Drilling bars, Stihl vs Cannon

[Boogedy_Man]

So...I drilled my Stihl bar for an oiler the other day, mostly as practice for ultimately bolting my bars to the mills.

With all the hoopla I read I thought the steel would be harder to drill than it was. I used a carbide masonry bit for the first hole, flooded it with cutting oil, and plugged away at 130rpm or so. It cut no problem until the carbide punched through the bar into the mild steel backer that I used and the carbide ripped off the bit. For the second hole I used a regular 5/16" bit. It cut perfect spirals all the way through and left a perfect clean hole.

Has anyone drilled a Cannon bar? This bar is too expensive to screw up, so I want to get it right the first time. I'm hoping it drills the same as the Stihl.

 

[SeMoTony]

I have drilled thru the center of nose sprocket on 36" stihl and my 50" cannon. The part in the center of the Stihl bar was a lot harder to get thru than the same spot in the middle of the six rivets on the cannon. The cannon has a lot less use than the stihl if that might make a difference since stihl has no lube hole like the 42" oregon which was in between as far as drillabilty

 

[Boogedy_Man]

Good to know. I figure the rails are the hard part on the Cannon, and mine doesn't have a nose, so I'm good there, too. It's a leap of faith drilling an expensive bar, though, so I want to get it right the first time.

 

[BobL]

The centre of a bar nose is a hardened bearing material and will make the bar itself seem like butter.
BTW there's no ned to drill oil holes. Just drip the oil onto the bar. it saves having to drill two oil holes having to swap oil connections over when the bar is flipped.

 

[Boogedy_Man]

I did the dribbling for a while. It works for sure, but I'd kind of like the firm connection. Coupled with everything else moving the oiler bolt takes but a few seconds.

This is more about modifying the mill so I can swap chains without complete disassembly - that I am highly interested in.

 

[BobL]

I did the dribbling for a while. It works for sure, but I'd kind of like the firm connection. Coupled with everything else moving the oiler bolt takes but a few seconds.

Another problem I forgot to mention with the hole in the bar method was that it would occasionally get clogged, probably because there is no pump behind it.
Maybe that's because with our hardwoods there's more fine dust but with your softer woods that might not be a problem.
The problem got worse when I used canola in the aux oiler and the mill sat around for a while not being used so I started to clear the line at the end of every day.
Once that canola goes sticky even compressed air won't clear the blockage.

I was using canola (US$8.50/gallon) because the Stihl B&C oil was costing over US$17/gallon and 3rd party oil was costing US$10-13 /gal
Now I use cleaned mineral oil from an oil recycler who adds tackifier to it to my requirements.
His pricer varies depending on supply and demand but last lot I got for US$5.50 gallon.

This is more about modifying the mill so I can swap chains without complete disassembly - that I am highly interested in.

Not sure what you mean by this? The drip method or the hole method should not impact this unless like my mill your chain comes off the top of the bar - hard to believe but yes it does that.

 

[Boogedy_Man]

I just mean that I already have oil holes - the bar was drilled from the factory.