The Granberg Sawtune 12v sharpener has a bracing system which means it sits firmly on the chainsaw bar, offering very precise and speedy sharpening, with accurate selection of the correct tooth angle and required degree of tooth ground off. It initially took maybe an hour of fiddling to work out quite how the device best fits on the bar- next time it'll be 2 minutes. The instructions suggest the clamps that secure the sharpener at the correct height on the bar should sit on the top of the chain rivets, but I found this tricky. Instead I followed the video instructions shown by Rob of Chainsawbars/ Alaskan Mill, its far better to set the clamps on the top of the bar, below the rivets, not on them. Once this was done, the adjustments to the cutting height and depth were straightforward, and the actual sharpening was remarkably quick and enjoyable (!), I did a chain effortlessly and precisely in about 3 minutes. The quality of the finished chain was excellent, back to 'factory' sharpness and far better than I'd have done with a hand file. It was apparent I'd been cutting more off one side of the chain than the other and the teeth had ended up shorter on one side, this was easily corrected by the Sawtune. I used the battery from my garden tractor, but think I'd prefer to do the sharpening in a warm workshop environment rather than fiddling with small screws out in the field. As such I can see me doing a 'proper' sharpening to my full set of chains maybe every week or two, and carrying two or more with me to the wood, perhaps with a quick occasional brush-up 'hand job' with a file in between 12v full sharpening. Value wise, it seems a good buy at around £60; it does the same job as the Timberline which is around £100 more, whether its a better long term deal will depend how long the 12v motor lasts. The little grinding stones are around £1-£2.50 each, depending how many you buy, and my first one still has mileage left in it after sharpening 2 fairly abused chains which needed about 1mm off them.
The Forest Master saw-horse was from Ebay and looked a bargain on offer at less than £30.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/291030595815?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
There's a video of it in use on the ebay listing. When it turned up it was surprising how it was built from very sturdy quality components. You need to buy a 4" post to form the base. They provided the correct drill bits, which was generous, but my first efforts at drilling six holes into the post by eye were errr... not very accurate- they were all over the place. I eventually borrowed a neighbours pillar drill to get the holes straight, if you don't have this facility, its difficult to do a good job. Why they couldn't just supply another metal rod as the base post is rather beyond me, it would have made life a lot easier. I spent 30 minutes working out the length of logs I wanted, and how this would affect where I placed my 4 log supports on the base. It was actually quite a challenge- I got it right, but not without calculating the optimum log length, sketching where I was going to do the cuts, and allowing for the thickness's of the bars. The moment of truth came when I tried it outside in the garden. I'd recently felled a poorly shaped old Bay Laurel and had a stack of 30 logs about 5" thick by 6 feet long. Cutting them by hand would take 30 minutes and be awkward doing one at a time, probably leaning one at a time on a stump, moving it along a couple of times and having to stoop down. Loading the sawhorse with all of the 30 logs took 5 minutes. Cutting through the whole lot in one go was very easy and I found it took about 3 minutes. Picking them up and stacking took 2 of us longer than the cutting. In future I might sit the sawhorse in a trailer so the chopped logs fall down into it, avoiding having to pick up the loglets. This thing could seriously boost log output! I reckon the cutting took a fraction of the time, was safer, and took a lot less effort. Where it would also really come into its own is you could stack maybe 100-200 1" sticks in it and go through the whole lot quickly, making good use of them as kindling, whereas they usually are too much effort to chop and are discarded in the brash.
On both these acquisitions, the Sawtune sharpener and the Forest master saw-horse, they do such a good job and save so much effort, the only question as Mrs Paws asked is, "Why didnt we get these earlier?"