Holy smokes and he was carrying a gun!Yeah Roger that! Unbelievably powerful and tough! With a pain threshold that makes a pit bull look like a Sissy when it comes to withstanding pain!
If you're not familiar with the American Bull Terrier breed of dog? Trust me! That's saying a lot about a bears sensitivity to pain!
Unfortunately we had young male nusance bear in our small rural community this Spring. Causing problems and becoming to comfortable around people much to often. Four of us hunted him every day for a week all at different times. After my sixth evening bear watch/hunt. I was the unfortunate one that got the first and last shot to terminate. When looking at him through the cross hairs at thirty yards while he was standing on his hinds looking right back at me. The only thing in my mind was "Man I really hope this is the right bear because I don't want to kill a bear that's just passing through not bothering anyone!" By the way we were looking at each other. He didn't really give me much of a choice at that distance!
It did end up being the problem bear, so it wasn't all bad. A three and a half year old young male. The neighbors and I guessed his weight between 400 and 500 pounds. He is a small Kodiak bear by size standards. Im 6'4" 230 and in pretty fair shape for my age! and his fore arm was as big around as my thigh and rock solid mussel!!! His front fore leg! Not his hind quarter or shoulder. His fore leg! Also, not firm like the hind quarter of a deer, beef, dog, or even a race horse! I mean heavy and solid like I've never felt in an animal! Even though he was dead, you could just feel his power!!! I really can't explain it!
View attachment 1000238And hes just a little guy! View attachment 1000239
Chain definitely not too tight. Sometimes I have to tighten it up because of stretch.
There is a lot to sharpening, but once you learn to sharpen one size chain, that learning transfers to the other sizes. From there tuning chains to a specific species of wood or frozen wood, a different powered saw, or even your personal cutting preferences becomes just a few file strokes away, whether that's with a round, beveled, or a flat file
.Not offended. If you put it in a vise it's fairly easy to with a "sharp" file
.Many guys will grind chains with a lot of oil on them, if they don't dress them often they will burn cutters too.
I tighten my chains tighter than most, and I don't have a problem with my bars or chains.
Everything carries in Alaska lol.
I imagine that would work fine if I were inclined to do it.They'll be fine after a couple light grindings, it doesn't usually go very deep.
Sad they do that to them though.
I just went through some a couple days ago trying to find a 20x.325, 78dl, not the 80dl of which I have 4 new chains sitting on the shelf
Here's one of the too sharpen piles, guessing it will only grow until next winter
Maybe I should send them to @sean donato , shouldn't take more than 15hrs giving 15 min each, and I know he's got lots of spare time.
View attachment 1000564
I've got an Oregon grinder. Bought it new a few years back thinking I'd even out the tooth length on my chains... After using it for a while I abandoned it and went back to hand filing. This as the chains didn't cut any better but they sure did lose potential life by grinding to the shortest tooth. That, and I prefer the soothing sound of hand filing to the sound of a grinder... It also didn't really save me any time unless I rocked/steeled a chain and needed to take the teeth back a lot. Rocks and embedded metal are common where I cut so it happens... 
Regarding bar dressing. Draw file the bar to remove the burr and flatten the edge. It only takes a few minutes... Use an 8", 10" or 12" single cut mill file. Even a raker file can be used but I prefer a larger file for this task. It doesn't have to be anything special.... a Stanley file is fine.
I missed this post earlier I guess.
.I don't typically grind to the worst cutter, as you said, that wastes a lot of chain. I also do not remove much at a time. I usually look a chain over real quick to see which cutters are the best(longest), then I set up to only remove a little off that cutter and run the chain around then that side hitting all the cutters it gets, then I advance the stop forward a touch and do that again until I'm getting most of the cutters, all the time counting how many turns I've adjusted the stop in. Then on my last pass I will mark any cutters that need taken back further with a green sharpie and then I make one more pass to get those, sometimes I have to hit those again. On a real bad chain I will make 4-5 passes around per side. Then I will hit the rakers with a file and a progressive gauge like the husky version. Sometimes I just file the shortest cutters rakers, then one of the average ones and throw it on the raker grinder(especially if I'm doing more than one chain). if they are all equal length, then I hit a raker on each side and put the chain on the raker grinder. Similarly, I make multiple passes when using the raker grinder when doing a chain I've removed a lot of material on, I just mark the rakers I file with the green sharpie. Yes I like my green sharpie, does that make me green lol. There's really no reason to take them down to the worse cutter, sometimes I'd loose a third of a chain doing that. If you are sharpening for customers, you can loose a customer quick by removing enough material off the worse cutterI imagine that would work fine if I were inclined to do it.
I typically do 2-6 chains per filing session... sometimes as many as 10. The process goes reasonably fast and sometimes I surprise myself by just how quickly I'm done with one side of an 84 or 117 DL chain. Once I understood the process, and what to look for as I'm sharpening, I could do it with certainty and have excellent results. Granted if I was the "chain guy" for a tree service a higher end grinder would probably make sense and I probably wouldn't care as much after a while as it would become a dull job.
