[Note: This post has links to Amazon. If you want the same stuff I bought, you can click the link and it’ll be the stuff I was talking about. I figured that’s better than re-inventing the wheel. If you want other stuff that’s ok, click a link and surf to whatever you want. I get a tiny kickback from Amazon no matter what you buy. If you want no material goods at all, more power to ya!]
A few years back I bought a Dewalt electric chainsaw. There are many like it, but this one is mine:
I expected a battery operated saw to suck. I was wrong! It blew my mind. It’s not going to replace my full sized Stihl but the little Dewalt rocks for small jobs. In fact, the electric saw punches well above its weight class. It does much more than I thought it’d be able to handle.
I’ve been beating it like a rented mule ever since I got it. I have a couple chains and a “fleet” of four batteries. Three 5 AH (amp hour) batteries and one 4 AH battery. I’ve been using real Dewalt 20V batteries. As you’d expect the 5 AH is slightly noticeable as having more staying power than the 4 AH, but it’s not a deal breaker. If you’ve got 4 AH batteries just use ’em and carry more spares.
Batteries don’t last forever and saw work is in hard conditions. I eventually cracked the housing on one and “froze” another. Again, I’m not complaining. I’ve worked these things hard. I decided to buy a couple more batteries.
Alas, it’s the Bidenverse and the price of batteries is just as affected by inflation as everything else. I went to a store who’s name rhymes with “Home Despot”. They had 20V 5 AH batteries in stock. The cost was $100 each. Roughly double what they cost when I bought the saw and batteries. Holy flaming shit!
By Crom’s throbbing nutsack I’m not dropping a c-note on a battery the size of a potato!
I walked out of the store, fuming.
Online I found a two pack of 20v 5 AH Dewalt batteries on Amazon. It was a little over $120. For reasons that make no sense you can get a two pack WITH CHARGER for SLIGHTLY LESS? I have no idea why.
I stuck with Dewalt because I’ve had less than the best experiences with Chinese knock off batteries. YMMV but I’d recommend avoiding the knock offs for a big power user like a saw.
OK so, I saved roughly $80 by telling “Home Despot” to kiss my ass. Can I do better?
Sure I can!
One of the old batteries had a cracked case. Why not buy a new case? It was a good case, I just mistreated it. I’ve been tossing it (literally) into the steel bucket of my tractor. My bad. Carrying it around in the bucket; with firewood logs under, on top of, banging into, and of course mud and snow sloshing around in the mix just was too much.
I wound up buying a ridiculously named Compatible with DeWalt 20V Battery Cover Replacement 1 Set Plastic Case 5.0Ah 6.0Ah DCB201,DCB203,DCB204 Li-Ion Battery Case Replacement,10-Cell Broken Battery Shell Repair Kit Cover Parts. This had the suspiciously weird price of $12.32. It is definitely NOT sold by Dewalt. In fact Dewalt is acting like any normal “monopolist” would and has no parts readily avalable for “fixing” a battery. Well played, but still a bastard move!
The Battery Case arrived packaged like someone had shipped a potato from Hong Kong.
This is what the original case looked like.
Undeterred, I opened the broken case using a torx screwdriver to pull out 4 screws. The driver didn’t fit real well but it did work. Note: keep the screws! A Compatible with DeWalt 20V Battery Cover Replacement 1 Set Plastic Case 5.0Ah 6.0Ah DCB201,DCB203,DCB204 Li-Ion Battery Case Replacement,10-Cell Broken Battery Shell Repair Kit Cover Parts doesn’t come with 4 new screws. Silly but it is what it is. That would probably add $0.11 to the cost and they were so cheap they didn’t even spring for a shipping box.
Four screws, don’t lose them!
Also, the battery is dirt simple but it’s not too simple. There’s some electronic shit in there, you don’t have to know what it does, but break a soldered junction and you’ve added to life’s complexity. Just be careful.
Also, people are assholes! (Not that you didn’t already know.) I left the battery torn apart and laying around for a few days. Everyone joked I was making a bomb. Fuckin’ morons see some tubes and a circuit board and think I’m a James Bond supervillain? Really? I have a welder too, does that make me Ironman? A battery is damn near the simplest object this side of a brick. Does their car run on magic and their TV remote have magic spirits inside? Have they ever done anything involving a screwdriver?
Others mocked me for “wasting all that labor just to fix a battery”. My return on investment was about $85 for less than an hour’s work. (The next time it’ll take me 5 minutes!) Unless you’re Elon Musk, curing cancer right fucking now, or a lawyer billing $150 an hour, saving $85 bucks is pretty good use of anyone’s time. Just how much do these people think the average schmuck’s time is worth?
We really are in the dumbest timeline. It’s bad enough living in a world where people can’t drive a manual transmission or read a fuckin’ book but it’s worse hearing them preen about it. I hate that shit! Being incapable of fixing something is not a sign of superiority, it’s a sign of domestication.
It’s just a damn battery!
The replacement housing was not 100% identical to the Dewalt housing. I expected that. I’m assuming it came from a rogue Chinese factory but for all I know it came from a 3D printer in Fresno. It’s close enough, just not perfect.
