Kong
ArboristSite Member
After years of pushing files back and forth I decided to buy a "Professional" sharpener for my chain saws. I didn't know much about them when I started looking around a couple of weeks ago and don't know much more now, at least with any certainty. So I thought I'd share my sharpening story and tell you all what I've seen and see what you have to say.
First off I've got two (Stihl) saws that can interchange bars and chains and my son often uses one while I use the other. When we go for a day's cutting we usually take two or three extra chains per saw. We don't let them get very dull and I resharpen all the chains at the end of the day. Its been that way for a long while.
To sharpen I clamp the saw's bar in a vice, break out the file/guide, and have at it. Two saws, three or four chains per saw; boredom and tedium, year after year after year. Now the thing is I wouldn't mind this other than that no matter how careful I am I can never get the chain quite as sharp as it was when new. I can get them good, sometimes even great, but never exactly like new. I never understood why until last week. Then one day it occurred to me that the difference came because I was sharpening a cut that had been made with a flat disk but suing a round file to do it. In short the cutting face I left after sharpening was not the same face that the factory left when the chain was manufactured. I was leaving what was in effect a hollow ground edge whereas their's was flat. Mine would be sharper, but only for the first or second pass through the wood, then it would be just a bit duller. Also, my hand sharpening almost never took into account the length of the resultant cutters. Even though I make it a point to count file strokes so that every cutter gets more or less even treatment they still become uneven over time.
Now I'm getting older than salt and I'm tired of filing chains. If I left it to my son we'd buy a new chain every time one got dull; presumably the money to do so would come from the chain-fairy.
I could of course take my chains out to have them sharpened professionally. Locally that would cost $7 off the saw, $13 on it. I can buy new chains all day long on E-Bay for $20 each so professional sharpening makes very little sense.
Electric disk sharpeners seem to come in two versions. There are cheap ones and there are expensive ones. Cheap ones cost forty bucks, expensive ones cost three or four hundred bucks. There is no apparent differences between the cheap ones and the expensive ones. Oregon seems to be the major manufacturer and they make several models; my interest extends to the top two in their lineup, the 510 and 511 models. These are small bench grinders that allow contoured stone disks to be presented to the cutters at precise angles to do the sharpening. You can duplicate the original factory angles, hence an "as new" cutting face. This is what I want. Some sharpeners have plastic bodies, some are aluminum. Some had manual vise systems to hold the chain as its being ground, some (expensive) use an hydraulic mechinism. I saw a reference someplace to either a NIOSH or EPA regulation that causes new grinders not to blow sparks in the operator's face and somehow this effects the performance of the sharperner - but I couldn't find anything specific about this so it might just be internet-hogwash for all I know.
So the question is, do I spend $40 or $400? There are precious few reviews that I can find on line for sharpeners and most of them look like plants from sharpener manufacturers so I thought I'd ask here.
How do you sharpen, do you have any comments on sharpeners? Oh, I've used all those clamp on file-guide gadgets over the years. Worthless if you ask me.
First off I've got two (Stihl) saws that can interchange bars and chains and my son often uses one while I use the other. When we go for a day's cutting we usually take two or three extra chains per saw. We don't let them get very dull and I resharpen all the chains at the end of the day. Its been that way for a long while.
To sharpen I clamp the saw's bar in a vice, break out the file/guide, and have at it. Two saws, three or four chains per saw; boredom and tedium, year after year after year. Now the thing is I wouldn't mind this other than that no matter how careful I am I can never get the chain quite as sharp as it was when new. I can get them good, sometimes even great, but never exactly like new. I never understood why until last week. Then one day it occurred to me that the difference came because I was sharpening a cut that had been made with a flat disk but suing a round file to do it. In short the cutting face I left after sharpening was not the same face that the factory left when the chain was manufactured. I was leaving what was in effect a hollow ground edge whereas their's was flat. Mine would be sharper, but only for the first or second pass through the wood, then it would be just a bit duller. Also, my hand sharpening almost never took into account the length of the resultant cutters. Even though I make it a point to count file strokes so that every cutter gets more or less even treatment they still become uneven over time.
Now I'm getting older than salt and I'm tired of filing chains. If I left it to my son we'd buy a new chain every time one got dull; presumably the money to do so would come from the chain-fairy.
I could of course take my chains out to have them sharpened professionally. Locally that would cost $7 off the saw, $13 on it. I can buy new chains all day long on E-Bay for $20 each so professional sharpening makes very little sense.
Electric disk sharpeners seem to come in two versions. There are cheap ones and there are expensive ones. Cheap ones cost forty bucks, expensive ones cost three or four hundred bucks. There is no apparent differences between the cheap ones and the expensive ones. Oregon seems to be the major manufacturer and they make several models; my interest extends to the top two in their lineup, the 510 and 511 models. These are small bench grinders that allow contoured stone disks to be presented to the cutters at precise angles to do the sharpening. You can duplicate the original factory angles, hence an "as new" cutting face. This is what I want. Some sharpeners have plastic bodies, some are aluminum. Some had manual vise systems to hold the chain as its being ground, some (expensive) use an hydraulic mechinism. I saw a reference someplace to either a NIOSH or EPA regulation that causes new grinders not to blow sparks in the operator's face and somehow this effects the performance of the sharperner - but I couldn't find anything specific about this so it might just be internet-hogwash for all I know.
So the question is, do I spend $40 or $400? There are precious few reviews that I can find on line for sharpeners and most of them look like plants from sharpener manufacturers so I thought I'd ask here.
How do you sharpen, do you have any comments on sharpeners? Oh, I've used all those clamp on file-guide gadgets over the years. Worthless if you ask me.
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