Chainsaw chain question...

[David Rose]

Well... maybe not right in line with the chain though, huh?

David, who would enjoy milling some bigger stuff... maybe... someday...

[Frank Fusco]

Bodark is one of the toughest woods on this continent. It will dull faster than other woods.
Some folks can sharpen or touch up with a round file by hand just fine.
Others think they can but are really just fooling themselves.
Others can't but know it and only use professionals to sharpen their chains.
I consider chains a disposable item. Always have and extra or two. When you saw stops throwing out a beautiful stream of sawdust be alert that your chain is probably dull and switch to a sharp one.
As stated, a dull chain is the quickest way possible to send your saw to the graveyard.

[Dennis Peacock]

As stated, a dull chain is the quickest way possible to send your saw to the graveyard.

Very well stated Frank!!!!

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Yah, you have a "real" chainsaw.
Why not just try sharpening it yourself and see?
The first chain saw sharpening I did was on a friend's saw. We were on his wood lot in Taunton MA cutting the logs he was going to have milled to build his home. He didn't know how to sharpoen the blades. I was a machinist tooolmaker at the time. It just seemed to me to be unreasonable that he coudn't do it hiimself so I took a rat tail file from my trunk tool box, and went at it. A few munites later - vioila - he was cutting again.

Since then I have used Dremils with great (but painfully slow) success.

Now I simply use a 10" abrasive cutoff wheel as though it were a speciality grinder wheel. I have tried little wood angle blocks to hold the chain at the correct angle and also holding it freehand.
I prefer freehand. It's fast and easy.

[Al Willits]

Check out of the lumberman contests if ya want "THE" saw, now there's some high powered saws...

Kinda really depends on how much your gonna use this saw, when we were burning wood for heat, I had maybe 12-16 blades and would hand sharpen them till they stated not to cut well, then take them into the local small engine shop where they'd resharpen them.
I got them resharpened for about $4 a blade, wasn't worth spending the money for a professional sharpener to me.

If your just doing a bit of pruning, I'd buy 2-3 blades and the basic set up to sharpen them and when they got real bad, throw them away, gotta believe with the price of gas and sharpening now, be easier to just replace them.

Most of all, be careful, them little saws can cut ya too..

Al

[Jim Becker]

I last bought a quantity of loops from Bailey's for about $14 each and just keep a bunch of them on the shelf. I have a file and do a little touch up while cutting, but given my time availability to do anything like this is very dear, I tend to just put a new loop on the saw when one gets unmanageable. If the old chain is salvageable, it goes into a box for future consideration. If I hit rocks or other foreign materials that did a lot of damage...the trash can beckons!

[Jon Shively]

I have heated my home for five years with a Central Boiler outside wood stove. Grew up with wood stoves in the home and except for my time at Purdue have had a wood stove in the place I lived. As a kid it was always magic that the saws stayed sharp (threw them in the truck bed without sleeves). For the past few years I generally touch up my chains with a round file once or twice then took off for the guy in town to "true up" the teeth. Bought a cheap chain sharpener from HF last year, still touch up my chains a couple of times before putting them on the sharpener but find I grind a lot less of the tooth off than the guy in town. Isn't a tool used everyday, but hang my dull chains on it and when needing a sit down job I sharpen chains. Doesn't take over five minutes of my time per chain and they are razor sharp. Was one of my good buys from HF.

[Jake Helmboldt]

touch up after every tank, it is easy to do in 5-10 minutes and keeps things sharp.

flip the bar every couple tanks of gas to even wear on the rails and dress them occaisionaly with a file.

The Husqvarna roller guides are simple and small. No setup, fit anywhere and teach you how to freehand, plus it has a built in guage for the rakers.

Keep an eye on your drive sprocket; as it wears it will cause your kerf to be crooked and get excessive wear on all parts.

Dremels can take the temper out of the teeth and its easy to remove too much material, which means you shorten the life of the chain and get uneven cutter length, which in turn can make the saw cut crooked. Plus, you don't need an extension cord for a file.

JH

[Ian Abraham]

And one other thing to watch for.

When you sharpen you have to take the cutting edge back to clean chrome on the outside of the cutter. If it's badly rounded over you can file it 'sharp', but the cutting edge isn't actually fresh chrome, it's just steel from the body of the cutter. This will go dull again REALLY fast. If you sharpen as soon as it shows any wear then a couple of file strokes is all it needs. If you have hit metal, rock or just let it get hopelessy dull, you HAVE to file / grind it back to clean chrome again.