. Think about how many times you've heard someone say "I took my chains in to be sharpened and they removed half the cutter" 
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I do the same thing weather on the grinder or by hand, If I took every tooth back to exactly the same length I'd go through chains like crazy. Depth Guage being set right per tooth is very important.I missed this post earlier I guess.
I consider myself progressive, as long as we're talking about filing rakers
I don't typically grind to the worst cutter, as you said, that wastes a lot of chain. I also do not remove much at a time. I usually look a chain over real quick to see which cutters are the best(longest), then I set up to only remove a little off that cutter and run the chain around then that side hitting all the cutters it gets, then I advance the stop forward a touch and do that again until I'm getting most of the cutters, all the time counting how many turns I've adjusted the stop in. Then on my last pass I will mark any cutters that need taken back further with a green sharpie and then I make one more pass to get those, sometimes I have to hit those again. On a real bad chain I will make 4-5 passes around per side. Then I will hit the rakers with a file and a progressive gauge like the husky version. Sometimes I just file the shortest cutters rakers, then one of the average ones and throw it on the raker grinder(especially if I'm doing more than one chain). if they are all equal length, then I hit a raker on each side and put the chain on the raker grinder. Similarly, I make multiple passes when using the raker grinder when doing a chain I've removed a lot of material on, I just mark the rakers I file with the green sharpie. Yes I like my green sharpie, does that make me green lol. There's really no reason to take them down to the worse cutter, sometimes I'd loose a third of a chain doing that. If you are sharpening for customers, you can loose a customer quick by removing enough material off the worse cutter
Touching up a chain with the grinder takes me a little more time than filing them, if you include removing them and then putting them back on, so I only grind damaged chains, chains that are not on saws, and chains I'm converting to square.
Honestly, with my elbows I wouldn't want to file that many chains in a session. That being said, I've started with a new or almost new chain when flush cutting stumps, and worn(filed) a chain down to a point I didn't feel it was worth hitting it again as after that it would be on the witness marks. It makes tossing a chain much easier when you know you've gotten paid for it already
I'm thinking that maybe I should be titling my posts, that way guys who want to get caught up can just skip the "Sharpening" posts
Thanks Mike.
If you OVER tighten your chains enough, your straps will look like that ... don't ask me how I know this!
I guess since his sister and I both have lever guns in 348 Winchester he felt he needed a more powerful lever gun!
Flat mill-bastard file will work great.
That process seems to have a lot of redundancy... i.e., examining each tooth repeatedly and grinding individual teeth on multiple passes. Hand filing I generally touch a tooth once and go on to the next one until a side is done and then I do the other side. I don't mark anything as I can tell by looking at the teeth whether they've been filed. Upon a final inspection I may touch a tooth or two again if it doesn't look like I got the tip well but it is a rare exception to the "touch it once" approach. Anyhow, as long as we all get to the same final result it doesn't much matter how we get there as long as it's repeatable!I missed this post earlier I guess.
I consider myself progressive, as long as we're talking about filing rakers
I don't typically grind to the worst cutter, as you said, that wastes a lot of chain. I also do not remove much at a time. I usually look a chain over real quick to see which cutters are the best(longest), then I set up to only remove a little off that cutter and run the chain around then that side hitting all the cutters it gets, then I advance the stop forward a touch and do that again until I'm getting most of the cutters, all the time counting how many turns I've adjusted the stop in. Then on my last pass I will mark any cutters that need taken back further with a green sharpie and then I make one more pass to get those, sometimes I have to hit those again. On a real bad chain I will make 4-5 passes around per side. Then I will hit the rakers with a file and a progressive gauge like the husky version. Sometimes I just file the shortest cutters rakers, then one of the average ones and throw it on the raker grinder(especially if I'm doing more than one chain). if they are all equal length, then I hit a raker on each side and put the chain on the raker grinder. Similarly, I make multiple passes when using the raker grinder when doing a chain I've removed a lot of material on, I just mark the rakers I file with the green sharpie. Yes I like my green sharpie, does that make me green lol. There's really no reason to take them down to the worse cutter, sometimes I'd loose a third of a chain doing that. If you are sharpening for customers, you can loose a customer quick by removing enough material off the worse cutter
Touching up a chain with the grinder takes me a little more time than filing them, if you include removing them and then putting them back on, so I only grind damaged chains, chains that are not on saws, and chains I'm converting to square.
Honestly, with my elbows I wouldn't want to file that many chains in a session. That being said, I've started with a new or almost new chain when flush cutting stumps, and worn(filed) a chain down to a point I didn't feel it was worth hitting it again as after that it would be on the witness marks. It makes tossing a chain much easier when you know you've gotten paid for it already
I'm thinking that maybe I should be titling my posts, that way guys who want to get caught up can just skip the "Sharpening" posts
