Whipped Cream Difficulties

Well, not a real massacre, except maybe of firewood.

Front page of the WP:

Chris Cox took the state of the Mall personally during the shutdown. In return, he gets a $1,200 chain saw.

My first reaction: “A $1,200 chain saw?! That had better be a Stihl!”

(click through to the article)

Yes. Yes, it is.

“It’s an honor to be able to present Chris with this chain saw,” said Belmont Power Equipment’s Robert Hill of the Stihl MS 660, which retails for approximately $1,200.

Nice picture, too. Second thought: damn, that’s a long bar, even for tree cutting.

“I do bears, sea captains, cigar store Indians, tiki heads,” Cox explained in a pre-ceremony interview. He is, in fact, a Northern Virginia chain saw artist and makes wooden sculptures under the name Cox Creations. He’s working on a football display case, carving the Redskins mascot out of reclaimed wood, and positioning him as if he is cradling the ball. Cox was commissioned to make it by a local real estate developer.

Third thought: what’s he going to do when the team name changes?

Fourth thought:

Then, before a small crowd of onlookers, he hoisted the 5.2-kilowatt engine-powered saw into the chilly November air, though he did not turn it on. In the middle distance, a police officer appeared to be monitoring the situation.

5.2 kilowatts? That’s an odd way of stating power. Though, as it turns, out, it is:

• correct
• and apparently pulled directly from the spec sheet on the Stihl website

Fifth thought: even for a Stihl, $1,200 seems high. But I can’t find prices for new ones online; Amazon has chainsaws, but not the Stihls. It looks like you might be able to get one off eBay for half that amount, but would it have the same bar length? MSRP looks to be just a little under $1,200, so maybe so; it has been a long time since I had any reason to look at pricing for Stihl chainsaws.

(I’ve written about this elsewhere, but my father loved cutting firewood. What we didn’t burn in our fireplace got sold. He intended to get a Stihl chainsaw, but never got around to it.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 14th, 2013 at 9:23 am and is filed under Clippings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.