Chainsaw Repair

I had a friend that repaired aluminum cylinder heads on cars, etc and figured someone must have tried fixing broken chainsaw cylinders.

Come across this video showing a common repair on broken cylinders. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdMK9lRGH-M

I've never done it mainly because I don't have a heli-arc rig .

On my avatar picture that 2100 Homelite has had a lot of welding done to the starter .My buddy who owns a welding shop did it .

Evidently the decomp wasn't working and some gorilla type on the west coast nearly jerked the starter off it .However it was must have been strong as a bull .

From what little I know about it, it's more the alloy of the metal .With TIG in my opinion you  have better control than with a wire welder also .

Now I've never claimed to be a good heli arc welder on aluminum mainly because I never had any reason to be .However using TIG on steel I've done stuff that would be very difficult to do with a wire welder .Such as welding a bandsaw loop back together .

Within the last six months I had a welder at work weld the cases of an 038 mag because of a hole in the oil tank .It took him about 4 different types of filler rod until he found the correct alloy to use .So on that unless a person knew going in what the alloy make up is it would be hit and miss .

Rambling on .On cast iron there are so many types,the way it's cast etc that none of it reacts quite the same .John-Deere for example is very easy to weld .Caterpillar and old Ford are very difficult .--and so it goes . However I'd much imagine that certain components of chainsaws would also present a challange .

I havent had the need to do it but yes it can be done. Cylinders arnt a heat treated aluminum, so you don't have to worry about that.

Shaun Carr = I've been welding plug threads up on rare or expensive chainsaw cylinders for a long time. I've tried to capture and share some of the tricks I've learned over the years. There is a lot more to it than just welding since you have to handwork the chamber back.

https://youtu.be/coITcuFSPxQ