The Secret To Sharpening Your Chainsaw Chains!

hey everyone welcome back to Lumber Capital log yard in today's video we are actually doing something that was highly requested by a lot of our viewers and that would be a tutorial on how to sharpen your chainsaw obviously a lot of people use chainsaws not just us lagers so I'm thinking that this is going to be a pretty valuable video so let's get into it [Music] foreign [Music] so I wanna I wanna try and teach you some things that you don't you might not know maybe if you do know them you can refine your Technique a little bit there are three different things that will make your chain not cut and most people think that you just need to sharpen your chain and that will make it work and that is why a lot of times a sharp chain still will not cut so let's talk about it the first thing is the bar now this bar is still in good shape this is a bar that I brought in from the woods to the log yard and we're at the log yard today because of the rain that we've had and this bar is not a bar that I will use in the woods anymore I use it only for firewood now Oregon Oregon bars has their name printed on both sides which is convenient because when I put the bar on I put the bar on with the name up and then as soon as I change a chain I turn around the other the bar upside down or the other way and then the name will be upside down so it's just a little site indicator now why would I do that and the reason I do that is because the rails on the bar begin to wear and of course you're not going to be able to see this on the video but when I pull my fingers up across that I can feel that that is actually mushroomed it's actually razor sharp on the side because of that mushrooming over and can actually see a little bit of wear right where the bar tip um goes on so what happens is when we bring the bars back into the yard we'll take them put them on a grinder and grind that edge off of there where it begins to mushroom out the next thing that you need to know is the rails of the bar will actually begin to separate or expand between them and when they do when you have a chick when your chain is actually physically on the bar and you're running your chainsaw I'm putting this on backwards but I think it'll work for the video you see what I mean now this bar is still in good shape uh but your chain can lay off to the side one way or the other and like I said this this chain or this bar is in good shape but you can see how that even after a little bit of wear the chain can fudge in the bar now it should move a little bit but what happens is you will have a really sharp chain and it will cut incredible as the bar goes down into the piece of wood if you're cutting firewood but as soon as the bar is the entire distance into the wood the cut begins to go sideways it will actually start to get a c shape to it as soon as that's happening you're pinching your bar here and then you're pinching it on the other side and it just stops and that's simply because this groove where the chain rides where the the uh where the inside of the chain rides is actually worn out and the chain is going off to one side or the other so there's several different techniques uh there's tools that you can buy that will bring the bar back into being true we actually put a thin piece of metal in the in the groove of the bar and then take a a bowl a plastic ball peen hammer and tap it back in now again this is once we I do this I'm not using that bar in the woods but at 50 bucks a bar we want to get some more mileage out of them so they come to the to the log yard and then we use them for firewood or or if we have to trim anything so and they certainly work work good for that so a logger is going to feel very differently about how they're felling saw is and how it's set up uh than necessarily then their firewood saw so you have a couple different ideas and techniques on that now I want to show you the the tools that I use I use a file and I know a lot of loggers are probably laugh but I do use a file guide I've always used one I think they're convenient if I'm sharpening my chain when I don't have good light I can almost do it with my eyes closed just by feeling but that file guide helps you have a flat file and then you have a gauge for your rakers so those are the three tools that that you need to sharpen your chain so here we have you know I use the 390s I've talked to you about that before this is a saw that's three or four years old probably everything's been replaced or changed we've cannibalized it many times to keep it going um and now this saw is dedicated to being here at the yard so one of the things I want to show you is I I've seen a lot of people run their their chains like this to me that is an absolute No-No your chain should never be that loose first of all it could fly off but again you're just you're getting that slop in there so I insist that let it be tight there's always ought to be tight with uh with the Husqvarna saws you you have to put a little bit of pressure out on the end to pick that up to get it tightened up the other reason I like my chain tight is that when I let off the throttle I I want the chain to stop on its own I don't want it to sit there and spin so and I use my Chain break all the time these chain breaks I we break them and gr the saw goes into the shop and Grandpa replaces them for me all the time but now you can see that's fairly tight and and that's how I like it so I mentioned in a previous video that I like to use a vice again we're here at the log yard uh over by the firewood processor and I just have a station set up a customer from that owned the subway gave me this wonderful stainless steel table I did that about 10 or 12 years ago we actually used to take it to the log sites I mounted the Vise on it and um that allows you to get a really level um way to sharpen your saw so let's take a look at this so I use the same chain on all of my saws I use a 20 inch bar which I mentioned in the past that keeps it away from your toes and I use 3 8 50 gauge that that is the sizing of the chain so you have to have a matching file for 3 8 50 gauge that file is a 7 30 seconds round file so that is what this chain uh requires uh in file size so if um if you come over here when the chain is dull and starts to miscut this is going to be very hard to see but I really I want you to I want you to understand it so this is actually the only part of the chain that is cutting it's this tip and right down around in here and then the rest of this clears the debris out of the way if this tip is shiny uh that's an indication that the chain is dull what will happen is it will actually begin to hook over it will actually begin to to curve down like that so if you look at it very closely you see they're curved the other thing is is that right across here where I'm laying this small screwdriver flat screwdriver this can get just a slight shiny curve to it and that indicates that your chain is dull now I'm using organ chain NM if you can get a shot from the top you will see that organ chain has an indicator I think it's actually a wear indicator it's the line that runs at an angle right across and that is the same angle then that you file your chain so that is just a site indicator and then of course you don't want to file file beyond that uh because your tooth could break up so I'm gonna I'm gonna switch sides um so I want you to be able to see this so you run the file across flat okay and I use two hands and I know there's different techniques