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6
Danger: Beware of the danger of kickback!
The Kick Guard must be removed
for any operation requiring use of
the nose section for cutting, or for
drawing the nose through a cut.
Read your Instruction Manual
before operating saw without Kick
Guard.
Check out your technique for cutting with an unguarded
guide bar nose, because you cannot do safely without the
Kick Guard what you can do with it. The rules for cutting
without a Kick Guard are as follows:
1. Maintain proper stance and grip. (See Figure 9.)
2. Keep your body to the left of the guide bar. (See Figure 9.)
3. Avoid letting the nose of the saw dip into the ground
or touch obstructions.
4. When necessary to bore with the saw tip, you are
most vulnerable to kickback. Begin at full throttle,
making first contact at the bottom quadrant of the
nose section, or further back on the straight portion if
there is room.
5. In the small percentage of cases where it is
absolutely necessary to bore with the upper section of
the nose, it is best to let a trained tree expert do the
job. If you are an experienced operator, angle the saw
blade to be sure that no part of your body is in the
same plane of chain rotation.
6. Limit your cutting to the range within which you can
control the saw fully. Don’t reach way out so as to
lose your balance. Don’t make any cut above
shoulder height, because you cannot control the saw
well when held higher than this.
7. Making limbing or pruning cuts one at a time. The tree
shearing or electric razor technique of de-branching
(limbing felled trees) should not be practiced without
the Kick Guard because you can too easily hit an
obstruction which will cause kickback. Whenever
possible, stand on the opposite side of the tree from
the branches being cut, so that the tree offers a
barrier between you, the saw, and the branches.
Operating Saw Without Kick Guard
OPERATOR
STANDING
DIRECTLY
BEHIND SAW
BLADE
LEFT ELBOW
EXTREMELY
BENT GIVES
POOR
CONTROL
THUMB ON TOP
OF HANDLEBAR
KICKBACK
PATH
Fig. 8
PLANE OF
CHAIN
ROTATION
THUMB ON
UNDER SIDE
OF HANDLE
BAR
BODY ENTIRELY TO ONE
SIDE OF PLANE OF CHAIN
ROTATION
STRONG LEFT
ARM AND
ELBOW
POSITION FOR
GOOD
CONTROL
Fig. 9
POOR
CONTROL
GOOD
CONTROL