The verdict is in concerning my powwermatch bar!

[Westboastfaller]

Nobody is going to fix your shirt collar and wipe your tears in this life.
I don't believe the cliché "the customer is always right" applys in this industry.
I don't take product replacement as a compromise, I take it as a victory. They can back their product and deflect all they want but when they replace it then they are really saying something else aren't they?

I'll repeat it for the obtuse.
"Don't get caught up in the words
Just their actions.
Lol
G'night Kiwi

 

[Greenerpastures]

Nobody is going to fix your shirt collar and wipe you tears in this life.
I don't believe the cliché "the customer is always right" applys in this industry.
I don't take product replacement as a compromise, I take it as a victory. They can back their product and deflect all they want but when they replace it then they are really saying something else aren't they?

I'll repeat it for the obtuse.
"Don't get caught up in the words
Just their actions.
Lol
G'night Kiwi

The OP is in the position where he does not trust the product,
he seems to know what he did with the bar and that none of
it should have resulted in his bar broblem.

He can choose to take or leave another bar, I think it is good to
hear of such issues, it might only be a bar, but the principles go
all the way to the top, as does the negative publicity Oregon are
now getting, Oregon can well afford to refund the man for the bar,
a lot has been said about the OP 's attitude to this, if Oregons attitude
was different we would be praising Oregon for stepping up.

If I made a product that someone was not happy with I would glady
take it back and refund the person, I really would not expect them to
trust me with another, but I would offer them one for free so they could
properly determine if the issue is my product, or if they like, a refund.
That would have put an end to the issue, and no need to straighten a
collar or wipe away tears.

 

[HarleyT]

Damn guys,
this ain't no pacemaker!!

How's my english?

 

[Chris-PA]

No wear on the bar rails where the cutting load is, just lots of peening where the cutters meet/separate from the rails by the sprockets. What does this say the cause is? What material characteristic would help resist it?

 

[KiwiBro]

Nobody is going to fix your shirt collar and wipe you tears in this life.
I don't believe the cliché "the customer is always right" applys in this industry.
I don't take product replacement as a compromise, I take it as a victory.

Projection, your honour.

They can back their product and deflect all they want but when they replace it then they are really saying something else aren't they?

Speculation, your honour.

 

[KiwiBro]

this ain't no pacemaker!!

True. It's a slippery slope though. One day it's lying about your homework getting eaten by the dog then the slide kicks in like an angry junk yard dog let off its leash as you grow so accustomed to the cognitive dissonance it hardly registers or you're conditioned to ignoring it. Before you know it, you're cheating on your wife and selling dodgy pacemakers made in Faroffistan. If someone had taken the intervention opportunities when we were pups, the dishonesty wouldn't have been allowed to grow to the point people are keeling over with faulty pacemakers. Well, not in all but the most clinically interesting of cases.

 

[HarleyT]

Don't bring up lying and cheating on wives around this bunch!!

 

[Westboastfaller]

No wear on the bar rails where the cutting load is, just lots of peening where the cutters meet/separate from the rails by the sprockets. What does this say the cause is? What material characteristic would help resist it?

Hi Chris..how are things man?

It is natural a bar will wear more in those places. It just should obviously not have worn anywhere close to the acceleration it did.
It's like strapping a cargo load from a slightly lower anchor point. If you are securing a row of boxes then the end corners are going to round from the downward pressure and the middle of the span may not feel that tight. Add an over tightened chain along with the inward centripetal force. Now you are generating heat and it will get tighter again. Other factors like the design of the tail vs sprocket height.
Worst combination would be a wide tail and small sprocket adjusted close together in theory.
Having said all that, on a 36" bar (always with a 7T) in order to get the same tention in the middle as you would with a very short bar you would be applying more pressure to the ends to accomplish this. On the 36" Stihl lite bars with round chisel, I find for my aggressive cutting style when brushing out saplings with the extra flex in them, a have to snug it up a bit more than I have ever had too for any bar. You really have to pay attention to what the bar is doing.(flex).

 

[ken morgan]

this thread just went to lols side of the page

 

[Little Al]

If Iv'e got this correct has Oregon offered a replacement bar? If yes why doesn't the OP take them up on their offer & see if he has the same problem I'm not in any way defending Blount but the total number of bars they produce I would expect a "wrong un" now & again. the "lemon" Friday night motor or dish washer/whatever If the company will repair/replace seeing if they can solve the problems It's surely not worth a rant if the 2nd bar or no replacement is not forthcoming then calling them out is in order The old adage of "You can please all the people some of the time Some of peoplle all the time But NOT all of the people all the time I would urge the OP to try the replacement bar if offered & that will prove that either you had a one off "Wrong un" or the products are below expected quality a gain a saying Them as never made a mistake never did "Nowt" the trying of the replacement & a post on here re the outcome would be most useful

 

[Chris-PA]

Hi Chris..how are things man?

