Wayne Sutton’s earliest memory of a chainsaw was when he was 5 or 6-years-old. Sutton had accompanied his father into the woods on a timber-cutting job when his father asked him to hold the handles of a chainsaw as he carved up a felled tree.

“The vibration felt like it was shocking me,” Sutton said.

While it didn’t actually shock him, the experience did spark in Sutton a lifelong curiosity and love of chainsaws nurtured by his early exposure to them. “Dad was a timber cutter. …. I was on my own during the day and I played with chainsaws,” he said.

That was 60 years ago. Today, Sutton is the founder and curator of Wayne’s Chainsaw Museum. Located a few miles outside of Amboy in Clark County — on the same family property where he once played with chainsaws — the private museum holds about half of the 4,000 or 5,000 chainsaws Sutton has collected or that people have donated to him over the years.

The Columbian recently profiled Wayne’s Chainsaw Museum, which is free to visit by appointment only. Sutton serves as tour guide and host to educate visitors about the history of chainsaws and the indelible marks they’ve left on the commercial development and history of our region.

“The Northwest was a logging community. I mean, whether it’s Oregon or Washington, it was all about logging basically until the Second World War,” Sutton said. “The early chainsaws that were developed came to the Northwest because they knew that’s where they had to be successful.”

Unlike his father, Sutton never worked as a logger. He did, however, own a shop where he repaired and sold chainsaws before going to work for Stihl, the world’s leading manufacturer of gas-powered chainsaws. Sutton spent nearly 25 years working for the company until his retirement in 2024. As a territory manager, he traveled across Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington to visit with vendors while acquiring chainsaws to add to his growing collection. Peter Stihl, the son of the founder of the company, gave Sutton several rare chainsaws, including one that was never put into production and built “on a lark,” Sutton said, by engineers at the company.

“It has a jet engine,” Sutton said. “It gives you the kind of torque that an electric motor gives you, but it has also got a flame coming out the front that helps you burn your wood right away.”

Sutton says visits by retired loggers can be particularly rewarding and affirm the deeply personal value these tools hold for enthusiasts. “They’ve been in the industry their whole life, and they look at that and they go, ‘Man, I never saw anything like that,’” he said. “They’ll see one that was like the one they had and it kind of brings it into perspective for them how many things I’ve turned over to come up with those saws.”

Wayne Sutton spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. Click play to listen to the full conversation:

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/31/clark-county-chainsaw-museum-showcases-pacific-northwest-power-tool/