What's up everyone? Welcome back to The Durbin Compound. If you haven't met me already, my name
is Devin Durbin. So today on the channel we're going over the Stihl GTA 26. So this pruner is
pretty awesome! I figured that I'd better do a review on this, be one of the first ones out
there to give you a down and dirty review about it. Things that I want to show you are... we might
go into a little bit of the unboxing, exactly what you get. But I'm more concerned about--what
is the capability of this pruner? How far can you push it? What do you want to stick
to when it comes to, you know, what you should reasonably expect from this tool? And then I
also want to go through runtime. Runtime is important, you know. And of course, wrapping it
up with value. Is it worth your money? So, if you're interested in my review of this GTA 26, stay tuned.
All right guys, so this GTA 26, a brand new tool out there from Stihl. If you visit a local dealership,
they might have them start coming in. I got the very first one from my Stihl dealer,
a buddy of mine hooked me up. So, definitely am excited to have this tool in the arsenal. And
it's another chainsaw that I didn't have. So, if you want to call this little guy a chainsaw. But,
this thing has a four inch blade on it. It's pretty gnarly. This runs a different version
of the Picco Mini. This is not the Picco Mini, but it is a quarter inch. And it runs the same chain
as the MS 250, I think, or yeah, maybe it is the, no, it's not a .325. I don't know exactly what it
is, but that the pole saws and stuff run the same chain. So, you get what I'm trying to say. Very cool.
What I want to do is go ahead, and we'll go through exactly what you get in the kit. And then we will
suit up, and put our PPE on because this thing is highly dangerous. And we'll go outside and I'll
show you just exactly what you can expect out of this thing. And if it's worth your money. So let's
see what's inside this case here. All right guys, so when you grab this thing, this has a little case.
Now I think it's a little goofy, the kind of case that it comes in. You know, you put the scabbard
on, and then it has a little elastic thing here to hold the tool. I think it's a little goofy. It might
go actually the other way. The handle might go here. No, I don't know. So I forget even how I had it
in there. So, whatever the case may be, I think the case is a little goofy. But nonetheless, you need
your charger. You need your oil for the chain. And then you need your battery. So the battery comes
in this little pack. This is a 10.8 volt battery from Stihl. It's pretty cool. It reminds me of
the Milwaukee M12 battery. I don't know if they're interchangeable, but they look pretty darn close.
That might be something we look at in the future, just saying. So let's get this battery on the
charge, and make sure it's charged completely up for our testing, as we go outside. One of the things
that I didn't go over already is, that this kind of folds up into a little box here. And it has a cute
little handle, so that you can carry it places. Now am I going to always use this? Probably not.
I'll probably, you know, get rid of it, but I don't know, we'll see. I'll probably always have this on
the bench, so that I can charge my battery and, you know, keep everything up and ready to go. And
that's just how it's going to go. So let's go ahead and get this battery charged up. Next time I see
you we will be outside, and geared up ready to cut with this bad boy. All right guys, so our battery is
charged. It's green. It's time to cut. So before any of you keyboard warriors out there say that I'm not wearing
any of my PPE, let's get suited and booted for this. All right guys, before we take this bad boy outside
and let it cut some wood, what we're going to do is take our Stihl Multi Oil Bio, little chain oil.