The top plate usually has a diagonal line at the back of it. You can use that as a reference to keep the cutter angle correct, and thats about how far you can file the cutter back to. It will cut just as well on the last 1/4 of the cutter as long as it's sharpened properly. (by whatever method)

Cheers

Ian

[David Rose]

Well, I bought the $23 Oregon sharpening kit (plus another $10 for files) at Lowes tonight. It looks a lot like Stu's, but red, and not quite as substantial looking. Maybe I'm just too tired, but I find this tool more difficult to setup than a new bandsaw! And I'm not talking about Laguna or MiniMax. It took almost two hours to get the settings right. The chain calls for a 30/0 degree cut. The closest to the new chain was 27/2 degrees by the tool setting. That seemed to cut right on the old chain. That is for the first tooth and sometimes the second. Then the chain would climb out of the jaws and it took another 5 minutes to get the chain back into the jaws of the guide. I have the tension set by the Stihl book, so that isn't it. The jaws seem to encourage the chain to climb out. Using even, counted strokes, some teeth are cleanly cut, others are not fully cut. Something has too much play or something to allow that. Under magnification the teeth look uniformly dull and not damaged before I start butchering them.

The raker cut guide is for larger chains, it turns out. That was all they carry, but no real surprise.

I think I can do better by hand. If my eyes were better I know I could!

I'm not sure what to try next, but I'll look over all the suggestions again and see if Oregon has a website that might tell anything.

Thanks again for your help and experiences.

David

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

Well, I bought the $23 Oregon sharpening kit (plus another $10 for files) at Lowes tonight. It looks a lot like Stu's, but red, and not quite as substantial looking. Maybe I'm just too tired, but I find this tool more difficult to setup than a new bandsaw! And I'm not talking about Laguna or MiniMax. It took almost two hours to get the settings right. The chain calls for a 30/0 degree cut. The closest to the new chain was 27/2 degrees by the tool setting. That seemed to cut right on the old chain. That is for the first tooth and sometimes the second. Then the chain would climb out of the jaws and it took another 5 minutes to get the chain back into the jaws of the guide. I have the tension set by the Stihl book, so that isn't it. The jaws seem to encourage the chain to climb out. Using even, counted strokes, some teeth are cleanly cut, others are not fully cut. Something has too much play or something to allow that. Under magnification the teeth look uniformly dull and not damaged before I start butchering them.

The raker cut guide is for larger chains, it turns out. That was all they carry, but no real surprise.

I think I can do better by hand. If my eyes were better I know I could!

I'm not sure what to try next, but I'll look over all the suggestions again and see if Oregon has a website that might tell anything.

Thanks again for your help and experiences.

David

I had trouble using mine at first too, but I stuck with it, and I got the hang of it.

A couple of points, off the top of my head, please understand that I'm just spouting off stuff here, I'm not saying you don't know what you are doing (Hey, the one I have came with instruction in Japanese only, no pics, so I certainly did not know what I was doing!!! ).

I clamped the file guide on to the top of the bar, about halfway down the bar.

Mark the first tooth you sharpen, I used red chalk.

Find the worse tooth on the chain, make this one sharp first, and count the strokes, this will give a benchmark to sharpen all the teeth too.

File all the teeth on one side first, use the same number of strokes on each tooth, which you figured out from the worse tooth you sharpened first.

Loosen the bar a bit, this slacken the chain, and makes it easier to slide along.

You move the chain backwards, from the saw towards the bar tip. The unit stays clamped to the bar, only the jaws are loosened each time, and they do not need that much loosening. There is a stop on the unit, it sits on the back of the tooth, you move the tooth past the stop, and then back against the stop, but only so it is just touching the stop, this will set you file up exactly the same spot on each tooth.

The jaws tighten on the chain just above the rivets.

I found that it worked VERY well, once I got it setup.

Hope you try it again, and have some success.

If you need to, I'll take the time to snap some pics for you of me doing it, please just ask.

Cheers!

[David Rose]

Stu,

I had no doubt that I absolutely did NOT know what I was doing! And that was after I read the instructions. I'm an "instruction sort of guy". I read them FIRST! Weird, huh? Anyway, I understood the principles of the angles and such, and I've worn out a barrel of (flat) files over the years.

