Reading about it in books and websites is helpful but CS are like sport and doing the real thing on a regular basis for an extended period is really the only way to be able to really understand principles and processes. For example, the average several times a year firewood cutter is unlikely to ever come to grips with sharpening even if they use a grinder, and not even many so called professionals know about or can deal with progressive raker setting. If anyone wants to learn how to sharpen they will need the opportunity of doing it often from a variety of perspectives, rocked chain, missing cutters, round - square, sharpening a chain that is near the end of its life etc.
One of the best sources on how to do things is to find an experienced CS user - maybe an old timer, and and just watch how he or she does things. Maybe in return you can offer to help lift and carry? Since they need to sharpen more than most, offering to sharpen for a CS miller would be one way to really get some serious sharpening experience.
A few years back I took a basic one day CS operators course run through a community college. The course focused on basic saw maintenance and safety. I did it mainly to appease SWMBO and apart from one or two small things, I could have given the course myself, but for someone new to CS it would have been a good introduction. Because it was many years since I had fallen trees what I mainly wanted was to refresh my myself on was tree felling - particularly trees close to buildings etc. I looked at the introductory fallers course offered by the college but could see it wasn't going to add anything that I didn't already know. What I wanted to take was the advanced fallers course but they wouldn't let me do that unless I had taken the introductory course.
Try to get as wide a variety of source of information and experiences as you . Even an old timer won't know everything and some of the things they do may have dated.
