal was needed on my cutting from the top.

I've still got plenty of logs to chop up, but the blade seems to be holding up, so the spare can live to fight another day. The smaller stuff I'm putting through my neighbour's Bosch compactor to boost the flagging tree-bark on a few of my raised beds.

GLAD I BOUGHT IT?

Yes, I suppose so, and if that sounds like being damned with faint praise, in a way it is. Whilst this saw will be a damned sight more useful than a chain saw, to me at least, it still won't find much work. Sure, I can think of plenty of things I've ALREADY DONE which it could have done better, but that's not the point. Its major task will do doubt be the chopping up of logs. I'm not sure how I come by them, but a bi-annual trip to Norfolk to increase my in-laws' woodpile always seems to happen, so I guess the stuff must come from somewhere.

Anyway, it was still cheaper than the cheapest chain saw, and it doesn't give me a funny feeling 'in my water', or anywhere else either!

Summary: Versatile saw for raw or seasoned wood. Heavy though