HOW TO SHARPEN A CHAINSAW CHAIN.

duration of how I like to sharpen my everyday firewood cutting type chain there's really not a whole lot to it once you understand how the tooth works and some of the geometry before I do anything I normally go ahead and clean the tooth I have these little scrubs there's a one sides a little rock the other sides smooth and there's a little detergent on it now you can use a different method if you want some use wire brush some people actually soak the whole chain and degrees are out I don't prefer to do that but if that works for you that's fine okay the reason for cleaning the tooth is to make sure you get all the oil and resin off off the tooth that'll load your file and even worse it'll load your grinding lil up if your grinding all gets loaded up with all that dirt and oil it's going to over overheat the tooth when you overheat the tooth and it makes it brittle and then also when you make the metal brittle and it's going to crack it's not going to hold an edge very long it also makes it harder to sharpen later it's almost impossible to use a file on a tooth that's been overheated it just won't cut it now let's look at some of the geometry and characteristics of the chain kind of get an idea how the chain works here yeah this is your side plate that's your working corner the corner of the tooth does all the work okay because of that it's the first thing that bites the wood as well and because of that that's the first thing to go doll is that that corner there okay now you have your depth gauge that needs to be lower than the top of your tooth here and I like 25 to get to be lower than the top of the tooth by 25 thousandths of an inch now occasionally have to file that depth gauge down why because the tooth slopes downward it has to it's called a relief if it wasn't sloped downwards if it wasn't sloped downwards the whole top of that tooth would be riding in the wood act create a lot of friction a lot of extra drag you don't need it's not doing anything either just creating heat so as you file the tooth the tooth gets shorter so you have to compensate by taking a little bit off the depth gauge every noun it okay now in here this is called the gullet this this area this okay when you file your only filing from here up okay that's the size of the font so you're not removing any of this material when you file a couple times you're going to have an excess buildup down here in the gullet you have to remove that with a file typically smaller than the one you use to sharpen the actual toothless this improves cutting efficiently greatly this is a must if you want your chain to cut quickly and efficiently what that does is it clogs this gall it up and kind of prevents the chips from clearing as easily so you want to every now and then after a couple file filings or grindings you want to remove the material in this area this one's not too bad I maintain my change so I actually don't have one that has extra excessive material in the gullet I look through all my channel have about 50 and I couldn't find one so I'm on the ball there okay this area here this semicircle area that's your hook you don't want to get too low in the tooth if you get too low in the tooth you created an excessive hook when that does make the metal behind the leading edge very thin which makes it not last very long and gets tall really quick it just bends over if you get too high it just makes the truth really blunt it's just not going to cut anything it would stay sharp for awhile but you're not going to be cutting efficiently the angle of the tooth the cutting edge on the top plate needs to be right around 60 degrees the top plate angle this angle here I prefer 25 to 30 degree angle the harder the wood less angle you want you want a little more shallow around 25 degrees 25 is a good basic number that's what I typically go with but 30 would be fine as well it's not not that big of a difference here's one tool I like to use the reason I like to use this one hand filing isn't because I can't do it by hand or freehand should I say this really helps to keep the right hook it keeps the file from going to the file from one to low in the tooth or to high it gives you that nice proper hook that'll give you a sharp edge but once strong enough that alone dull very quickly this is just a I think these go for like five or ten dollars I'm not sure it's been a while since I've bought one I can get them at skilled dealers organ makes one as well they're pretty much the same thing but these these little steel guys are the best they're they're put together the best they have a nice clamping system here there's an organ lunge is like a little spring I'm not too thrilled with that design you also have a little witness mark here that shows you that 30-degree angle you this angle goes parallel with the bar as you're sharpening I'll demonstrate that in a minute this here is a very very basic depth gauge tool now Carleton makes the best tool on the market they call it a file plate maybe that'll work with filing a tooth and lowing your depth