And what we're going to do is lightly oil the chain. So, you want to keep it oiled to the point where,
you know, it's not dripping off the chain, but you are keeping some lubricant there on the chain. So
this does not have an oiler. This is purely just oil that you put on from the can. You shouldn't
have to oil it that often. It will, in essence, stay on there for a little while. You're not going to
burn this thing up. It doesn't go that fast. So, it's not spinning at thousands of revolutions
an hour, or a minute. So, you know, you should be just fine. So, we've inserted the battery. We now have to
make sure that we have both hands on the tool, as per the manufacturer's instructions. There is a
little toggle switch here, on the left or right of the tool. So you can use your index finger here. Or
you can use your thumb over here. So, also has a battery gauge here. That will tell you how full
the battery is. Piece of cake. So we're ready to go cut. Our little shield here springs up out of the
way. Always keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you're ready to fire. Later we'll go
over tensioning the chain. And we'll go over all that after we cut. I'm not worried about that
right now. So let's head outside. All right guys, so forgive me if it's a little windy out here. It's
just a windy day today in Ohio, but nonetheless, you're going to get to see the review today. So, what
I want to start off with is, we're going to make as many cuts as possible in wood that is the same
size as the bar. So we're going to be cutting 4-inch stuff. This is absolutely a torture test to see
how long the battery will last. We're going to speed through it, but in the end I'll roll
in exactly how long the battery lasted, so that you know if you're cutting the maximum amount
possible with this saw, how long of runtime you will get. After this test, we'll go and we'll cut
some brush, honeysuckle, some small stuff. We'll just see how long it generally lasts so that you
get an extreme case scenario and an everyday use scenario cutting stuff like this. Okay? So let's
get down to it. Just want to show you that this is the same size as the tool. And let's start cutting.
All right guys, so that was real time exactly how long it took to wear out that battery. This is
worst case scenario if you are cutting through, you know, this stuff is the thickness of the bar. I mean,
you're talking about four inch pieces. If you're cutting this stuff with this little guy, I
mean, you need to have serious, you know, reasonable expectations about this thing. Because you should
be cutting this kind of log with a MS 170 or a top handle saw or, you know, a chain saw other than
this. You're not going to be doing that. This is a pruner. So I just want to put that out there, that
this was an extreme test. This was absolutely a 100% capability of this tool. Do not
have these kind of expectations about it. That's why the battery only lasted, I think, something
like two minutes. Okay? So absolutely 100%, you know, use the right tool for the right job. So, now we're
going to recharge this battery. I'm going to meet you back out here. And we're going to go through and do
some actual pruning of what this tool is designed for--small limbs, you know, pruning little branches,
and little stuff. It's not designed to be doing this kind of thing. So, absolute worst-case scenario.
Now we're going to do a more reasonable test. And we're going to see exactly how long it lasts. All right
guys, so we're headed back out here. I just got done charging the battery. It took about 25 minutes to
charge it from dead empty, like you saw it, to full again or green. So the main reason why I
bought this pruner was because I wanted to have the ability to cut vines off of trees. So, I hope
it's not too windy, and you can hear me all right, the audio is not messed up. So I really wanted it to
cut little vines and stuff on trees. So, like these trees here, I wanted the ability to, you know,
go in here and just cut these little vines out. Boom! Just like that! So, that's the main reason
why I went ahead and got this pruner. We're going to do a test here. I'm going to go down over the woods,
and, over the woods, I have no idea why I just said that. But we're going to go down into the woods and
I'm going to cut back some bush honeysuckle. And we're going to see just how long this thing will run. I'm
going to put it to the test, you know, just casually clearing brush, cutting it, clearing brush, cutting
it, and we'll see how long it lasts. So of course, just like before, I'm going to speed it up. So I
will have a time for you at the end, exactly how much work I got out of this battery. But, you know, 2
minutes and 10 seconds for that test to cut those 4-inch logs and it's pretty impressive for such
a small tool and such a small battery. So, let's go ahead and set the camera down. I'm going to go
into the woods. Let's cut some brush. And I'm going to clear a path through here and you're going to watch.
