Meticulous Chainsaw Maintenance

[Altissimus]

Have air at home and will do the filter every so often ... usually cutting dry or junk punk wood will clog with fines

 

[pantheraba]

Inverter in my truck and Rigid pancake 6 gal. compressor on my tree trailer. Whenever the trailer is parked at the house it is on shore power. I use air often...for saws and for me. Always at least at the end of a day, clean the saws with air, especially at the fill caps. But all the rest of the saw, too.

 

[vharrison]

Ours are cleaned and sharpened every morning.

 

[davidwyby]

Old thread I know…but it depends on how dirty the saw is, which depends on what I’m cutting…when it’s dirty, I blow it off/out. Really dirty, soap and water. Pitch, WD40 or premix…

Most of what I cut is dead dry desert wood in a dusty desert, so I clean a lot…and inspect.

 

[chainsawer4741]

I will just address the chain and what i have been doing, after i feel it's time to do some sharping i remove chain lay it on a folded news paper and spray in with Brake Cleaner.

I only do this process when i have the extra time many times i just sharpen the chain on saw and return it to service.

This removes the buildup of chain oil and any other type material, then i reinstall the chain on my Chainsaw and begin the sharping process after it's been sharpened i apply some chain oil so the chain is not dry when i again use my saw.

 

[Raj]

My tree saws get a general cleaning and bar service every month or so. Compressed air to blow off saw, and wash the filter. Tree saws get fuel filter and spark plug once a year (or so). Milling saw gets blown off at end of day or next day and wash air filter, bar service every couple weeks, fuel filter and spark plug twice a year. All chains get hand sharpened about half a dozen times, then go into a solvent or old mix gas tub. Then go on the grinder. They usually, not always, go into an old oil tub and then hung up or right back to service.

 

[Bart]

Has anyone ever pondered that when you drill or mill steel you use lube/oil on the cutter - so isn't filing a chain covered in chain oil actually making for a better file cut and longer file life? Just dawned on me after all these years of being lazy, maybe lazy is accidentally right. Too dirty, periodically wipe the oily file.

 

[Marc-Antoine]

Lubbing the file's cutters is good for their life like any other metal cutting tools, only if they were alone or a few on the file. The problem is that the oil keeps the shavings between the teeth by capilarity. The very shallow space becomes full of compacted debris with reduces severely the cut's deepth and the capapility of evacuating the new shavings. Concequence, the file just glides on the metal without taking much and has to travel 10 times more (purely arbitrary number) to take out the same amount of metal. So the file's life is reduced by the same proportion due to the wear of the teeth's tips.

 

[lxskllr]

I don't give the file much attention. I back drag it on the back of my glove every so often, but not with any precise regularity.

 

[Altissimus]

Tap the file a couple of times on the bench every so often when I sharpen

 

[SeanKroll]

I bang the tip on the side of the bar, frequently.

Yesterday, I was sharpening in the rain. It was like a slurry landing on the side of the bar.

 

[Jonny]

I tap it on the anvil part of the vise. If the light is right, you can see a little puff of metal dust, and can feel the file cutting better.

 

[Bermy]

I roll mine on my trousers every so often.

 

[Burnham]

I'm with the tap, tap, tap on the workbench crowd .

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Hi, my name is Stephen. And I am a tapper

 

[Burnham]

 

[Noodle]

I read many threads where pro loggers only get a few years out of their professional grade saw's, whereas I myself got a decade of use out of an old 032, and two decades of use from from two 365 husky's runnin to this very day on original pistons n rings!

How much fuel do you use? I can’t see any chainsaw user getting close to the amount of fuel used (and ultimately run time) by a production faller, other than maybe chainsaw milling or a full time firewood guy.

At a guess a faller in decent sized wood would use at least a drum a day (6 litres) or maybe even two everyday. In a modest working year that’s well over a thousand litres.
My gut feeling is that has more to do with the lifespan of a saw rather than meticulous…ness (not sure if that’s a word lol).

 

[SeanKroll]

I keep 10 saws in my truck, at last count.
One is a former logging saw...a hungry, woods-ported ms460. I've had it for around 10 years. Bought used off a desperate tree guy.

If an anti-vibe mount, as an arbitrary example, breaks, I pull out another, one minute away at the truck.

It doesn't cost me any appreciable down time.

Very rare is it that anything goes wrong.

If a logger's saw goes down, or it is running with 10% less compression than new, it will cost them way more than it costs me.

I heard locally that they would replace them regularly, not because they are worn out, rather they need the benefits of running new, and no need for repairs.

 

[Altissimus]

Loggers here replace every second year , get $100 towards new for trade in

 

[stig]

I sell my used ones on the Danish woodturners forum for between $200 and $300.
They usually sell within a day.
Woodturners need to make big cuts, but they don't hardly put any hours on saws, so a used pro saw is a fine deal for them.

The last times we have replaced were not because we really needed to, but because we couldn't resist the siren song of the new models.

That was the case with MS661, MS462 and of course after my dealer let me run the MS500i for a week, I simply had to keep it.