Chain Sharpening

I am looking into doing my own sharpening. Is it worthwhile to purchase the FG 2 Filerite bench mount or to continue my old friend sharpening at $3.50 a chain? By the way, obviously I am new to this forum, and very much appreciate the response and help with my prior question about the 044. Thank you.

i think $3.50 a chain is pretty fair to say the least! Do they clean, lube and drop the depth gauges for that?

You can stretch that too by hand dressing with a hand file and only take them in when they have hit something or need the gauges dropped. i think of a pro as ' rebuilding' the machine of chain.

Because the tooth slants down towards the back,as you shorten it thjrough sharpenning you have to drop the depth gauge to keep the same amount of the now lowered tooth exposed. Too lil' and it doesn't take big enough bite, too much and it tries to take too much, hanging up or shearing the tooth. Of course in non-freezing climates, with soft wood and shorter bars, the total resstance of the wood is less, so some maximize their cutting by dropping that gauge further for a bigger bite with the right amount of power to drive it.

sharpening

All depends how fancy or motorizes you want to be. If a simple hand file with a guide will do, you can save yourself some money. If you need a motor and grinding wheel, you might better keep going to the sharpening guy. At what he is charging, Anything else will be too expensive, that will do the job right.

Thats a good price, I do them all day for $5 a piece.

I thought about doing my own chains once. then after some investigation into the cost of automated sharpeners and the learning curve involved in hand filing I decided that 5 bucks a chain wasn't that big a deal. You really have to decide what your time is worth to you. i would say $3.50 a chain is a bargain. How long will it take you to learn how to do it right and many not so good chains will you do and slow your cutting? I know some guys will argue that a machine will cause your chains to wear out faster and this is certainly true, but I would rather spend the $10 -$15 on a new chain and have more time for me or cutting, while someone else does a good job on my chains. Everybody is different. Some guys here seem to find some therapeutic effects in the hand filing, sort of like yoga or meditation.

Does your guy do a job that you are happy with? If so I would stick with him at his bargain price. Spend your time making more money at cutting or enjoy some leisure time. Just my thoughts.

stihl file guide

stihl make an excellent file guide for around 30.00, go to stihlusa it is a good way you can put a factory edge on a chain. A 16 inch chain takes me about 20 minutes

You might want to try the file guide made by pferd. it files the cutters and drops the depth guage at the same time. Its available in 5/32 and 7/32, and is carried by Husky Dealers. Clamp the bar in a bench vise or stump vise and take full strokes with the file. Practice makes perfect. Its about $15. Shouldn't take more that 4-5 strokes per tooth, unless you've hit the ground hard, or my favorite, the chain link fence thats concealed inside the tree your bucking. If the chain is trashed then $3.50
is worth it, otherwise do it yourself.

a month back i invested in two Oregon file guides at $7@, and have had amazingly good results. The Bailey's site has an informative page on the dynamics of chain cutters. Once you understand what the cutter is actually doing, you can focus on making sure it gets a proper edge.
Like its been said: clamp the bar, have a well lit bench, and take your time with long steady strokes. I have found that as little as two strokes per cutter is all it takes to bring the chain back to life.
While $3.50 might be a good price, you need to be careful about the heat generated by a grinder. Some guys work too fast and end up turning the cutters blue, thus losing their temper, which will lessen their ability to hold an edge.

buckwheat,

I looked for that page on the Bailey's site about chain cutters and couldn't find it. I'd be very interested in reading that, can you point me in the right direction to find it?

Hey guys,

I think Buckwheat may have been thinking of the madsens site. They have got a bunch of different info pages that are interesting to browse.

whoops! It is Madsen's. Sorry about that.

http://www.madsens1.com/oregon4.htm

Hit the "search" at the top of the page and punch in chain sharpening . There is a wealth of info there .

I hand sharpen my chains. For as many times as they get dull It wouldnt be worth paying to have them sharpened. Also saves time I don't have to take it anywhere but my bench. I say if you have patience learn to hand file get some good ones and a file guide and your ready to go.

the good thing about sharpening chains yourself is when u finally get it right,from then on u got it in your head.
teach a man to fish an all.

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him how to fish an he'll sit in a boat with his buddies and drink beer.

Or something like that.

sounds pretty good to me. but somebody gotta make sure we all got life jackets on . just in case one of us gets plastered an goes for a little swim. we ll call him the designated life preserver person or sompm

Chain sharpening is a science of it's own. By tweaking the angles you can get the chain to cut 15% faster and wear out 20% sooner or tweak it again it will cut 30% faster and wear out 25% faster. What do you want it to do? I've sharpened my own for thirty years by hand. Think of the teeth as chisles cutting through the wood and what kind of cut you want it to make.I like the the long ribbons vs the short chips.

This web site has chain sharpening pretty well covered. Explore,explore.

Geofore, I don't know about the percentages you quoted but I agree in principle. I've always hand filed my saws with a new/sharp file I don't take any longer than a guy with a Dremel type tool and most importantly I can do a better job w/file. When I started out I sharpened like the manuals tell you to-saws cut okay. Several years ago a fellow showed me a different technique-Saying it would increase performance at least 10%. It does and I do it that way now. If I felt more ambitious I 'd describe the method (and probably confuse everybody LOL). As it is find someone whose saws seem to cut well and get a lesson.
P.S. I don't mean that you need a lesson Geofore-just that if someone does'nt know how, the best way to learn is a demonstration/explanation first hand.

A buddy of mine works for the guys with the orange trucks and they sharpen to an angle not in the book and gave me the wear %'s, I knew it made a difference years ago and would sharpen chains for no charge on days when I had nothing else to do ( rained out ). The angle change is up to 10 degrees or more but the way the chain cuts is dramatic. It just wears out the chain faster but the trade off is you can cut more in less time. Time is Money thing cutting power line right of ways.

You'd have loved this, the guy next door was trying to cut the over grown bushes out with his chainsaw and he'd been there about 15 miniutes at full throtle, smoke flying and getting nowhere.I asked to see his saw and said I could sharpen it in 5 miniutes or less. I gave it a quick pass with the file and gave it back to him. he revved it up and leaned into that bush and went through 15 limbs and right into the ground before he realized he even cut the first one. He was picking up his pride,I think he buried it as deep as he put that saw in the ground. He is looking for a new saw now as he has worn this one out in the last year. I gave him a few pointers on using saws to cut and now he wants to tackle bigger stuff.