Clamp Saw Vs Hand Chainsaw: We Cut 100 Trees in Australia And Here Is What Happened

Clamp Saw vs Hand Chainsaw: A Head-to-Head Test on 100 Radiata Pines

multi-functional clamp saw to the end of your excavator arm can sound like one of those "too good to be true" tools salesmen swear by. So did we.

Back in March, we were loading a container to Melbourne for a customer who runs thinning crews out of Bairnsdale, Victoria. Before he bought the whole set-up, he asked us a simple question:

So we did what any honest manufacturer would do - we rented a 40-acre radiata pine block out near Stawell, brought in two Australian fallers who had each been on the tools for over 15 years, and put our 12-ton excavator fitted with a clamp saw on the same rows.

Same trees. Same day. Same lunch break. Here's what happened.

The set-up, exactly as it ran

Before you read the numbers, let's be clear about what we tested, because "faster" means nothing without context.

Pinus radiata, plantation grown, 22-year-old thinning row

220–280 mm, consistent

under 4 degrees, flat ground

two certified fallers, each running a 90 cc professional saw, plus one loader on a skidder

one excavator operator - and here's the honest part - he had of training on the clamp saw. He normally runs a 12-ton digger on civil sites.

100 trees, measured by a tree marker before anyone touched a bar

We didn't tidy anything up for the cameras. The break was 40 minutes at 12:30. The chainsaw crew stopped twice to sharpen chains. The excavator never stopped.

Two experienced fallers on radiata pine work at roughly the same rhythm: one walks ahead and fells, the other follows and bucks the stem into 2.4-metre lengths for the loader.

On this day, after lunch, one of the fallers pulled up at 3:40 pm and said his lower back was gone. He sat for 20 minutes. We didn't stop the clock.

Total time for 100 trees: 13 hours 50 minutes.

That's split across two days, because we knocked off at 5 pm. We're not going to dress it up - that's a normal day-and-a-bit for a two-man crew on thinning work.

The operator started at 7:40 am. He gripped the stem, cut through, rotated 90 degrees, laid the stem in a row, and moved on. He stopped once for a 15-minute chain sharpening. He stopped again at lunch.

He finished the 100th tree at 1:55 pm.

Total time: 6 hours 15 minutes, including lunch.

That's 1.6 minutes per tree for the machine, versus 8.3 minutes per tree for the two-man crew when you factor in both fallers' combined time.

We ran the math twice. The clamp saw wasn't 10% faster. It did the day and a half's work in a single morning.

Safety - the part Safe Work Australia cares about

Speed is one argument. In Australia, where Safe Work Australia reports forestry as one of the highest-fatality industries on the books, safety is the argument that actually wins the job.

Not catastrophic - thank goodness - but entirely ordinary:

One faller took a wood chip to the cheek at 10:15 am. Hard hat saved him from worse. We washed it out, he kept going.

At one point a 3-metre top broke sideways while he was limbing and whacked the skidder tyre. No injury, but it would have been a hospital trip if someone had been standing there.

Both guys were soaked in pine sap by 11 am. That's not safety, that's just misery, and it matters when you're paying someone a full day rate.

Zero. Nobody left the cab. Nobody was within 10 metres of a falling stem unless they chose to walk over after it was on the ground.

"I've spent ten years on civil. The thing I hate most about this job isn't the tree - it's not knowing where the next flying chip is coming from. Here, I've got glass between me and it."

If you run a crew in Victoria, NSW or Tasmania, you already know how this translates: your work cover premium is partly priced on your incident history. One lost-time injury in a radiata thinning contract and your next renewal is ugly.

Here's the table we actually used when we debriefed with the Bairnsdale customer. Numbers are AUD.

The clamp saw landed on the customer's yard in Melbourne for roughly AUD 9,800 all up, including sea freight, GST and a customs broker we recommended. He runs two crews. At the numbers above, the machine pays for itself in about 9 weeks of thinning work.

That's the math any Australian contractor can redo with their own award rates. The higher your hourly on-costs, the faster the payback.

The honest caveats - chainsaw still wins some days

We would be lying if we said a clamp saw replaces every chainsaw in Australia. Here's where it doesn't:

If you're taking down a pin oak in a suburban backyard and the digger can't get within 8 metres, the clamp saw stays on the trailer. Hand crews with ropes and rigging are still the only answer.

Spiky, dangerous hardwoods - yes, even eucalyptus

We tested on pine, which is forgiving. Gum trees are a different animal. Eucalyptus has high resin content, can shatter when bored, and often has hidden rot. A clamp saw will cut through a healthy 400-mm blue gum fine, but you have to run a finer-tooth chain, keep the auto-oiler on max, and - this is the mistake we see on Australian job sites all the time - you cannot force the feed. The operator has to let the chain walk in. Push too hard and you'll cook the saw motor in an afternoon.

We put together a separate guide on cutting hardwood with a clamp saw; drop us a line and we'll send it.

One-off jobs, three or four trees a week

If you're a council contractor taking out three dead trees a fortnight, don't buy a clamp saw. Hire a hand crew. The machine earns its keep when you're processing volume - thinning rows, fence-line clearing, storm debris.

If you're running two fallers and a skidder on radiata thinning, and you're losing guys to bad backs and rising work cover - the clamp saw isn't a luxury. It's how you keep bidding on jobs next year.

If you're doing mostly arborist work in suburban streets, keep your chainsaws.

And if you're somewhere in between - a bit of both - send us a 30-second phone video of your typical job. We'll tell you straight whether it's worth bolting on, because we've now stood in enough Australian pine rows to know the difference.