advice on chains

[quackmaster]

I have cut wood my entire life. I own four Stihl saws two 029,064, and small climbing saw.My father and I always filed our chains by hand and took them in to have them ground and the rakers taken down.Since He has passed I started to try to do my sharpening myself.I got one of those cheap bench grinders, works pretty well at lesed for my needs.But I am not quite sure how to take down rakes evenly,what to use, and how far.Also don't know if I'm sharpening at the right angles.So far I have been sharpening at 30 degrees will a lesser angle cut faster?I am interested in learning more about chains like types,gauge,angle. All the chains I have are Stihl and my ears are open to any advice I can get.

 

[ShoerFast]

Welcome to the site!

Maybe the best place to start is to use the search function?

There are tons of answers to your questions.

For grins, run this as a search ' carlton file o plate ' and you will have a very good start.

 

[heimannm]

Take several dull chains to one of the local gatherings (search on Baraboo, Boscobel, or Darlington), ask "Can anyone give me some pointers on sharpening a chain..." then watch them scramble to take the chains from you and start filing. You will see all kinds of devices in action, and a woodchuck or two that do everything by eye.

The Carlton File-O-Plate is a great place to start, but virtually everyplace that sells chain saws and chain saw accessories will have some kind of guide for setting the depth gauges (rakers).

Depending on the saw, set up, and wood the "correct" clearance could be between 0.020 and 0.050", 0.025 to 0.030" most common for hardwood and 0.030 to 0.035" for soft wood.

I have relatively short bars on my saws so I tend towards 0.035 to 0.045" without any problems.

Mark

 

[BobL]

I have cut wood my entire life. I own four Stihl saws two 029,064, and small climbing saw.My father and I always filed our chains by hand and took them in to have them ground and the rakers taken down.Since He has passed I started to try to do my sharpening myself.I got one of those cheap bench grinders, works pretty well at lesed for my needs.But I am not quite sure how to take down rakes evenly,what to use, and how far.

Constant raker depths or heights work ok for a while but as the chain wears the cutter gullet becomes wider making the cutting angle shallower so the cutter loses efficiency and starts to make increasingly more powder than chips. As a chain becomes less effective, users start to sharpen them more often and religiously setting the raker at constant depth but the chains then cut even less effectively so they sharpen them more and eventually throw the chain away well before the end of it's real lifetime. This keeps the chain suppliers happy.

What is needed is not a constant depth but a constant cutting angle so as the cutter wears, the raker height has to be dropped much more than 0.025" to continue to make chips.

Here is what I mean by cutting angle

This angle depends on what you are cutting (higher for softer wood) and lower for harder woods. I should not need to be less than 6º which seems to work fine for the hardest of Aussie hardwoods. A 6º angle is equivalent to a "raker depth to gullet width" ratio of 1:10. When a 3/8 chain is new the gullet is around 0.25" wide, so a correct raker depth is 0.025". Near the end of its life the gullet may be 0.50" so the correct raker depth should be 0.050". This sounds like a lot but it really does work.

Fileoplate gauges do this automatically but for more control I set mine using digital vernier calipers. While this sounds completely anal, I do not bother setting rakers to within 0.001" as log as they are within 0.005" that's close enough for me. Here's a link showing how I do mine.

Here are some of my litany of posts about this matter

http://www.arboristsite.com/showpost...8&postcount=20
And Here
http://www.arboristsite.com/showpost...18&postcount=2
And Here
http://www.arboristsite.com/showpost...04&postcount=6
And here
http://www.arboristsite.com/showpost...31&postcount=8
And Here
http://www.arboristsite.com/showpost...83&postcount=7

 

[smokinj]

Constant raker depths or heights work ok for a while but as the chain wears the cutter gullet becomes wider making the cutting angle shallower so the cutter loses efficiency and starts to make increasingly more powder than chips. As a chain becomes less effective, users start to sharpen them more often and religiously setting the raker at constant depth but the chains then cut even less effectively so they sharpen them more and eventually throw the chain away well before the end of it's real lifetime. This keeps the chain suppliers happy.

What is needed is not a constant depth but a constant cutting angle so as the cutter wears, the raker height has to be dropped much more than 0.025" to continue to make chips.

Here is what I mean by cutting angle

This angle depends on what you are cutting (higher for softer wood) and lower for harder woods. I should not need to be less than 6º which seems to work fine for the hardest of Aussie hardwoods. A 6º angle is equivalent to a "raker depth to gullet width" ratio of 1:10. When a 3/8 chain is new the gullet is around 0.25" wide, so a correct raker depth is 0.025". Near the end of its life the gullet may be 0.50" so the correct raker depth should be 0.050". This sounds like a lot but it really does work.

Fileoplate gauges do this automatically but for more control I set mine using digital vernier calipers. While this sounds completely anal, I do not bother setting rakers to within 0.001" as log as they are within 0.005" that's close enough for me. Here's a link showing how I do mine.

Here are some of my litany of posts about this matter

http://www.arboristsite.com/showpost...8&postcount=20
And Here
http://www.arboristsite.com/showpost...18&postcount=2
And Here
http://www.arboristsite.com/showpost...04&postcount=6
And here
http://www.arboristsite.com/showpost...31&postcount=8
And Here
http://www.arboristsite.com/showpost...83&postcount=7

Nice post make alot of sence