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Fabulous

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I would imagine that the initial investment in tooling (lathe, hand pieces and bits etc etc) needed to do this type of work can be thousands of dollars! Then we have the cost of the guy/gal experience/ trial and error / R and D and how do we put a $ figure on THAT! It doesn’t appear to be rocket science and it’s something one can learn on his/her own but be prepared to invest considerable cash … You are paying the guy / gal doing the work for the knowledge of where to grind , add epoxy , adjust ports to specs etc etc. machine and cut squish and all the other things (carb work , intake, transfers, port match everything, exhaust can modifications and more) and of course the knowledge and experience of the builder. If the guy/gal doing the work is very good at what they do the expense of the job is well worth it! You pay the $ and get handed a turnkey unit that’s going to outcut the stock saw by a 20-30% (or more) , get good fuel economy and last a good long while. For someone who does treework firewood or logging and considers the saw as a tool to make a living with the right builder and saw build can pay huge dividends from the perspective of more wood cut in less time
 

TX_Welder

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I would imagine that the initial investment in tooling (lathe, hand pieces and bits etc etc) needed to do this type of work can be thousands of dollars! Then we have the cost of the guy/gal experience/ trial and error / R and D and how do we put a $ figure on THAT! It doesn’t appear to be rocket science and it’s something one can learn on his/her own but be prepared to invest considerable cash … You are paying the guy / gal doing the work for the knowledge of where to grind , add epoxy , adjust ports to specs etc etc. machine and cut squish and all the other things (carb work , intake, transfers, port match everything, exhaust can modifications and more) and of course the knowledge and experience of the builder. If the guy/gal doing the work is very good at what they do the expense of the job is well worth it! You pay the $ and get handed a turnkey unit that’s going to outcut the stock saw by a 20-30% (or more) , get good fuel economy and last a good long while. For someone who does treework firewood or logging and considers the saw as a tool to make a living with the right builder and saw build can pay huge dividends from the perspective of more wood cut in less time
About like my foray into gunsmithing. $1,000 to true up an action and rebarrel!? I'm not paying that again. I'll get a lathe and do it myself!

The lathe was the cheap part, lol. The tooling is where they get you. I'm several custom rifles deep in tooling and equipment. But it's been fun learning it, and I enjoy it. And the lathe is handy to have around.

I rebuilt and ported a saw one time. Won't do it again. I can't afford to tool up for guns and saws. If I ever port another one it will go to the tree monkey. Next on my list is a ported 261. And I'd like to do my 462 also. All it takes is money.
 

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The lathe was the cheap part, lol. The tooling is where they get you.

Our university built a shop for faculty to use for building equipment, which included a large vertical mill and a large lathe.

I just put together an order for basic mill tooling to get us started, and it was more than the price of the mill.

Basic measuring and layout tools will be half that cost again.

I have been using a router as an analogy when I explain it to people, because that is something more familiar. Out of the box it is just a noisy paperweight. Whatever utility it will have depends upon what you are willing to spend on bits.
 

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Then we have the cost of the guy/gal experience/ trial and error / R and D and how do we put a $ figure on THAT!

Quite some time ago, on another site, I followed treemonkey's work. There were a lot of folks just guessing and grinding, but I watched several videos showing treemonkey dialing in specific saw models through extensive testing.

That is the reason that I was excited to see this thread pop up. I haven't been through all of the videos yet, so it may be there, but you should see the cant that he builds for testing.
 

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It would take thousands of dollars to have a professional setup. And that's what it would take to do the milling fast and accurate. You can do the milling other ways that take a looooong time relatively speaking and may not necessarily be as accurate or pretty, but it works. Lots of info out there on porting theory, methods, timing.............. you can do with a few hundred dollars in a Dremel or Fordham setup and timing wheel, burrs. Add to it a chunk at a time as you get sick of doing it the slow, less accurate and less attractive way.

Might kill a cylinder or two but they make great pencil holders. How do you think most of the accomplished saw porters on here got started?
 