I guess my main problem, after finally getting guide angles to agree with the saw angles, was that the teeth would climb in the guide jaws as I moved them. The instructions say nothing about clamping them tight for each tooth, as I think you are indicating. That would keep them from climbing out, though it would greatly lengthen the process time. My instructions, in the language that I am suppose to understand, say to set the edges of the jaws on the centers of the rivets. The rivets are small and it is "interesting" to keep them positioned as the jaws are tightened. I did try that before I re-re-read the instructions. Like I said, I might should have drunk a glass of wine before starting.

The front clamp screw on my tool is only down about 1/2" from the top of the bar when the jaws are aligned with the rivets. You know, I checked Oregon's web site and their tool looks exactly like yours! I suspect what I bought was a "made for Lowes" model. The jaws are stamped steel instead of what looks like brass on yours. They are clearly narrower than yours are. And the model number is slightly different on their site than on the Lowes model. I think I bit myself on the foot again with borg purchasing.

If it isn't a big deal, I would love to just see the jaws on your tool set up on the bar as you use it. One pic would do it, I think. However, you say they are positioned just ABOVE the rivet, so that is probably enough info. My instructions say to position them "on the center of the rivet". Your idea "jist might work for me"! That should keep the chain from climbing out.

The rest of your instructions were basically what I did. I'm not giving up yet.

Thanks again,

David, who thinks sometimes no instructions are better than poor ones

I had trouble using mine at first too, but I stuck with it, and I got the hang of it.

A couple of points, off the top of my head, please understand that I'm just spouting off stuff here, I'm not saying you don't know what you are doing (Hey, the one I have came with instruction in Japanese only, no pics, so I certainly did not know what I was doing!!! ).

I clamped the file guide on to the top of the bar, about halfway down the bar.

Mark the first tooth you sharpen, I used red chalk.

Find the worse tooth on the chain, make this one sharp first, and count the strokes, this will give a benchmark to sharpen all the teeth too.

File all the teeth on one side first, use the same number of strokes on each tooth, which you figured out from the worse tooth you sharpened first.

Loosen the bar a bit, this slacken the chain, and makes it easier to slide along.

You move the chain backwards, from the saw towards the bar tip. The unit stays clamped to the bar, only the jaws are loosened each time, and they do not need that much loosening. There is a stop on the unit, it sits on the back of the tooth, you move the tooth past the stop, and then back against the stop, but only so it is just touching the stop, this will set you file up exactly the same spot on each tooth.

The jaws tighten on the chain just above the rivets.

I found that it worked VERY well, once I got it setup.

Hope you try it again, and have some success.

If you need to, I'll take the time to snap some pics for you of me doing it, please just ask.

Cheers!

[Erik Rudd]

$30.00 at HarborFreight...one of their good buys.

[Greg Narozniak]

touch up after every tank, it is easy to do in 5-10 minutes and keeps things sharp.

flip the bar every couple tanks of gas to even wear on the rails and dress them occaisionaly with a file.

The Husqvarna roller guides are simple and small. No setup, fit anywhere and teach you how to freehand, plus it has a built in guage for the rakers.

Keep an eye on your drive sprocket; as it wears it will cause your kerf to be crooked and get excessive wear on all parts.

Dremels can take the temper out of the teeth and its easy to remove too much material, which means you shorten the life of the chain and get uneven cutter length, which in turn can make the saw cut crooked. Plus, you don't need an extension cord for a file.

JH

Very Well said!! Once you get the hang of the file, you can freehand touch up a chain in less than 10 minutes. The way I was taught was when you done with the whole chain and you've done it right your Forearm should be in GREAT PAIN

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

OK David, I got the little chainsaw out and the filing jig and went at it...........

Attachment 48019
Here the guide is attached to the bar

Attachment 48020
Honestly this guide is a touch large on this small saw, but you get the idea

Attachment 48021
Here I am sharpening a tooth

Attachment 48022
A view from the back

Attachment 48023
Now just loosen the one thumbscrew, and lift the stop, slide the chain forward to the next tooth that is going the same way, and that's it.

It took me about 5 minutes to do one side of the chain, with the picture taking, about 3 strokes per tooth, and it is super sharp again.

I also wanted to tell you a tip, that I forgot I'd done until I looked at the guide tonight, I filed the inside of the vice like grippers that hold the chain in place, so they are flat on the inside where the hold the chain, not much filing, but much better than just the thin edge the way it came stock.

Hope this helps!


Cheers!