You’re right in thinking that directly powering the cutting chain would be a tough go. Pedaling the chain wouldn’t generate much torque (twisting power) and would easily get stopped. But I could see the pedaling powering a generator to charge the battery, which, in the case of a plain old lead-acid battery can store quite a load of power. Without having done the math, I have no doubt that if you were to operate the chainsaw continuously (and be cutting wood, not just letting it run wide open, unloaded) and pedal-generate continuously, the saw’s consumption would greatly exceed the generator’s output and so eventually the batt would deplete to where it would no longer turn the saw.
Ergo, wouldn’t a hand saw be better ?
You know all of these modern devices today are ... Well, pardon the ignorant and ultimately wrong term - Digital. They are supposed to be working on less power than ever before.
But they aren’t.
Even Cell phones aren’t lasting longer. They are simply packing more juice into smaller batteries. PCs, LCD televisions (Which were directly marketted to take LESS power than a CRT) and other gadgets are really getting quite hungry.
A laptop should, in our current technologies and speeds, be able to run for about 5 minutes on a little crank of a static generator.
I mean come on. Flying cars is one thing. But we’re supposed to be slightly more ahead of where we are.