[ SECRET POST #2636 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2636 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Pinocchio]













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 086 secrets from Secret Submission Post #377.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

tldr: Leiko is a Joyless Nitpicker re: Chainsaws

[leikomgwtfbbq]

Well, there's a first time for everything! :P

First of all, there's the gas problem. I figure in any apocalypse/zombie/horror situation, there's going to be a shortage of gas. Chainsaws really guzzle up fuel pretty quickly. They have pretty small tanks, after all. Each of us on the crew had our own jug of gas and bar oil to use, but we'd always need more by the time lunchtime rolled around, sometimes even before that.

By the way--the bar oil is necessary, and sometimes, you have to use a special type of grease to keep the chain spinning around the tip of the bar properly. Otherwise the chain could stick and that could cause problems. Using a different type of common oil could cause the chain or the bar to wear out a lot faster, because of the friction.

Speaking of the chain, that's going to be a pain in the ass, too. It isn't just points on that chain; they're called teeth and rakers, and they're designed kind of like tiny little shovels to pierce and then scoop out the wood. Naturally, they wear out pretty quickly, and I usually had to spend about 15 minutes twice a day sharpening the chain. Which requires sitting down with the saw against a steady surface and filing the teeth with a special file at an angle. This can take awhile.

The chain also needs to be put on correctly. It doesn't just come attached to the saw forever--they're separate pieces. So what you need to do is put it on so that the teeth and rakers face the correct way, and then you need to put the bar back onto the powerhead of the saw, and then you need to put the nuts and bolts and screws back on with a particular tool (called a 'scrench'), and God help you if you didn't tighten those nuts and bolts correctly, because your saw is going to fly apart and fuck shit up.

That's just equipment so far.

So, hey, let's start that saw. There's a pull-cord, so how hard could it be? Well, there's a tab on the back that you need to put at the right notch--full-choke, half-choke, etc.--before pulling it, and pulling that cord is going to take several tries if you haven't been using the saw all day (and sometimes even if you have) to warm it up right. It might take a minute to catch. Plus, a lot of people try to pull the cord while they're holding the saw out in front of them, and that's a lot of wasted effort and reckless endangerment. It's hard to start it that way because the saw's going to move around. I usually started mine from the ground, so it didn't fly back up into my face and eat it, but some braver souls on my crew would clamp it between their thighs and start it that way.

So once it's started, you have to hold it with two hands, and you have to hold it at a particular angle for it to be effective. You don't use the tip of the bar, because it's relatively flimsy. You'd go for the middle of the bar, which holds more power, and you would have to really hold it and pull the trigger at the back of the powerhead. It wouldn't be very good at mowing down hordes of the undead because, for one thing, bone is probably pretty tough to cut through. It takes a little bit to cut through wood, even if it's just a pine about the circumference of my fist--it's only seconds, but those seconds could cost you in a zombie siege, you know. You wouldn't be able to just whip through the crowd with your saw and have them falling all before you. And wood doesn't have any guts and organs to get in the way of cutting through it. Trees also generally don't fight back. It would probably complicate things to be standing there with a chainsaw, trying to get through the crowd, and have them climbing all over you while you're trying to get the saw through this one zombie.

Speaking of all that, chainsaws also require frequent cleaning. I remember I had to clean mine a lot even when I was just cutting down juniper bushes, and that's just stringy bark and weird leaves, not zombie gunk. I imagine zombie gunk would gum up the works of that saw in a real big hurry, and in the middle of the invasion is no place to stop and clean it out. As with refueling, restarting, etc., it's a bit of a process, and then you have to put the entire saw back together.

I know that little to none of this matters when you're in a setting that involves zombies, which don't make any sense anyway, but it used to be my occupation, so it's something I fuss about a lot, because I'm a goddamn joyless nitpicking dweeb. XP