Growing up, we heated our house all Winter with firewood, so Spring and Summer were spent cutting it. Father was too cheap to pay for electric heat, but he had two sons that he fed and he expected us to pay him back with free labor. Even my sister didn't get a pass. She had to help stack it. We knocked the trees down in the spring after they had leafed out. At the height of the Summer heat, my father would drag us out into the woods on his Yanmar farm tractor to cut up the trees we fell a few months before. He had a plethora of chain saws, all different mixes and models. I remember a huge McCulloch that weighed something like 50 pounds, the engine was the size of a small block V8. My little pipe cleaner arms could barely pick it up. He ended up buying a Poulan from someone he knew, but that saw was junk and barely ran, then he had a Remington and a Homelite, which he really liked. These saws were all tons lighter than the McCulloch and became his saw of choice after he almost cut his leg off. He was standing in the pile of fallen trees, cutting these 8 to 10 inch swamp maples into stove length and was getting tired. He shut off the saw then, for some reason, rested it on his leg, but the chain was still spinning. Just like that, down though his jeans, into the meat of his quad. We had the next couple weekends off. We drive back up to the house, he cleaned out the wound as best he could and bandaged it up. No doctor visits, no hospital visits. It left a thick, sawdust filled and chain oil colored scar on his leg. I don't remember him using that McCulloch too much after that.
I had an Echo with a 16 or 18 inch bar I bought when I bought my house. Used it during the Ice Storm of '98 to clean up fallen trees, used it to clear snowmobile trails, used it to cut Christmas trees. Just a nice all around good saw. One day, cut down a nice, tall balsam fir behind the house, took the top 6 feet off the tree for a Christmas tree. Dragged it back to the house and my wife asked how I cut my pants. I looked and had a nice jagged tear through my jeans, my wool long underwear and it never touched skin. I have no idea when it happened. That was the last time I didn't wear chaps when using a chainsaw. I got divorced and sold my chainsaw to my brother and he's still using it to cut his firewood in the same woodlots we cut firewood as kids.
In the Guards, we started out with some German make of chainsaw. I can't remember the name of them, but they were OK. The real problem with them was partially trained soldiers borrowing them and screwing them all up. I would leave on a drill weekend, saws were cleaned, sharpened, running well, come in the next drill weekend they would be all dirty, dull and none of them running. WTF? Then we got Poulans to replace those and no one wanted to borrow them, so they stayed in halfway decent condition until the ice storm, and then when they had to be used, they turned to junk in short order. Those were quickly replaced with Husqvarna's and those are some nice, tough saws. They were still there and in good working condition when I retired. Can't go wrong with a Huskie.
One of my father's friends was an Arborist. He swore by Stihl's. Never used any other saw. Most of the arborists I see around here use Stihls.