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Fabulous

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Quite some time ago, on another site, I followed treemonkey's work. There were a lot of folks just guessing and grinding, but I watched several videos showing treemonkey dialing in specific saw models through extensive testing.
I have watched quite a few of Treemonkey videos and another guy working with him on his channel redbull 661 iirc. Frankly , I’m surprised he has as few subscribers as he does vs what he given to the community in terms of knowledges thru the years. He should have waaaaay more than 3000 subs imho! Then again utube seems to favor flashy graphics / video presentation over actual talent and skills. In other words actual skill apparently does not = subscribers. You see evidence of this with some new guys to the scene having 6x the subscribers but 1/10th the knowledge and skill. A flashy cookie cut for 30sec with music playing and then 20mins of staring at a moon face rambling on and on and on regurgitating info that most know already. No rhymes or reason - just how it is!
 
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59billy

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I rebuilt and ported a saw one time. Won't do it again. I can't afford to tool up for guns and saws. If I ever port another one it will go to the tree monkey. Next on my list is a ported 261. And I'd like to do my 462 also. All it takes is money.

My porting setup consists of PayPal, Pirate Ship, and a short list of names. Call me lazy.
 

TX_Welder

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I have watched quite a few of Treemonkey videos and another guy working with him on his channel redbull 661 iirc. Frankly , I’m surprised he has as few subscribers as he does vs what he given to the community in terms of knowledges thru the years. He should have waaaaay more than 3000 subs imho! Then again utube seems to favor flashy graphics / video presentation over actual talent and skills. In other words actual skill apparently does not = subscribers. You see evidence of this with some new guys to the scene having 6x the subscribers but 1/10th the knowledge and skill. A flashy cookie cut for 30sec with music playing and then 20mins of staring at a moon face rambling on and on and on regurgitating info that most know already. No rhymes or reason - just how it is!
Tree monkey's subscriber problem is just that most people now days have extremely short attention spans. (Think covid, epstein, the list goes on.)

Tree monkey imparts actual knowledge in his videos, but you have to watch the whole video if you want to see/hear it. Most people are not willing to sit there for an hour watching a guy talk through a job. We are. But we're chainsaw nerds, lol. Most are not.

Like you say, the average youtube consumer wants a 30-60 second short, that's loud and flashy, and its on to the next one. Thank tiktok for that one. But it's by design. Big tech has spent more money on researching the optimal time to keep people engaged on their phones than all of our chainsaw collections put together.

Long range shooting is another passion of mine. Another youtube channel that really suffers from a lack of subs but shouldn't, is a guys channel called MountainsMulletsMerica. Think of him as the tree monkey of the precision rifle world. Same problem. Average video is 30-45 minutes long, and people just won't hang around for it. Even though it is some of the best shooting content on youtube.

I don't run a youtube channel, so I dare not tell tree monkey what to do. But, and there it is, from what I've seen, the channels that keep their "long form" videos under 30 minutes seem to get better traffic.

The problem for tree monkey there is, he'll grind on something for 5-10 minutes, then drop some knowledge bombs of some of the things he's learned in his lifetime of being a professional logger, saw dealer and porter. Which again, is fine for us saw nerds, but not your average social media consumer.
 

Fabulous

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Yah, I think what happens a lot of times is a guy/gal makes one video that gets millions of “hits” and from that video the subs go from 500 to 50,000overnite … Now, folk see the large sub count and think that he/she must be an expert and the guy/gal might start believing it themselves. YouTube seems to have really “stuck it” to the creator in terms of payout though, to the point of making the creators work 4x harder to make the same coin they were making a few years ago. Case in point , ol Buckin was pullin in close to $1000/day a few years back and now he’s lucky to make $150/day. Where did all that money go ? Well it doesn’t go to the creator anymore so… Sometimes ya wonder if it’s all just bs anyways - your video could got a million hits but only shows 2000 on your channel - how do you or I verify this? Answer is : you cannot
 
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