Prep Your Chainsaw for Halloween

Halloween is just around the corner, and few things are scarier than a masked person wielding a chainsaw running after you. Spiders are also high on that list, but to our knowledge spiders can’t lift a chainsaw, so we’re safe for now. If you want to be the scariest house on the street this year, we’re here to help! We’ll show you how to remove the chain from your saw and add a bit of fake blood to give you a gory touch to this safe scare-prop.

Gas or Electric Chainsaw?

If you want to strike fear into the hearts of your victims err, visitors, the gas chainsaw is the way to go. When you're starting it up and revving a gas saw, it’s going to give you that classic sound for scaring. Something to keep in mind with a gas chainsaw is the amount of noise and emissions it gives off. Make sure that you are wearing ear and eye protection, and for everyone’s safety it should be operated outside only, perhaps in a haunted corn maze. An electric chainsaw is much lighter and quieter to operate, and since it is battery powered it doesn’t give off the same fumes. Personal protective equipment should still be worn, as it can still cause hearing damage. Ultimately it really comes down to what type of saw you already have available!

How to Remove the Chain

To remove the chain from your saw, begin by putting on a pair of safety work gloves. We don’t want to get any real blood on it! Then remove the blade guard from your saw. The next step is to remove the side cover. Depending on your chainsaw model, there may be a slightly different process for removing the bar and chain. Take a look through your owner’s manual to confirm. For our model, our side cover twists off, but others may have bolts holding them in place.

Once the side cover is removed, we need to add slack to the chain tension in order to remove it. To do this, we turn a wheel which allows us to pull the bar back, which loosens the chain. Now the chain can be removed from the bar and put in a safe place until it’s time to put it back on. Reposition the bar back to its original position and reinstall the side cover. At this point, your chainsaw is now ready to be used as a scare prop.

Add Fake Blood

So, your chainsaw is now chainless and ready for scaring. But what if you could make it even scarier? No, not spiders. Blood. Fake blood obviously, or we wouldn’t need to take the chain off! We're going to start by making it look like the saw is squirting blood! To do this, we’re going to use a medical syringe, supply tubing, and some zip ties to hold those in place. The syringe is filled with water and red food coloring, and when you depress the plunger, it gives the appearance of blood dripping out the end of your chainsaw. To up our production value, we're going to apply some stage blood or special effects blood from a Halloween store to the bar of our saw. This will make our prop look particularly gruesome.

Start Scaring!

Your ultimate scare prop is now complete! Now get out there and start terrorizing the neighborhood. Don’t forget to ensure your ear protection fits while wearing your costume or mask. After all, safety first! If you discover you need to do a bit of work on your chainsaw before it’s operational again, we can help with that too. You can find replacement OEM chainsaw parts for your saw by searching for your model number on our site.