gauges but for the beginner this is just much much easier to use this guide is for 3/8 chain and as you can see it's even marked I prefer to use the 1364 files 7 like the Sun like the 7/32 but I'd prefer the 1364 it's just slightly smaller in diameter it seemed to cut a little bit quicker it gets under the tooth little bit easier ok I had this all in a vise right now when you sharpen like this with the song of ice clamp to the bar you always wanted me make sure you go ahead and tighten the chain a little extra tighter than you normally would just prevents it from rocking at all or lifting up much just makes filing easier now with the tooth all the teeth clean which they're not I just clean this one for the demonstration now with the on the tooth you can see how it aligns you can see the witness mark there at least I hope you can and you line that parallel with the bar now some people like filing 90 degrees with the ground with the file pitch 90 degrees with the ground like that I prefer to give a little upstroke even on chains that don't require it or mention that you should do that about 5 degrees upward I find that produces a little sharper corner now the image quality is probably going to be a little dark I don't have the best setup here but I I'll see how it turns out anyway this is the clean tooth and I'm just going to simply put the file on there now you can also use the chain brake helps rent the tooth from moving much and in a smooth deliberate motion without that much force you don't need much force against the tooth to really take off a lot of material just good forward like so again smooth easy forward strokes never drag the file backwards that will doll file a file right away these files last a long long time if you just clean the teeth and file in one direction and just a couple passes that's all it takes this was a Dolf tooth and now it's nice and grippy I could easily cut myself and trust me when you sharpen them as much chain as I have even with gloves you're gonna cut yourself eventually that is properly sharp after you've sharpened the chain you can then go ahead and check your depth gauges checking the depth gauge is a very simple process simply lay this little gauge over the tooth okay and this is a set for 25,000 kids it's going to be now after I'm done filing the gauge down should be 25 thousands higher than the top of that depth kick and to check it you just simply take a straight edge or whatever you have handy that's flat and run it over the depth gauge you can hear grab there a little bit let's go ahead and file that down I have several of these flat files around there specifically for filing these depth gauges that's all it takes doesn't catch now and when you file a lot off at one time you can slightly around these depth gauges the hump over again on these depth gauges that's really not necessary they can be pretty much completely flat and they'll still cut relatively well but it'll be a little smoother around the top over a little bit it's probably hard to see with this camera it's not the best camera and lighting is not the greatest for camera work in here but there's no reflection on the toothed edge or the corner the most important part that's how you know it's properly sharp and obviously you can also feel it now I'm going to go ahead and demonstrate how you clean out the gullet this chain really doesn't need the GALT cleaned out but I'll go ahead and file a little bit on it just just for demonstration purposes I'm using a smaller file than I use last time to actually sharpen the tooth this is a 3/16 file juice for 0.325 pitch Jiang you can look down in here and usually when you file a lot of the tooth away there'll be extra material simply remove it now you don't want to create another hook you're just cleaning out what's in here and you actually want it to be vertical with the top of the or in the line with the corner of the tooth you don't want to go too far back they'll kind of create too much hook as well you just want that area cleaned out this bottom area clean like so that'll make the chain that makes a big improvement in cutting efficiency I personally think the most important thing is maintaining the proper hook you can actually get your angles off and it'll still cut relatively well but if you have too much hook or not enough hook chains not going to cut worth of darn it won't stay start long or it won't cut it all well I hope you enjoyed the video I hope it helps it's it's very simple stuff nothing complicated very basic way I sharpen my chains and if you do what I did and you keep up with the chain and don't let him get too dull you'll be impressed with how the chain cuts and of the saw performs it'll be less stress on the saw let's wear and tear on the saw and yourself having a chain sharp like that is very important

Channel: bobe8888

Views: 644,717

Rating: 4.7469831 out of 5

Keywords: How to properly sharpen a chainsaw chain., Chainsaw sharpening. Chainsaw., Sharpening

Id: 4x-vx2Kn5UI

Length: 12min 6sec (726 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 11 2014