A Saw Chain Troubleshooting Guide

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Wait! Before you head out to the woods with your chain saw this fall, inspect your chain.

Back in 1978 and '79, MOTHER published an extensive two-part excerpt (see issues 54 and 55) from Barnacle Parp's Chain Saw Guide. This well-illustrated, commonsense handbook quickly became the standard guide to selecting, using, and caring for those dangerous, but well-nigh indispensable, machines. All of our staff woodcutters who had copies of the book used them faithfully.

Then, recently, Parp's Guide went out of print . . . and our staff sawyers had to guard their copies faithfully. Well, we saw a situation that needed correcting, so we decided to republish the book ourselves. Not only that, we persuaded Walter Hall—the guide's author—to expand and update it. The result is Barnacle Parp's New Chain Saw Guide (copyright © Walter Hall, 288 pages, available for $12.95 plus $1.50 shipping and handling from Mother's Bookshelf, 105 Stoney Mountain Rd., Hendersonville, NC 28791). As you can see from the selections here, Parp's Guide is animportant aid for anyone who ever has need to pick up a chain saw.

Occasionally, in one of your periodic examinations of your chain, you might spot a problem with some part, such as a cutter. When you do, use the picture guide here to identify the problem and thus discover its probable cause and remedy.

But not all cutting problems are immediately apparent to the eye, especially if chain saws are new to you. It's impossible here to cover completely all the potential saw chain problems, but if you experience a performance problem, try to identify it from the following paragraphs.

Chain cuts crooked; cuts at an angle; engine drags: If your bar and sprocket are in good shape, these problems are caused by filing the cutters at different angles or by inconsistent filing pressure from tooth to tooth. A chain that is sharper or longer on one side will pull to that side. Refile to restore uniform cutters, and reset the depth gauges. Check bar rails and tang clearance.

Chain dulls quickly: The most common cause of this problem is thin or feathered cutting edges caused by holding the file handle too low or by pressing down too hard on the file. A misaligned, worn, or wrong-pitch sprocket will also cause the chain to wear or dull quickly. Check the sprocket for wear and to be sure it's the correct size. Refile cutters using lighter strokes with the file held level or at a slighter angle, no more than 5° from horizontal. Also check and lower the depth gauges, and check the chain tension often.