Wrote my first instalment on this last summer. Never really got to road test my 36" lo pro bar properly because I didn't have my Stihl 045 Super rebuild running right yet. Plus after nail damaging a demo chain I'd gotten in a package clearance deal from Chainsawbars in the UK, the teeth ended up ground so far back I couldn't get it to mill worth a damn anymore. I have two fresh chains I was being too cheap to install one of, thinking I should get the most out of the demo chain. I have a bad habit of masochistically spending way too much time milling with dull/damaged chains and kidding myself that my sharpening efforts are the best I can do. I need to keep more new chains in reserve, and switch to them more regularly, if nothing else to give me a baseline of sharpness I should be achieving. When I put a new chain on today and ran it with my 87cc 045 Super, it was the fastest milling I'd ever done. I mean, it literally flew through the wood. Was resawing some 20" red oak and some 12-16" mesquite and it just ate it up. And such beautifully smooth cuts.
When I milled a bit last year with the 36" bar on my 64cc Makita, it had very little issue with chain stretch which is one of the things people assume lo pro on bigger saws and bars is problematic about. So far with the torque-y 045 Super, no worse stretch than most other new chains I've used. Conventional wisdom, particularly in the US where next to no one uses lo pro for milling cause no one sells the sprockets or bars, is that anything over 60cc is too much torque for lo pro and makes breaking chains likely. But the 36" lo pro bar seems a perfect match for the 87cc saw, and lots of people in Europe are using lo pro on 661's without issue.
I really wondered if all the time I was putting into the Super rebuilds (I finally found the glitch in the 056 last week and got it running) was worth it, but now that I have them working I couldn't be happier. My 880 just isn't much use to me in south Texas. When everything is working right like it was today, I remember milling actually can be kinda easy rather than the struggle I've so often made it. For most folks, it's not worth doing the whole sprocket/bar/chain conversion to lo pro, along with Chainsawbars in the UK being one of the only places in the world you can do one stop shopping for all things lo pro. But if you only work with really dense hardwoods like me, it's the best solution. Photos show my lo pro rig and a 3" slab I resawed to 5/4 slabs, originally cut with my 880 and .404, was milled on site in a hard to work place I didn't use my winch (which tends to smooth out my cuts) and you can see the surface was a bit ridged. But the lo pro resawing - which I didn't bother w the winch either it goes so fast - came out way smoother.
When I milled a bit last year with the 36" bar on my 64cc Makita, it had very little issue with chain stretch which is one of the things people assume lo pro on bigger saws and bars is problematic about. So far with the torque-y 045 Super, no worse stretch than most other new chains I've used. Conventional wisdom, particularly in the US where next to no one uses lo pro for milling cause no one sells the sprockets or bars, is that anything over 60cc is too much torque for lo pro and makes breaking chains likely. But the 36" lo pro bar seems a perfect match for the 87cc saw, and lots of people in Europe are using lo pro on 661's without issue.
I really wondered if all the time I was putting into the Super rebuilds (I finally found the glitch in the 056 last week and got it running) was worth it, but now that I have them working I couldn't be happier. My 880 just isn't much use to me in south Texas. When everything is working right like it was today, I remember milling actually can be kinda easy rather than the struggle I've so often made it. For most folks, it's not worth doing the whole sprocket/bar/chain conversion to lo pro, along with Chainsawbars in the UK being one of the only places in the world you can do one stop shopping for all things lo pro. But if you only work with really dense hardwoods like me, it's the best solution. Photos show my lo pro rig and a 3" slab I resawed to 5/4 slabs, originally cut with my 880 and .404, was milled on site in a hard to work place I didn't use my winch (which tends to smooth out my cuts) and you can see the surface was a bit ridged. But the lo pro resawing - which I didn't bother w the winch either it goes so fast - came out way smoother.