I have just registered today to reply to this posting. I live up in canada, in ontario to be precise, and we go to the cottage almost every weekend in the winter, about 14-15 weekends a season, we are the first on the ice with our sleds, about 4-5 inches of ice in early season.
in the middle of winter, when it is coldest, we have about 39-40 inches of solid ice. I own a strikemaster mag 8 1/4 " standard chipper blade
, it is about 5 years old now, and will cut through 3 feet of solid ice in about 9-10 seconds flat. I don't know much about the eskimo's , but I hear they are a good machine. we had a group of guys on the one weekend, and one of them had a jiffy 8 inch gas auger, it started good, but you could not put any weight on it or it just stopped spinning, and it was only a year old. I have talked to other jiffy owners and they tell me the same thing, i guess the older ones were better. with my strikemaster, I start it, give it about 15 seconds to warm up in -40 weather, full throttle with my weight on top of it , and we have timed it as fast as 9 seconds from start to finish, awesome machine. when it dies, i will buy the same thing again