Milling bar for Jonsered 920

[hbohnet]

I'm new to milling and milled my first log the other day using a recently aquired J 920. It was impressive but now realize I need a longer bar to fit my 30" Alaskan mill. These bars aren't very common but managed to find a 30" Carlton hard tip in .063 for cheap. Can anyone give me a comment on this bar for milling? Thanks.

 

[mtngun]

I'm new to milling and milled my first log the other day using a recently aquired J 920. It was impressive but now realize I need a longer bar to fit my 30" Alaskan mill. These bars aren't very common but managed to find a 30" Carlton hard tip in .063 for cheap. Can anyone give me a comment on this bar for milling? Thanks.

A 30" bar is not very long and a hard nose is less desirable.

To get the most out of your 30" mill, look for a 36" bar with sprocket nose.

 

[hbohnet]

Thanks for the reply Mtngun. A couple of more questions/recommendations:

A 36" bar will fit a 30" mill? (I like the sound of that)
.050, .058 or .063 guage?
Skip or full comp chain?

I plan on milling mostly cedar and doug fir.
Thanks.

 

[mtngun]

Yes, a 36" bar will fit a 30" mill perfectly. The bar should be about 4" - 6" longer than the mill to utilize all the mill's capacity.

Full comp leaves a smoother cut, all other things equal.

No right or wrong answer to gage. I favor 0.050" because it gives me the option of running lo-pro chain (if special sprockets are used). Other than that, it doesn't make much difference.

 

[NuggyBuggy]

hbohnet, did you ever end up finding a suitable 36" bar and if so, do you mind sharing what you ended up buying ?

I happen to be considering purchasing a Jonsered 920, which I also hope to use for milling on my 48" Alaskan MkIII, but this saw only comes with a 24" bar IIRC and the logs I'm looking at are bigger - not sure how much bigger bar I could pull with this saw ?

I did some research and did find that it uses the D024 bar mount pattern but that the D009 pattern also works, sometimes with a little modification and sometimes with none. Also found that there was apparently a Jonsered->Husqvarna bar mount conversion kit but could not come up with a part #.

I did go through Baileys but they had so many combinations, none of which were listed to work with the J920, and after a while I lost track of what I had looked at.:dazed: If anyone wants to shoot me a specific model recommendation, I'd probably just buy that and owe him a beer.

 

[srcarr52]

hbohnet, did you ever end up finding a suitable 36" bar and if so, do you mind sharing what you ended up buying ?

I happen to be considering purchasing a Jonsered 920, which I also hope to use for milling on my 48" Alaskan MkIII, but this saw only comes with a 24" bar IIRC and the logs I'm looking at are bigger - not sure how much bigger bar I could pull with this saw ?

I did some research and did find that it uses the D024 bar mount pattern but that the D009 pattern also works, sometimes with a little modification and sometimes with none. Also found that there was apparently a Jonsered->Husqvarna bar mount conversion kit but could not come up with a part #.

I did go through Baileys but they had so many combinations, none of which were listed to work with the J920, and after a while I lost track of what I had looked at.:dazed: If anyone wants to shoot me a specific model recommendation, I'd probably just buy that and owe him a beer.

The D024 mount is a 10mm width slot where the D009 (Large Husqvarna) is 9.5mm. I think the bar profile are about the same but the oil hole on the D009 is a little farther forward (1/2") then the D024 mount. So you can grind the D009 out to 10mm or take 0.5mm off the bar stud shoulder diameter. The oil hole will probably still line up with the oil galley unless you are getting out to the far extent of the bar adjustment, then you could just drill a new oil hole in the bar.

 

[hbohnet]

NuggyBuggy,
I did not get a longer bar yet, the big fir trees I was hoping to mill did not work out so put the purchase is on hold for now. Not much more advise to offer except that some claim a Homelite mount will fit the 920. There was a hardnosed 36" bar for sale a while back on ebay which the seller claimed would fit the 920. When I do purchase a long bar will probably go with the large Husky as srcarr52 pointed out in the previous reply. I would appreciate some feedback if you do get something to work. Thanks.

 

[NuggyBuggy]

hbohnet, that's too bad. I haven't actually decided to buy it but am supposed to look at it tomorrow evening. The problem is it's about a 4 hour detour for me on the way to my cottage... and I have a 6- and 4-year old with me.

For a 87cc saw, these seem like very affordable saws, even if older, and it sounds like they would be great for milling. I just don't know if I want to drive that far if sourcing a bar is more than a bit of work, as I do have another saw I could use...

 

[Metals406]

The Homelite bars will work. . . An 820 I recently purchased came with a Homey bar on it.

 

[dustytools]

The Homelite bars will work. . . An 820 I recently purchased came with a Homey bar on it.

This is true, I can switch bars between my old XL and my 820.