How saw chain works

hey guys john here with another video on saw chain this is not a stand-alone you know how-to type of video the intent here is to be we think of it as a homework assignment if you were to be attending a game of logging hands-on program with us the level two day we spend a pretty good amount of time explaining how to sharpen chain what chain to use i like to you know think about all the how to's that are out there with sharpening chain really the first question we gotta ask ourselves is what are we using the saw for are we standing on flat ground moan grass we got to make two cuts as fast as possible it's a competition and was that the application or are we um standing in a river up to our waste and water cutting up mud caked trees from a flood like wow right two extremes of saw use probably not either one being used here what we're most of us are talking about is cutting logs cutting firewood cleaning up blow down or you know maybe clean up a trail or something so it's somewhere in the middle ground but all of those applications there's different styles of chain that work better for certain situations to get there we've got to understand how this tooth works there are five parts of a cutter tooth and that's what i want to cover here in this video okay um let's get started i'm gonna go through it and i'm gonna really again this is not a how-to this is just how does it work okay so if you get a piece of paper and a crayon let's go number one is this guy here in the front it's proper name a depth gauge it's common names depending on where you are regionally pretty common to call it a raker a drag a rider it's got a lot of nicknames this tooth determines the thickness of the chip common chain nowadays they're set right from the factory at 25 000 of an inch okay we modify them a little bit depending on what we're doing with the saw but that determines the thickness of your chip number two is the working corner on the tooth so where that top plate comes and the side plate come together we have a working corner i personally believe that that working corner is drastically under appreciated for what it does its job in life to explain this is if i take this here it's just a broom right just a wish broom and i have a piece of wood the broom is really representing a piece of wood the only difference of course is there's two major differences here one of course is the wood is much more dense but the other is showing the idea of the fiber and if i get this broom tipped just right there you can see that little fiber sticking up the fiber of the broom okay if you take a piece of wood and i got a fresh cut piece of wood here and you look really really close like right here you can it's it's hair like that wood fiber is hair like it's super important to appreciate wood fiber and then go back to the broom right the stick of the wood and the piece of wood is the same as a as the broom it's fibers running this way right the difference is the wood fiber is hair like the reason that is so important is to understand what the point of the tooth does the point of the tooth wants to and needs to hook into that fiber let me go back to the broom okay the point will hook onto that fiber and the tooth will naturally be pulled down into the wood that going back to the depth gauge that stops the tooth from going too deep thus setting the thickness of your chip if we lose that point ever so slightly it stops hooking the fiber and you can kind of think of as the front of your tooth here is going to be like the front of a sled runner or in front of a ski to where it's just going to slide over the wood we as the saw user we feel like we we need to start pushing on the saw what we're doing there is we're pushing the tooth down in to try to get it to hook onto that fiber and we get the impression or the feeling from the saw that the chain is becoming dull when in fact it may not be the cutting edges getting dull it can be simply we've lost that point and it pins down ever so slightly and it no longer hooks into that really hair like fiber of wood that's number two right depth gauge the point now we have two cutting edges we have us what we call a side plate and the top plate those two jobs i'm kind of going to explain them a little bit simultaneously here in the sense that they have two very different jobs in life they do two very different things the side cutting edge i like to say that the side cutting edge okay actually pays the bills or gets the job done the reason that is is if you think about a cutting edge okay i got a cutting edge here and you take a piece of wood and you put your cutting edge to the piece of wood this way i'm gonna turn around here so you can see okay this way here any of us that have run a pocket knife before know that it is much harder to drive a cutting edge across the fiber so i'm going to get here and where i can do it a little more easily right i'm trying to drive that cutting edge across the fiber so i need to cut that fiber off that's going to take a lot of power all right but once i get that fiber cut off you'll notice that the chip you see where that will will almost fall out of there that's the difference between the side plate and the top plate the side plate is trying to cut that fiber off that's what's pulling the power from the saw that there is why you hear guys that will modify their saws and they'll put you know they want horsepower it's the horsepower that's needed to cut that fiber off once that fiber is cut off your top plate which is 90 degrees to it the chip pops out of there very easily so that's the difference between the top cutting edge and the side cutting edge side cutting edge cuts that fiber off top cutting edge is popping the chip out there's four already right the depth gauge the point your side cutting edge your top cutting edge and the last part of the tooth it's important to understand is referred to as the chisel angle now if we can get that into the light here we go and what i'm talking about there is this this angle right here all the way across the underside of the top plate it's referred to as the chisel angle that chisel angle think of it as a little ramp that the chip slides down and then it escapes out under the back of the tooth okay so that really there in a nutshell is all five parts of the tooth here's your depth gauge your point the side cutting edge top cutting edge and then that chisel angle i want to leave you with a trivia question and if you can answer this question correctly then it really does indicate that you get it you really understand what's going on okay here's the question during the process of cutting a tree up now whether you're cutting firewood or cutting logs doesn't matter when you're cross cutting in a log piece of wood i explained that the side plate cuts the fiber off the top plate pops a chip out sometimes those two jobs will switch where the top plate cuts the fiber off and the side plate is kicking the chip out sometimes those jobs will switch part way through the cut now i'm not talking about ripping logs or anything like that i'm talking about cross cutting your piece of wood okay the fundamentals as i first explained is the side plate cuts the fiber off top plate knocks the ship out in reality in the real world those two jobs will switch back and forth all day long sometimes they'll switch part way through the cut so the trivia question is why would that happen if you think you got the answer put it in a comment be interested to uh see what you think okay so there's your homework assignment okay in a nutshell and hope to see you at a game login program sometime in the woods and we'll take this information and then we'll carry it into what style of chain to use and so on for your different cutting applications all right take care

Channel: Logger Growing Trees

Views: 1,696

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Id: RfPIDldIYrE

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 22 2021