I grind two off leave two, sit a cutting disk in the front of the cutter and wipe it off. Doesnt take long. Worth the effort for me because ripping chain is twice the price of ordinary chain. Saw revs better with half the cutters gone.
My experience that skip chain increases cutting speed on small logs is that is is a bit of an illusion
What really matters is cutting speed, and how often the chain needs to be sharpen.
Removing half the cutters on a skip chain means that each cutter on average now has to remove double the amount of wood each cutter does on a full comp chain.
OR
the revs in the cut have to double - i.e. not likely
While the RPMs do indeed go up unfortunately sound can be deceiving. When using skip chain the tacho on my saw says it maybe goes up by 1000 - 1500rpm. Yep the saw sounds and feels good but doesn't really do that much to the cutting speed across the entire cut.
What few folks realise is that a chain is not like a wood plane.
Each cutter does not take out a neat little shaving with each pass and only about every 3rd cutter on a full comp chain is actually reaching its full cutting potential.
This is because chains porpoise in the cut and only about every 3rd of 4th cutter is really savaging the wood so to some extent full comp already acts like skip chain .
With full comp in a narrow log there may only be one or two cutters actually cutting a significant amount of wood during each pass pass of the chain and the next 2-3 cutters just scratch the wood or follow in the wake of the first cutter.
This effect is clearly visible where washboarding occurs where the speed of the chain and cut are synchronised and there are clearly delineated cutter marks across the full width of a cut. If the math is done on the speeds there has to be at least 2 or 3 cutters just trailing behind the wake made by the cutter that made the major score in the wood otherwise a clear score would not have been made.
On skip chain there even fewer cutters that reaches full cutting potential during an individual pass and that's one reason why on average the saw can rev higher but unfortunately it does not increase the cutting speed because they are not removing double the wood. To increase the amount of wood they take which each pass the rakers should be dropped substantially but any increase will reduce the RPM in the cut so it's swings and round abouts. In the end my experience is that overall it cuts about at the same speed in small logs.
In larger logs with fewer cutters available to share the overall cutting load the skip chain goes blunter faster. A skip chain will make the saw sound peppy and may be a touch faster at the beginning of the cut but by the middle and the end of the cut the cutting speed will drop off faster than for full comp chain. In narrow softwoods it won't go as blunt as quickly but then neither will full comp.
I figure if I have to stop and sharpen anyway, while it takes me longer to setup and sharpen a full comp chain the chain stays sharper in the cut for longer.
Skip chains definitely have their uses on really wide logs where sawdust clearance becomes an issue and even big saws max out on torque needed to pull a full comp chain with a large number of loaded cutters so to keep cutting, a few less cutters helps the saw make it through the cut.
I think I'll add a full comp chain to the rotation tonight.