The photo isn’t great but there are two “voids” in the case in the original Dewalt, that are not voids in the replacement case. I spent 15 minutes trying to squeeze the damn thing together before I figured it out.
A Dremel tool can fix anything. I ground out the “voids” in the replacement. It felt like I was making a functional receiver out of an 80% battery case. Don’t overthink it. I did a sloppy job and it was good enough.
It really is a tight fit getting that battery back together. There’s not much “play” in the fitment. I was probably a bit too rough on the replacement case, but it’s a learning curve and all that.
Before I could reassemble it, I needed to address the “these screws suck with my torx wrench” situation. Turns out there are torx wrenches and “security torx wrenches”. I found security bits in stock at my local store. How secure is it if it’s in every hardware store? The answer is none at all. I feel insulted to live in a universe where you can buy “security” bits literally anywhere and in so doing you’ve thwarted what someone calls “security”. Ever get the feeling we’re some other universe’s punchline?
I got security bits locally. They’re on Amazon here. I paid more in person but was willing to pay because the local guy had the knowledge to explain to me the concept of “security bit”. (Always pay for knowledge. It’s worth it!)
Once assembled it looks 99% like the original.
It charges on my Dewalt charger, just like usual.
If you ignore the cost of bits, I turned a broken battery that costs $100 for a replacement at “Home Despot” into “as good as new” for $12. I know people are bad at math but $12<$100 should be a no-brainer.
Thinking about how the battery got damaged, I bought myself a chainsaw carrying case. If a few bucks on a case saves a bit of damage on useful equipment it’s a decent investment. I sure like the little saw so why not? I couldn’t find anything from Dewalt. I was prepared to spend big bucks on a hard case, like I have for my Stihl. But there was nothing to be had.
I bought a stupidly named Chainsaw Case,Waterproof Chainsaw Storage Bag Compatible with DEWALT & Ego & Greenworks 10Inch 12Inch Cordless Power Chainsaw&Accessories, Black&Yellow. It was $44 which is not the deal of the century but it’s reasonable and I need to get used to living with Bidenverse prices anyway. It is somewhat thoughtfully designed so I was willing to roll the dice. This is a soft case and a cheap knock off from China. It might not hold up. But it was cheap so why not?
It actually looks pretty good. I give it an A for style.
One pocket is perfect for bar oil. (I bought a quart of bar oil too. I’ve been using a gallon sized bottle of Stihl bar oil and that’s overkill for the little saw.)
The other pocket has room for a handful of batteries.
It’s not made for or by Dewalt, but it fits my saw just fine.
One other reason I got it is that my saw leaks bar oil (saws tend to do that). When it was tossed in the back of my Jeep-thing it got oil where I wanted things to stay clean. Now the case will catch the oil… I hope. So far so good.
As always, YMMV. Happy camping y’all!
This sounds like the sort of project I would attempt to use my 3d printer for. Plastic isn’t the greatest material, and 3d printers aren’t the be-all/end-all tool that their early popularizers had hoped, but for making random oblong-shaped enclosure things they sometimes do the job.
I have an Ender 3v2. It’s cheap for a plastic printer, and does what any of them would do.
-madrocketsci
I’ve wanted a 3D printer for years. I’ve only held back because I lack the time to learn how to use one.
The security bit set is $6 at Harbor Freight if you have one close by.
I’ve long thought the security bits were a lot like bike locks, keeping the honest people honest. The thieves have battery powered cutting wheels and security bits already.
Tanks!
I’m also amazed that a lot of people seem to recoil from the mere appearance of anything that looks vaguely mechanical or electronic. Apparently, it’s so offensive that we now have plastic covers on top of the engine in our cars. Only the dipstick and oil filler are deemed acceptable to penetrate the veneer that protects us from unsightly reality.
Yes and all that plastic overlay does nothing but clutter up what in other times might be a nice machine. An old truck’s parsimonious engine is a thing of beauty.
I wonder if a pig mat would keep the bag from becoming an oil-soaked mess. You would probably have to peel it off the saw every time you took it out, but if the mat doesn’t fall apart, it might do the job.
My saw’s hard case has a pool of oil in it that I need to clean up “someday” – might throw a mat in it. Thanks for making me think about it!
Jim_R
Every saw has some oil under it. I jokingly call it “waterproofing”.
Never thought of a “pig mat”. I’ll have to Google it and investigate.
A couple of comments, from my own experience with the Dewalt chainsaw. When we take the saw boat camping, I just screw off the chain bar and fit the whole thing into a small sports bag — anything that fits the body of the saw will probably have empty spaces for gloves, safety glasses, chain oil and batteries. An old rag goes in first, and gets replaced when it gets oil soaked.
And if you can store the chainsaw with bar up and tilted, it won’t leak as much oil (the oil is leaking out a small hole in the base, underneath the spindle). I keep mine in a plastic basin, and wipe out the thin film of chain oil once a year or so.
Steve O
You saved $85.00
BUT….that was 85 After Tax dollars.
You have to earn $110 to $130 and give .GOV their extortion share to take that $85 for a battery value.
Good on ya!
Yes! A thousand times yes! I’ve tried a million times to explain that NOT needing to spend a buck relives the need to earn a solid buck and a half or more. It adds up!