Storing saw chain

emr

Cheesehead Treehouser
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
2,193
Location
Neenah, Wisconsin
Does anyone have any good ways of storing their saw chain while in their trucks? We have a few spare chains that we keep on our truck and it always gets all tangled up when it brounces around. The worst one is our 36" chain but our shorter ones can be a pain too. Any suggestions?

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I bought these little ditty bags from CRC I believe about 6 inches square with a zipper.
Edit: Or was it CLC can't remember. They work great I usually carry a spare chain for each saw I run.
 
I use the folding cardboard boxes they come with. I hand file, mostly, so rarely change chains. I rarely touch metal in a tree.
 
Dollar Store has had plastic boxes that I used to use. I got away from them. I only really change chains when I change bars, virtually always hand filing, unless I hit something bad in a low cut stump.
 
That's what I like to do too Sean. Rewarding to stay sharp and cut well such a high percentage of the time.

Someone was asking me about filing "rocked" saws for his crew the other day. It sounded painful.
 
I hand file, mostly, so rarely change chains. I rarely touch metal in a tree.

Same here.

I keep spare chains each in a basic thin plastic grocery bag, wrap it up, tape it shut, mark it with chain length, put 4 or 5 together in a drawstring nylon bag. I put a new chain on in the field maybe 2x's a year.
 
I keep my spares in the box they come in. I file my chains as needed so if I swap chains it's never going back on. This might be uncommon, but I can touch up a chain faster than anyone on my crew can swap one out. This holds true for all the saws up to a 25" ( 84 link) bar. As others have said though, individually packaged, will work best if you can't hang them anywhere.
 
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  • #10
Thanks everybody. We have tried hanging them on the door of the tool box but they seem to fall off very easily. We usually keep new chains in the boxes until the box falls apart. We don't keep a ton of chains in the truck normally. We generally run a 24" bar on our 660 but keep the 36" bar and chain on the truck. We also keep two or three spare chains so in case. I was hoping there was some cool trick that I've never heard of..... My favorite way to store chains is to keep the chain on a bar and put the bar and chain inside of a scabbard. However, we don't have a 36" scabbard and we don't carry around extra bars for our other saws.

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Thanks everybody. We have tried hanging them on the door of the tool box but they seem to fall off very easily. We usually keep new chains in the boxes until the box falls apart. We don't keep a ton of chains in the truck normally. We generally run a 24" bar on our 660 but keep the 36" bar and chain on the truck. We also keep two or three spare chains so in case. I was hoping there was some cool trick that I've never heard of..... My favorite way to store chains is to keep the chain on a bar and put the bar and chain inside of a scabbard. However, we don't have a 36" scabbard and we don't carry around extra bars for our other saws.

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Firehose works well for long bars.
 
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  • #14
Anyone ever heard of Ranger Bands? I wonder of those would work?

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Self sticking velcro.
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I store chains in the original cardboard boxes, then put the boxes in a smallish plastic tote bin with lid. I know some people get totally confused by a twisted up sawchain, but really, it never is all that hard to straighten out, is it?
 
I store chains in the original cardboard boxes, then put the boxes in a smallish plastic tote bin with lid. I know some people get totally confused by a twisted up sawchain, but really, it never is all that hard to straighten out, is it?

Unless some evil types deliberately made one up with a build in twist, so they could get a laugh out of giving it to new apprentices.
We even keep it in an original box, marked with a small black dot, so we don't accidentally grab it ourself.
 
I keep spares in the original box as well, and most of my spare chains are in my "saw bucket" with files, wedges, saw tool, etc. The boxes in the bucket hold up well, the ones for my 32" bar get pretty beat up as they are not always in the bucket, I only take them along when I grab the 32" bar. Having the boxes bouncing around with other gear gets them beat up much quicker. I've sharpened some stihl chains for a friend that came in individual plastic containers, must be an older stihl packaging thing as none of my stihl chains came like that. I as well like to stick the b/c together in the scabbard, which I do when I take the saws apart for travel. I thought about maybe getting a larger scabbard for my 32" bar just to store a chain with it.
 
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  • #24
Lots of good advice so far. We have tried several of the ideas mentioned already but just have not found anything to our liking. Im guessing we may just get a longer scabbard for our 36" bar and chain and keep them stored together. The smaller chains are not so much of a pain.
 
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