I have to admit this thread has so far been entertaining- much like watching a good train wreck in slow motion. Some of the folks here are putting Much too much stress into chain tensioning and adjustment.
When I was but an innocent youngster, I worked as a landing chaser/second loader for a small gypo logger in Northwest California. We spent most of one summer logging nothing but tan oak. Why? I'm not really sure- the big timber company wanted tan oak, and we were elected to do the logging, it being their land and all and they sure as heck didn't want to do it.
Anyway, the timber fallers HATED the stuff because the bark tended to cook on and stick to their chains, slowing down the whole program. The fellers soon discovered it was much easier to have the dozer operator (they were all brothers, by the way) push the trees over with the D-8 and drag them in tree-length to the landing , usually while pushing several more tree-lengths in front with the blade, where I stood by with my trusty 60's vintage Homelite 66 Super Whiz gear drive with 42" bar and Oregon #16 chipper chain, ready to buck off the root wads, lop the limbs and buck into log lengths after everything had been skidded a quarter mile through the mud and grit. The fellers were getting paid truck scale, so it was a win-win for them.
So, you got half a dozen 24"-36+" diameter tree-lengths and what ever the cat skinner could push about every 15 or so minutes, while also attending to getting the trailers down and hooked up, making out trip tickets,filing the chain (only had one, and it was about shot- gypo operation, you understand), mixing gas, cutting chokers (which were by now completely embedded into the afore-mentioned root wads) and making whatever repairs that couldn't wait until later.
I was the only chaser, and we were averaging a million board feet per month. Suffice to say, you looked for every possible way so shave a second or two, and chain adjustment was one of them. One of the biggest time savers was to remove the adjusting screw and bar stud, and dispose of them in an environmentally appropriate manner, iE: chuck 'em into the brush.
Thereafter, when the chain needed tightening, you loosened the bar nuts, slipped the screwdriver end of your bar wrench into the bar slot and levered the bar out slightly, as necessary to snug up the chain. took perhaps 1-2 seconds, compared to futz-ing around with the adjusting screw, and also eliminated a lot of tightener travel issues. When you ran out of bar slot, then it was time to do something about it, like beg and plead for a new second hand chain that had been thrown away down at the sawmill. This was one of the many hacks you learned in order to have a fighting chance of not getting buried alive.
50 years later I still do it that way.
Hope this was helpful....
Pete.
So I’m going to be replacing my original (2008) rim sprocket when these two stretched chains are done!
