Over the years EvilDeadChainsaws has been running, I've made a number of 'working' versions of my chainsaws. 'Working' in the sense that the chain moves round, the muffler blows smoke, and the pull start is retractable.
The first thing to say is that I don't make an sell these to everyone, just a few specific special cases. This is for a couple of reasons; they're difficult and time consuming to make, the owner would need to be competent enough to operate, maintain & repair one, and I have a full time job working in film & TV special effects, so I'm just as happy not to have the headache. You can download the instruction sheet below;
My 'standard' chainsaws have no moving parts, nothing to wear out or malfunction, nothing which needs to be maintained. Short of damaging it by force, there's really nothing to go wrong. The most taxing thing the 'standard' chainsaws have to do is sit there and look the part. The 'working' chainsaws are a different story, there is plenty of parts which could be damaged simply by the unit being dropped, but there are a long list of other things you could do to damage it; connecting up a higher voltage battery burning out the internal electronics, burning out the motor by trying to cut through something, leaving it caked it fake blood so the chain seizes up, getting liquid into the electronics, etc, etc, and that's apart from general wear & tear of all the moving & electronic components. At some point it's life something will go wrong, and even if it's the tiniest part, regardless of the reason, the onus is then on me as the seller is to fix it. With FedEx shipping between the UK & USA around £190.00 each way (£380 in total) for a chainsaw packed in it's wooden crate for example, just one return over the life of a chainsaw is very costly.
Further, a 'working' chainsaw takes roughly five times longer to make than a 'standard' chainsaw, and it's hard to charge a reasonable amount that anyone will pay, that also makes the time spent making one worthwhile. You can see a test video of a 'working' chainsaw below;
As mentioned above, the owner would need to be competent enough to operate, maintain & repair their chainsaw. To give you an idea of how involved it would be to do something seemingly simple like swap out a burnt out drive motor, you can read a brief description of the process you'd need to understand, and have the tools & equipment to do, below;
"To replace the motor, you'd need to remove the vented side of the saw, remove the hot-glue on the tags/wires then de-solder the two wires to the back of the motor, slide off the aluminium sleeve surrounding the motor, unbolt the sprocket from the driveshaft and remove the washer behind it, which should leave the motor free to slide out. Then you'd need to hammer out the 2mm x 10mm roll pin from the brass driveshaft allowing the driveshaft to come free of the motor, then the tricky bit, you need to re-drill the motor's driveshaft (as the original was) without making a hash of either the new motor, or existing driveshaft, it also needs to be straight & true or the saw won't run properly, then just insert a new roll-pin (which you need to make sure is completely flush to the driveshaft and not sticking out), then just re-assemble & re-solder the saw exactly the same way you took it apart."
Having read & understood everything above, if you need one for something special, and are still interested, you're welcome to get in touch although for most everyday customers the answer will be no.