Stihl MS 650
A good choice in the big felling saw category
It isn’t really possible to talk about the MS 650 without at least briefly mentioning its predecessors, the now discontinued 064 and the evergreen 066 (now replaced by the MS 660). These were both remarkably popular saws among hardwood cutters and people like me who felled their share of big softwood. The 064 was popular because it was a proper all-rounder despite its size – it could be used quite effectively for delimbing, rounding up or felling just as long as it didn’t come up against too many really big trees.

The 066, on the other hand, was just that little bit bigger and more powerful. It was more able to cope with turning a really long bar, but it wasn’t quite so handy when fitted with a shorter bar, so there has always been a school of thought that there was a place for a saw somewhere just in-between the two. The MS 650 drops into this slot quite nicely. It feels very much in the same mould as the 064, with the same easy handling and none of the rough edges of the 066, but more of the bigger saw’s power delivery.

The MS 650 is a new saw though. It shares more in common with the shape, feel and style of the new and, in my opinion at least, groundbreaking MS 441. The pre MS saws, and, to a certain extent the earlier MS saws were built with function taking precedence over form, and
whether this should matter or not, there will always be people who look at an older-style Stihl and say they just couldn’t get on with Stihl chainsaws. Looking at them next to the brightly coloured offerings from the main competitors that the same people would find pleasing to the eye, they always looked slightly crude in comparison: regardless of how they performed, this was a consideration.

It is good to see that Stihl are bringing these new models into the modern day with good form as well as superb performance. It may be that many people who use Stihls, and have done for years, wonder what I am talking about, but I was viewing new saws at a stand at the last APF show when I observed a potential buyer looking at two saws. One was an MS 361 the other a model from a competitor. The vendor was doing his best to be impartial and I knew in my own mind that the MS 361 was the better saw – I had just bought yet another one on the strength of the test I had done in this journal – but the buyer was just not interested.

His reasoning was that he just didn’t like the look of the saw. I don’t consider that a good enough reason, but it was good enough for him and for some people it always would be. The MS 650 we used for the test came fitted with a 20” bar and Stihl’s excellent RSC chain. I have still not met anyone who quite understands how this chain works in practice. All I know is it is noticeably smoother in use than other chain. I have bars ranging from 16” right up to 36” that will interchange between most of the Stihl saws we use, and so we tried the MS 650
with a variety of lengths and we found that 18” is about the shortest and around 25” the longest that really suited the saw best. We did try it with a 16” bar but it was pretty lively, and the other extreme, the 36”, made it very unwieldy, although I have never used any saw
that carried a 36” bar comfortably.

To be fair, the 20” bar the saw came with was just about ideal for what we were using it for.
The MS 650 has all the usual refinements of a saw of this size (84.9cc) found in the Stihl professional chainsaw range – tool-less access to the air filter, side chain tensioning, decompressor and elastostart. Weighing 7.3kg without bar and chain, and producing a hefty 4.8kW, the MS 650 has a power to weight ratio of 1.5 kg/kW that is impressive now, and would have been unbelievable a few short years ago. We used the MS 650 on an unusual thinning job. We were felling the Grand fir out of a mixed stand to leave an ash and oak crop
that previously formed a very obvious understorey. The Grandis varied from an almost diminutive 1.5 tonnes right up to a few trees that had enjoyed little or no competition that were either side of the 5 tonne mark.

The average for the stand was around 2½ tonnes. The final crop trees were marked to leave and everything else was felled to leave just a select few Grandis where there wasn’t enough hardwood to form a viable crop. It was critical that none of the final crop trees were damaged and so the felling had to be neat and accurate. It was for this reason, and to avoid tiredness and complacency, that we shared the felling between us, so everyone got a fair spell using the new MS 650. It was Ralph or Pete who did most of the felling with the MS 650, but in the time I used the new Stihl I formed strong opinions about the saw’s capabilities. I found it to be a good, smooth, powerful, well balanced 80+cc saw that, despite its big power, doesn’t feel like a really big saw as the old 066 always did.

The MS 650 just feels more usable – in fact, when I was dressing the big Grandis tops out, I would occasionally look back down the stem to see Pete on his way up to meet me with the 650 rolling about the stem like a limbing saw even with the long 20” bar. Pete is extremely critical of saws that vibrate, and he recently gave away one of his own saws that he just couldn’t get on with for that very reason. It was no surprise to me that he quickly grew to like the big Stihl, even though, until recently, he has never used Stihl chainsaws despite working in forestry off and on for almost 25 years. He was happy with the smoothness and the handling, but the overall balance of the saw was his main reason for giving it the thumbs up. If it hadn’t been virtually vibration-free he said he would have dressed the tops out and I could have done the felling. Ralph, on the other hand, is from farming stock and isn’t bothered about a bit of vibration – all he wants is a saw that starts well and has plenty of power – so he was more than happy when he was using the MS 650. Ralph said he liked the good spread of power that allowed the saw to be worked hard and then worked a little bit harder still, he also commented on the MS 650’s easy starting, with or without the decompressor! This relates to another big saw we have, that he occasionally uses, that has a habit of ripping the starter handle back through the unwary user’s fingers if the decompressor isn’t used every time it’s started.

In conclusion, the abundant power, good handling and operator- friendly smoothness make the MS 650 a good choice in the big felling saw category. Take these features and add in Stihl’s high quality cutting equipment, and the MS 650 becomes a saw well worth considering for anyone working in hardwoods or felling big softwoods in substantial volumes. At around £750 including VAT but before discount, the MS 650 isn’t the cheapest option on the market, but quality always comes at a price and you are getting what is one of the best bar and chain combinations available on the market today. Stihl really seems to be producing a range of good professional saws these days and the MS 650 is yet another fine piece of kit from a maker that had spent so long making saws that weren’t seen as an automatic choice of professional users. That is no longer a statement that holds true, and, with these new MS saws, Stihl have really put their products right at the front where professional users are concerned. Simon Bowes