It is natural a bar will wear more in those places. It just should obviously not have worn anywhere close to the acceleration it did.
It's like strapping a cargo load from a slightly lower anchor point. If you are securing a row of boxes then the end corners are going to round from the downward pressure and the middle of the span may not feel that tight. Add an over tightened chain along with the inward centripetal force. Now you are generating heat and it will get tighter again. Other factors like the design of the tail vs sprocket height.
Worst combination would be a wide tail and small sprocket adjusted close together in theory.
Having said all that, on a 36" bar (always with a 7T) in order to get the same tention in the middle as you would with a very short bar you would be applying more pressure to the ends to accomplish this. On the 36" lite bars with round chisel, I find for my aggressive cutting style when brushing out saplings with the extra flex in them, a have to snug it up a bit more than I have ever had too for any bar. You really have to pay attention to what the bar is doing.(flex).

I'm good, how are things with you? I've been trying to spend less time here and working on saws so as to get other more important projects done. But it's time to move firewood and I have a dead ash leaner to drop today - might try some of those things we talked about on that thread earlier this year.

As for this bar, all my bars end up looking similar with damage in those places, but then I've never owned a "good" bar (a PowerMatch is a good bar for me). But that is not "wear" in the sense that the metal wore away. The metal is still there, it's flanged out to the sides as shown in the video. Even if the surface is hard, it's been pounded down into the metal below by the hardened cutters coming off the tip and drive sprockets. This occurs only at the point where the chain returns to the bar rail (and apparently where it leaves on the opposite side too). Oregon says damage like this at the tip is due to a too loose chain or high speed light load (limbing), so presumably it's the same at the tail. I've been trying to run my chains a little tighter than I used to and it seems to help.

Basically, the chain is under tension from the applied force of the engine between the bottom of the drive sprocket and the point where the wood is being cut (usually the bottom center of the bar). Everywhere else the chain is just being pulled around without much force. If it is loose then the sprocket grips the drive links and throws it at the bar rail, peening a divot in the rail at that point. Adding chain tension helps prevent the drive links from being thrown at the rails that way.

None of this says that the metallurgy of the bar is correct, and no doubt some alloys will perform better - but I doubt it is a hardness problem.

 

[pioneerguy600]

Back around 2008 or there abouts I posted about the Oregon power match bars being soft and not lasting more than a week in production cutting. The gang on here then jumped on me and hammered/flamed me hard but I still won`t buy any Oregon product today due to the inconsistencies in both their bar and chain machining and hardness. We were bucking up 8 - 9 cord of hardwood a day working toward bucking and splitting 400 cord of hardwood that year. We were running two Husqvarna 365`s and my collection of Stihl 044`s, when I complained to our local Oregon dealer about the soft bars he replied our saws were revving too high for them and thus were hammering them above and beyond what they were designed for. We then switched to old school Windsor bars and chain and I myself stuck with Stihl ES bars and RSC chain with dramatic results. After cutting that entire cordage up my Stihl bars are still cutting today, never even had a bar tip replaced to date and never grease them either. I have a few Total bars that have stood up really well but mostly stick with the Stihl bars but pick up every NOS Windsor bar I come across in the right lengths, mostly 18 - 20" for the cutting I do now.

 

[Modifiedmark]

I have not heard what saw this Homelite bar was used on, just curious.

I like most Oregon products ok, no company that large is going to have everything they offer perfect. That said, I doubt seriously that the Oregon chain angles were off that bad, I do believe that bar mounted filing guide is junk and the angles marked on it are off. I have one here and you cannot believe the markings on it. I don't use it and should throw it out.

 

[Modifiedmark]

I agree that Carlton had very inconsistent cutters. When i drove a harvester i thought the boss was buying second grade chains to save money, but i found out all Carlton chains were sharpened the same. You just needed to spend a bit of time on a new chain to get all the cutter lengths the same and raker heights the same to make them a good chain. Another problem with Carlton was that some links would have a big chunk of hard chrome on the front of some cutters that would ruin any file. Some Carton chains were ok and others were terrible.

I agree with all of this and have been saying the same thing for a long time.

