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By James Card

Behold the mighty chainsaw and discover its history, its influence, and its people

Considered the most powerful of all hand tools, the chainsaw has been vital to contemporary life in ways large, small, and sometimes surprising since it first came on the market in the 1940s. In Chainsaw Love, author James Card celebrates this formidable implement in unflinching style, sharing stories and reflections about the world of chainsaws and the people who use and appreciate them.

Card describes the personal freedom that comes from harvesting your own trees for firewood and introduces readers to lumberjack competitors, hot-saw builders, and the sculpture carvers who take sawing to new heights. Chainsaw Love asserts the key role chainsaws play in clearing the right-of-way for powerlines to keep the electrical grid humming; in forestry and conservation efforts to maintain desirable ecosystems; and in the sciences, where ecologists and astronomers use chainsaws to age trees for scientific research. Card also considers the chainsaw’s place in pop culture, from movies to rock songs to presidential photo ops.

Readers of Chainsaw Love will discover the lore and terminology of forests and wood cutting— widow makers and windthrows, witness trees and barber chairs, pumpkin pine, devil’s forks, cat faces, and schoolmarms. Additionally, the book offers insights into chainsaw variations and parts, guidelines for saw care and maintenance, safety recommendations, and other hard-won tips and tricks. Dozens of photos from the field, as well as helpful diagrams, add to readers’ understanding of the saw’s evolution and modern use.

Part homage, part social history, and part field guide, Chainsaw Love is the perfect book for chainsaw users of all stripes—from loggers to conservationists, woodworkers to weekend cabin-dwellers—and anyone curious about this magnificent and underappreciated machine.

Find Chainsaw Love at your favorite book retailer or in our online store.

PRAISE

"Anyone who loves chainsaws will be absolutely enthralled with this book. As a former climber for tree companies, I know my way around a chainsaw, but I still learned a huge amount. Card is a very fine writer, and the book is a love letter, a practical guide, and a deep history. I tore through it like a spy novel."

—Sebastian Junger, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Storm and In My Time of Dying

"Chainsaw Love is the ideal gift for that person in your life who, right now, is in his or her shop, sharpening the teeth of a chainsaw, or better yet, cutting up that fallen oak limb for next winter's firewood. This book is written with real adulation and respect for one of the planet's most revolutionary tools. Here's to hoping that Chainsaw Love joins Lars Mytting's Norwegian Wood as an essential book for any outdoorsperson."

—Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and A Forty Year Kiss

"As a longtime chainsaw industry journalist and tree farmer, I was impressed with the absolute accuracy of Mr. Card's review of chain saw history, technology, and operational guidelines. Upon this background, he explores a number of interesting and unusual chainsaw applications; each one garnished with fascinating tales of the chainsaw practitioners involved. Chainsaw Love offers a wealth of information for the chainsaw enthusiast, and intriguing discoveries for any outdoorsman."

—Ken Morrison, past editor of Chain Saw Age

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Card has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Foreign Policy, and other national publications. He is the only journalist in history to have stories about ice fishing and deer hunting on the front page of The New York Times. Between stints as a magazine editor and a journalist, Card worked as a line-clearance tree faller. He is the author of The Dawn Patrol Diaries, recounting his experiences as South Korea’s only fly-fishing guide. He lives in central Wisconsin and cuts firewood with a chainsaw throughout the year. 

AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES CARD

Chainsaws are a unique topic for a book. What made you want to write Chainsaw Love?

I was working as a line-clearance tree trimmer where we trimmed and felled trees along electrical transmission lines. We used chainsaws every day. I was chatting with a foreman that mentioned the Northeast Blackout of 2003. I had never heard about it as I was living in South Korea at the time. That summer, an overloaded transmission line made contact with a tree, which could have caused a localized blackout if trees were trimmed around the lines. Instead, there was a cascading effect and by the end of the day, all the states in the northeast and parts of Canada were without power.

All of this could have been prevented with a chainsaw. One tree sent a good portion of the USA back to the Dark Ages. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the importance of the work that we were doing in the right-of-ways that crisscross the state of Wisconsin.

What was your favorite part of the writing process for the book?

I deeply enjoyed speaking with many people during the course of researching this book. I had a lot of great conversations and met many people from different walks of life. Chainsaws brought us all together. Then I realized chainsaws bring a lot of people together. Chainsaws are now very widespread tools. Many people have strong opinions, interesting insights, or useful tips about chainsaws. Some have cool stories to share, some have scars to show off. There are many people out there that love and appreciate their chainsaws and I discovered I wasn’t the only one that felt that way.

Not everyone is like this. Some look at chainsaws as loud, obnoxious, ornery tools that get put into service only when necessary. I feel the same way about my lawnmower.

Did you uncover any information about chainsaws in your research that took you by surprise or altered your opinion of the tool? If yes, did you incorporate it into the book?

I met with Cyrus Johnston at his workshop in Menominee, Michigan. He makes hot saws, which are super-tuned saws designed for maximal performance. There are no manuals to read or classes you can take to learn this. He’s studied Japanese speed bikes and the physics of rocketry to grok this obscure subject.

In the film Ford v Ferrari, Carroll Shelby designs the Ford GT40 to compete at the 24 Hours of LeMans. Every part, inch, and ounce of that car was analyzed and studied and refined so it could be one of the fastest race cars of its time Cyrus Johnston does the same thing but with chainsaws. It was a pleasure to include this world-class craftsman in the book. He is a saw mechanic but he crafts the fastest saws on the planet.

How has the chainsaw bettered your own life, from a physical and mental standpoint?

In my woodlot there is invasive brush (buckthorn, autumn olive, honeysuckle) that smothers the forest. Along with that, I have some oaks that have died from oak wilt and many ash killed from the emerald ash borer. So, on winter afternoons I will clear the brush and fell some dead trees.

Clearing the invasive brush opens up the forest and allows native plants and seedlings a chance to grow and it improves the woodlot itself. I get satisfaction from being a good steward of my woods, but it also has practical benefits, too. And as for the dead trees, they get converted into firewood and the production of firewood is good exercise outdoors: cutting, lifting, splitting, stacking. And it makes the woods safer as dead trees become hazard trees and hazard trees can kill people. The real reward comes months later after the wood has seasoned and the snow is falling and the woodstove is ablaze.

What do you feel it is about chainsaws that make the tool so popular—both for artistic expression and in pop culture?

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre blew the door open about chainsaws in pop culture but remember that it was made in 1974. At that time, chainsaws were creeping from the hands of lumberjacks to the general population. The technology became more refined and user friendly. Like supercomputers in an IBM laboratory getting condensed into a PC desktop with Windows: powerful tech put into the hands of many people. Suddenly chainsaws were being adopted and used everywhere for all kinds of things. So, it’s not surprising that people started using chainsaws for sculpture, on construction sites, or for cutting holes on frozen lakes.

In horror movies and other forms of pop culture, it remains a tool of mayhem and bloodshed. It certainly is as it is such a powerful tool by its nature—one slip up and you’re getting stitches. But it is natural for it to be this way: if you wanted a tool for a horror scene, what tool would a bad guy (or hero) pick out from a garage? A power drill? A circular saw? A belt sander? A disk grinder? An air compressor? Or a chainsaw? The chainsaw wins every time.

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