Stihl 461 - Different length bars in same wood

[redbull660]

saw has 3x ported muffler, and H limiter tab removed - which is what it seemed to produced the best performance. So to get more performance I think I'd have to get it ported.




kinda thought the times would be faster for the shorter bars.


20" 15.0 14.7
24" 15.9 15.6
28" 15.3 15.4
32" 15.8 16.4
36" 17.5 17.2

some mental notes:

20 and 24 felt kind of rough in the cut. 28" felt smoothest. 36" felt like it lacked some power on the 36, maybe better with a full skip chain. Yet 32" felt pretty darn good.

 

[MustangMike]

Interesting that the 24" bar seemed to interrupt the linear progression. Any chance that chain or bar has a flaw?

Again, thanks for the detailed info.

 

[redbull660]

quite honestly I've done this test before and the results were similar but the 20 and 24" were actually slower than the 28" ...28" was the fastest and 32" and 36" weren't far behind. But the total spread on time was less than a sec. If i remember correctly those times were - 16s for the 20 and 24" 15s for the 28" and 16s for the 32 & 36".

Furthermore I've done this other times with 20 - 24 - 28 on the 461 and 660. Those produced similar results. All are extremely close.

One could argue that the shorter chains would do better as they got duller since you should have more torque with the shorter bar/chain. But I could counter that argument with - I believe you create more heat with the 461 and 660 with these short bars (20 - 24) ...so I would argue that the more cuts you did the 20 - 24 would possibly get slower due to heat and dulling faster.

Also it seemed like the 20" bar sucked the gas faster??

I guess for me the answers I settled on were 461 with either a 24-28" bar for majority of cutting 32" if need be. and 660 with a 28" bar for majority of cutting 36" if need be.


Part of me still wants to do a 461 or 660 with a 20" 3/8ths bar full comp RS vs a 20" .404 bar with full comp RS. Torque seems to be there. But honestly I can't stand the 20" bar on either saw. So I don't care to spend the time, effort or money to do the test.

 

[MustangMike]

It always depends on what U R cutting. I often like the 20" because it is more manageable, and if U R working in a log pile, there is less collateral damage. U can also pull it from the cut faster. I also like 20" for limbing, so I don't have to reach so much.

I keep 20" on 2 saws and 24" on the other two, and it seems to serve me well for most situations. Occasionally, I'll encounter wood over 30" and wish I had a longer bar, but the 24" does it fairly well. Plus, all the saws fit (barely) in my Husky tool case. I widened my carry basket to fit the tool case.

I also have a wide nose 24" bar, I wonder if that would make a difference.

 

[redbull660]

can tell you that the Cannon wide nose 24 was slightly faster than the tsumura. as is the 28" cannon wide nose. But, recently I've connected the dots to be able to say... you seem to trade some torque for the extra chain speed that the wide tip produces. That said I really enjoyed using the wide tips. I like how they cut.

 

[Termite]

Good thread Redbull.

 

[Marshy]