Was thinking of reaching out to my tree service contact who hooks me up with wood to mill after not hearing from him for awhile, and just then I got a message telling me he had a big red oak for me. Nice ten foot trunk section laying on the ground ready to mill. Also had a big ash trunk about 6' tall in the front yard he left me to drop and mill once I finished with the oak. First chance to try the new Rollomatic 42" rollertip bar on my 880 after ditching the Duromatic 36. Something rarefish said on another thread about why he likes .404 over 3/8 is he can go through a nail without breaking a sweat on the .404 whereas it can snap the 3/8. I was hurried and didn't scan the trunk with my metal wand on the first cut and didn't notice anything while making the cut, but scanning before the second cut, sure enough I found a sheared off nail I'd gone right through. Still did the chain no favors I'm sure so my disappointment in cutting speed not being what I'd hoped was largely due to that happening right away. But even when I resharpened the chain, still wasn't quite as good as I hoped. May be that full comp .404 on a 42" just ain't that fast or maybe I'm just doing lousy sharpening jobs again. I'd guess the sharpening was poor, because when I put fresh full comp 36" on my hardnose bar last year I just powered through a mesquite burl which is way harder than red oak or ash. Got about seven nice 10' long boards about 1 1/4" thick out of the red oak 20-28" wide in the end though, the longest boards I've ever milled, along with some good bench slabs. Just finished up the ash today, got some good 54" by 24-29" by 3" slabs out of it. I also tried something I'd heard was impossibly slow, which is to crosscut with ripping chain and it really wasn't that bad - especially considering how slow it had been milling. It did a good job leveling off the big trunks right at the base for the homeowner, as my tree service guy didn't have any bars big enough to do it. This is only the third time my tree service friend had given me some wood, and he'd never seen me work before as I'd just collected some short red oak sections from jobs he'd already finished. So he got to see chainsaw milling for the first time, which he was amazed by as were his crew. People are rarely exposed to in an urban setting. A lot of the neighbors were interested too and stopped by to start conversations. I need to do a proper sharpening job on the chain (and maybe lower the rakers a little) to see if I can get this full comp chain working a lot better. This job just took way too much out of me compared to what it should have. Hope to be a lot better prepared for the next one.
