EDChainsaws
New Member
Hi All, Rob the webmaster of BookOfTheDead.ws here. Some of you reading this will know already, but I used to run a hobby company called EvilDeadChainsaws.com, selling replica 'hand' chainsaws from the trilogy, you can read about that HERE As laid out on that page, I shut up shop in January of 2008, but recently I mulled over possibly resurrecting the company as it once was, and I have now put a revised, expanded & updated version of the website back online at the old domain;
This is explained in the FAQ page, but just to pre-empt people's questions; why are all three chainsaws currently unavailable?
After I called time on EvilDeadChainsaws around the start of 2008, all the moulds, templates & related bit & pieces were scrapped, and any larger machinery of value was sold off (such as a metal lathe, bandsaw, disc sander, pillar drill, bench table saw, slide mitre saw, metal shear, etc...). This means starting completely from scratch, setting up a new home-workshop, making new moulds and revising my designs based on all the various tweaks and upgrades built up over the chainsaws I made between 2005 to 2008. It will take some time to prototype and refine new designs, but I'm approaching the production from a more experienced perspective, which should make for better saws in the long run. I've already managed to pick-up cheap/second-hand; a Pillar Drill, Bandsaw and a Disc/Belt Sander, but I'm still on the lookout for a Dremel Set with Flex Shaft and a Fein Multimaster, I'm willing to wait for something to come up at the right place, and I'm not going too mad as this is money I probably won't see back for a year at least. The website is online now, so it can get established in search engines and around fans long before the saws go on sale. If that wasn't enough, I'm moving house at the end of this year too, and can't set up a proper home workshop till that's out of the way, so please check back in 2013 if you are interested in placing an order. I'll announce a more specific date nearer the time.
If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. Since I'm starting from scratch I could go in any direction I wanted.
Someone has already asked me about selling individual parts or DIY kits to my saws, so just to post that here;
The main problem is that my saws are made from resin cast pieces. The guide bar, chain, top handle and wristband (along with all the nuts/bolts, screws & fittings) are all real, but the rest is cast resin. Why use resin casts when I could make each saw from scratch using a real saw? Given the increasing rarity of exact model real saws (20-30 years old now) and the further rarity of saws in decent condition, plus the cost of buying them and shipping each one to the UK, it's just not feasible, so resin casts are the only way I can make it work. Each section is carefully thought out and slots/screws/bolts into the others to allow everything to be dismantled again, rather than glueing everything together into one solid lump. There's no glue used anywhere in the saw actually.
Anyway, there are certain bits I could sell, such as the top wood/metal handle (and metal lid from my workshed saw), the side gill/heatsink, or the black side handle, which would fit an original Homelite XL saw, without any modification to the saw beyond what someone would have to do anyway. My body section resin parts would be fairly useless, unless you had them all. So, if I did do a DIY kit with ALL the pieces needed, every single piece I use to make a saw done, that would be about 90% of the work done, only leaving final assembly and painting, so the price difference would be small.
One thing I am thinking about is doing a DIY Real Chainsaw Kit, that would be the couple of parts needed to turn a real Homelite XL saw into the real working chainsaw seen on screen (not the one ash puts his hand in).
That would be the side grill/heatsink, the wooden dowel pull-start, the black side handle (the top handle on the real saw would need some modification by you), and even the various paints need to paint a saw up like mine. That would still look really nice in a proper display, and could realistically be done by most people. Any thoughts?
This is explained in the FAQ page, but just to pre-empt people's questions; why are all three chainsaws currently unavailable?
After I called time on EvilDeadChainsaws around the start of 2008, all the moulds, templates & related bit & pieces were scrapped, and any larger machinery of value was sold off (such as a metal lathe, bandsaw, disc sander, pillar drill, bench table saw, slide mitre saw, metal shear, etc...). This means starting completely from scratch, setting up a new home-workshop, making new moulds and revising my designs based on all the various tweaks and upgrades built up over the chainsaws I made between 2005 to 2008. It will take some time to prototype and refine new designs, but I'm approaching the production from a more experienced perspective, which should make for better saws in the long run. I've already managed to pick-up cheap/second-hand; a Pillar Drill, Bandsaw and a Disc/Belt Sander, but I'm still on the lookout for a Dremel Set with Flex Shaft and a Fein Multimaster, I'm willing to wait for something to come up at the right place, and I'm not going too mad as this is money I probably won't see back for a year at least. The website is online now, so it can get established in search engines and around fans long before the saws go on sale. If that wasn't enough, I'm moving house at the end of this year too, and can't set up a proper home workshop till that's out of the way, so please check back in 2013 if you are interested in placing an order. I'll announce a more specific date nearer the time.
If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. Since I'm starting from scratch I could go in any direction I wanted.
Someone has already asked me about selling individual parts or DIY kits to my saws, so just to post that here;
The main problem is that my saws are made from resin cast pieces. The guide bar, chain, top handle and wristband (along with all the nuts/bolts, screws & fittings) are all real, but the rest is cast resin. Why use resin casts when I could make each saw from scratch using a real saw? Given the increasing rarity of exact model real saws (20-30 years old now) and the further rarity of saws in decent condition, plus the cost of buying them and shipping each one to the UK, it's just not feasible, so resin casts are the only way I can make it work. Each section is carefully thought out and slots/screws/bolts into the others to allow everything to be dismantled again, rather than glueing everything together into one solid lump. There's no glue used anywhere in the saw actually.
Anyway, there are certain bits I could sell, such as the top wood/metal handle (and metal lid from my workshed saw), the side gill/heatsink, or the black side handle, which would fit an original Homelite XL saw, without any modification to the saw beyond what someone would have to do anyway. My body section resin parts would be fairly useless, unless you had them all. So, if I did do a DIY kit with ALL the pieces needed, every single piece I use to make a saw done, that would be about 90% of the work done, only leaving final assembly and painting, so the price difference would be small.
One thing I am thinking about is doing a DIY Real Chainsaw Kit, that would be the couple of parts needed to turn a real Homelite XL saw into the real working chainsaw seen on screen (not the one ash puts his hand in).
That would be the side grill/heatsink, the wooden dowel pull-start, the black side handle (the top handle on the real saw would need some modification by you), and even the various paints need to paint a saw up like mine. That would still look really nice in a proper display, and could realistically be done by most people. Any thoughts?