All right guys, so I'm sweating my butt off there. One of the things I hate doing is clearing brush
on the side of the hill. Bush honeysuckle grows like crazy and then it's on the side of the
hill. Super dangerous to get in there with the top handle saw and cut that stuff. This thing
made it absolutely safe. So, even a couple times I fell with this thing while I was running it. And
I didn't even come closer to the blade, where a top handle saw, if I had it in the woods with me,
it would have been closer than I care to come to the chainsaw. So, I've fallen in the
woods a bunch of times with the chainsaw, trying to saw on the slope. Yes, it's probably
not recommended. Wear all of your PPE. This thing made it a lot safer. And it, surprisingly, lasted
a lot longer than I thought it was going to. So, based on our first test, I didn't have a lot of
great expectations for it in the woods, but it surprised me. So, I think that it just ran for,
heck I'll roll it in here, but it had to have been every bit of, you know, 15 minutes I would
say on how long it ran. So, for general pruning and, I mean, that was me pretty much keeping the thing
running the whole time, just from branch to branch to branch to branch. So, if you were out there just
pruning this and that, I don't see why this thing wouldn't last an hour with you. So, it definitely
when you're cutting something that's a size that this is supposed to handle and it's designed for,
by all means, you could get up to an hour of runtime out of this battery. In the future, I see them
probably coming out with higher amp hour batteries that provide longer run times, and stuff like that.
But only the future will tell when it comes to that. So I give this thing a thumbs up in my book.
I mean, we put it through a torture test. It cut seven full cookies off of that branch that was the
size of the blade. That's pretty impressive for a little battery tool like this running 10 volts,
you know, 10.8 volts. I think the amp hour on it is 2.6. Okay, so 2.6 amp hour. All right, really? You
know, very, very underpowered. It looks like 2.1 amp hour corrected, usable energy will be less. So 2.1 amp
hour for this. Very, very impressive tool! So, the last thing I have to say is thumbs up on the
quality. And it is absolutely worth $150, especially for what I'm going to be using it
for, pruning and doing vine control and stuff like that. Am I going to go through the woods like that and
do bush honeysuckle? Probably not. So this works 100%, just as expected. It's a pretty
stout little tool and it will be a vital, you know, a vital tool in my arsenal. So I'm not biased at
all. I think that, you know, it could be a little better, but I mean it's a pruner. So, you know, for
what it's designed for, it's pretty darn good. I'm sure somebody else will come out with another one.
Milwaukee will probably come out with a pruner and just blow it out of the water, I don't know.
We'll see. So, maybe they're not even interested in getting into that market, but they have pull
saws and they have chainsaws. So I'll probably see some offering from them in the future. But I would
definitely, highly recommend this, you know, for the bang for the buck, I think it's there. And it
absolutely impressed me. So, the last thing I have to do is to show you how to tension the chain on
it. If you're interested in that stick around. But, as always, give me a thumbs up, or a thumbs
down. Whatever you're into. And for those of you not sticking around for the chain tensioner I'll see
you guys in the next video.
All right guys, chain tension on this is all manual. So you take this
thing up and you're going to screw this out. So it is the full cover here. So after every time you
use this thing, I would go ahead and clean it out. As you can see the sprocket--remove the battery--
anytime you're working with chain. So that way it cannot engage. This little six tooth sprocket is not
too shabby. You can take this bar and chain off. And you can clean out all of the little things
in here, you know, all of the grooves in the chain here, or in the bar here. Man! I'm lost for
words. All of the grooves in here, make sure they're cleaned out. Don't drop it and throw it on
everything. But make sure your chain slides through the guide bar as it's supposed to. You can dump
out all of your stuff onto your brand-new case. But once you put it together and you have it in
here, the chain tension is all on you by hand. So you go ahead and slot it in here as well as you
can. This turn thing is literally just a nut on the other side. So you set it in here and the saw
and then tighten it down. Get it close to what you are wanting to, close to tight. And then you're just
simply going to pull out on the bar. So you'll be able to move it a little bit. You'll see the chain
get tight. And then, literally, just tighten this the rest of the way down. So it doesn't need to
be super tight. It just needs to be able to roll along it like that. Okay? Once again, keeping the
battery removed as to not accidentally engage it. But, after that you can clean it up, oil it up, and
put it back in the storage container. All right guys, I hope that review helped out some of you, and of
course, chain tensioning at the end there. I hope you enjoyed. So I'll see you guys in the next video.