 

[KiwiBro]

Back around 2008 or there abouts I posted about the Oregon power match bars being soft and not lasting more than a week in production cutting. The gang on here then jumped on me and hammered/flamed me hard but I still won`t buy any Oregon product today due to the inconsistencies in both their bar and chain machining and hardness. We were bucking up 8 - 9 cord of hardwood a day working toward bucking and splitting 400 cord of hardwood that year. We were running two Husqvarna 365`s and my collection of Stihl 044`s, when I complained to our local Oregon dealer about the soft bars he replied our saws were revving too high for them and thus were hammering them above and beyond what they were designed for. We then switched to old school Windsor bars and chain and I myself stuck with Stihl ES bars and RSC chain with dramatic results. After cutting that entire cordage up my Stihl bars are still cutting today, never even had a bar tip replaced to date and never grease them either. I have a few Total bars that have stood up really well but mostly stick with the Stihl bars but pick up every NOS Windsor bar I come across in the right lengths, mostly 18 - 20" for the cutting I do now.

Here are a few deals on good bars you might be interested in:
18" husky mount GBti 3/8 .063 - $15
20" stihl mount Tsumura 3/8 .050 - $40
24" husky mount Tsumura 3/8 .050 - $45
http://www.shopcomstocklogging.com/HVT1863PA-GB-TITANIUM-BAR_p_966.html
http://www.shopcomstocklogging.com/TSUMURA-BAR-SPECIALS_c_438.html

 

[Westboastfaller]

I have not heard what saw this Homelite bar was used on, just curious.
Thanks
I like most Oregon products ok, no company that large is going to have everything they offer perfect. That said, I doubt seriously that the Oregon chain angles were off that bad, I do believe that bar mounted filing guide is junk and the angles marked on it are off. I have one here and you cannot believe the markings on it. I don't use it and should throw it out.

I don't know if their bars are made of the same quality or if they sell a cheaper version that is 'of less than' I'm wondering? That's pretty much the only bars I've even used until I finally went to Stihl lite a few years ago for Coast falling.
This includes all the Husqvarna bars that come on many of the new saw that are made by Oregon.
I've had only one that chipped really bad in two days. It was -35-38c in 2010 on a Seismic slashing/snag falling job. It was the end of the 22" stock they made of a popular interior length. I've run in -43c and never had issues before.

I don't think a person could possibly do anything close to the damage of his bar doing many things wrong in 2 tanks. It's almost delusional on their part to justify that as abuse.
I ran my ported 262 thinning saw a full week with out chain oil in '94 when I lost the oil cap and gave up on wasting time making plugs out of
Saplings to then have them vibrate out. Five strokes off the rakes on a new chain and maximum hook.
Same chain he used except the 0.58 (73 ). I still have visions of looking into that oil tank while I cut. It was stuffed to the top with twigs.
Now that's abuse.

The chain is strange? That chain and their bars have been going longer than I.
I've never used a sharpening guide just raker guide. Having said that there are many I wouldn't endorse.
3° would be obvious by the eye though. He is not new. Never seen it myself ever. Only things I can think of is if the one side varied from 25° 28° someone filed the one side and it ended up back in a box and it got buy him somehow because he wasn't expecting it or it was a break down on the grinder setting at the factory. Sounds like a good run of bad luck.

 

[Little Al]

I totally agree with posters that have had problems with Oregon kit & for whatever reason have had the same problems with a replacement or have had no joy from manufacturer/dealer for that reason i will not use /recommend 91vxl chain but to have what you perceive a faulty bar, chain, what ever & it is replaced FOC with or without "sweeteners" & to call them out with out giving the replacement a go is a bit premature as I m sure a multiple production manufacturer will get a "sods law" number of "wrong un's" but I suppose it gone on for decades as my grandad used to say " You can do 999 good jobs & no one says a word but you drop one bol***k & the whole area knows & chews it over"

 

[Mad Professor]

Never chase good money after bad Prfessr.

A friend owns a machine shop and will do rockwell tests for free

 

[mrpotatohead]

Whilst I'll concede the English language can be a blunt, bludgeoning tool at times, I'm shocked by the comprehension skills some of the posters here have displayed.
Given the advised assessment from the manufacturer that the bar was up to their normal standards, I can understand and in fact applaud, the OP's principled stand rather than just putting his hand out for a replacement he would flick off anyway. Not everyone is willing to sell their principles down the river for a few dollars, as much as that might surprise others.

You understand me 100%. Had Glenn said the bar was defective, I would have taken a new one.

 

[mrpotatohead]

Here you go fellas, a closer look at the chain. The light kept messing with my camera for some reason, and after recording I realized it. The glare was terrible...

Harley, light the dog another smoke!