to this but if you are only sharpening the top of the cutting tooth you are all it's not gonna be as sharp as you want it you want to get all the way down in there so as I come flat across I'm using my thumb on the outside of the file guide and I am just putting a little bit of downward downward pressure now the suds that I run I generally have not damaged the chain so I take three stripes across three swipes and that is going to sharpen it and then I take one last swipe and it's just a cleaning very light swipe it would be like a leather strapping a uh razor for your face if I don't know how to do that but it's that final like I'm just cleaning it off and putting that final very sharp edge on The Cutting tooth now after I do my cutting teeth I take a raker guide and you lay the raker guide across the tooth so that the raker is in the center and then you take a flat file and you go across and this guide should be it should take your raker once you use your flat file down to the right Gap between the raker and The Cutting tube so remember I said when you're sharpening your chain and your and your your chainsaw isn't cutting there's three different things there's the bar and the chain can be laying over on the side and cavitating there's actually The Cutting tooth itself which most people think that's what needs to be uh sharpened but then there's a raker and what the raker will do if it is not filed down is when you cut into the wood it will actually Force the saw up over um your your cutting material and your tooth isn't digging into it so that the raker has to be taken down as well as the tooth just as a rule of thumb when I put a new chain on I file it twice they sharpening it and then uh the third time I take down the rakers that's just a rule of thumb that's if I'm doing my standard uh three to five swipes across and I haven't damaged or or done anything to uh the the chain itself just a couple other things to watch for if you ever see a blue spot appear in your bar um you you if you see a hot spot you know you're pinching uh in there and or your bar may be bent which would of course cause it to pinch and that bluing then of course is uh you've actually changed the content of the steel you've hardened it in there I'm using Oregon uh chain organ chain is softer than steel chain you say well why don't you use steel chain uh if that's harder it lasts longer if you think about it your sharpest blades your your best chefs in the world aren't necessarily using stainless steel they may be using just regular carbon steel because it's softer 440 stainless steel is so hard it doesn't actually get an edge I happen to like the softer Steel um it is easier to file and get sharp so if you're using steel chain you actually have to use a steel file because the file itself is a harder file so if you are using steel chain in an organ file again you're going to be thoroughly disappointed just another thing to watch for now I wanted to tell you about a couple other things this chain here is 440 Harvester bar or Harvester chain that is what we run on the firewood processor you can see it is a much heavier Duty chain than the 3 8 50 gauge that I use on the chainsaw I'm only using this as an example because if you take your chain to a company to have them sharpen it they're going to use a commercial grinding system for doing it when they do that can you still see me this area here will get extremely hot and I have a a grinder that I sharpen chains with back at home in our Saw Shop and I actually use a diamond blade for it but that will get extremely hot so again you've changed the temper of the chain itself so when you go to use your file on it there's a good chance it's just going to run right over it like you have a dead file so uh if you can learn to hand file it is so much sharper my second my ex excuse me my first sharpening is sharper than the brand new chain out of the box and usually it only gets better now the chains do wear and you do hit stuff here and there and uh a lot of times by the end of the chain life I'm very happy to put a new chain on uh but a lot of times it just gets better as I go not always but but sometimes the other thing I wanted to show you just as a tip is uh I don't suit my saws up I know there is specialty saw shops where you can send your saws out and they will report them and do all sorts of wonderful things to them I never spend the money on it I I just I'm thoroughly happy with the performance of the Husky 390 and and the steel comparable saw but one of the things I do is I change the uh gear Cog that the chain rides on and what I'm doing is I'm adding a new Gear with uh it one additional tooth I guess you'd call it a sprocket I'm adding one more sprocket tooth of on my chainsaw and what that does is it speeds up the chain itself so I'm running a high horsepower saw with a 20 inch bar and then I change the sprocket and it spins a lot faster and with the higher horsepower machine the chain spinning faster it's not it's really not getting dogged down at all the only time it would really uh get dogged down is if I would lower my rakers too much and we've had we've done a lot of experimentation with taking a little extra off the raker I really don't like it the chain does dulls out too fast we've had a lot of trouble with the processor uh Grandpa took down a couple of the rakers as an experiment and he took them down a little too low and the thing just cut so incredible for one chord and then that the chain just completely stops and it's a real pain in the neck to change those chains with all the bar oil and stuff that's flying around so hopefully that was an interesting tutorial um I'll try and respond to the comments uh on this video over the next couple days I know it's not as exciting seeing me as it is seeing the girls run the mill but um we like to give you a little bit of information so that you can be better Sawyers better loggers and know how to tune up your own machines and save yourself a lot of money and time running off to the store I also want to say a word of thanks to Lee he sent me a knife he knew I was a little jealous of Emerald's knife uh there's a link in how do you say that M it's an email an email description uh on our YouTube page I still she can correct this this is Redwood it is so gorgeous um I love it uh and I do have to say Lee that I am not going to wear it as uh to work on a daily basis I know you would love it if I I would but it's just too beautiful and too valuable so that just isn't going to happen but I am very grateful I wear it when I'm I'm going out uh and I have a little different clothes on so thank you again uh for for that and I also wanted to say I know last time I did a video I said this and we sort of flopped at it Samantha is going to be doing a video for our members and we hope this is going to be a weekly video and she's doing a week in review and she's already told me her ideas and I'm already laughing thinking about him um she's very excited about it so she's going to be doing one video a week for the members only and it will hopefully be out on Sunday M and her I think have that figured out so uh hopefully we'll pull it together this time and pull that off so just uh I guess a little plug for that so thank you for your time again and good luck sharpening your chainsaw chains

Channel: Lumber Capital Log Yard

Views: 715,669

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Id: lL654u0hSBQ

Length: 21min 21sec (1281 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 08 2022