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John Hushagen earns $10,000 a year...and creates new forests at the same time!...
A simple program that will help keep your woods in good condition, and provide firewood and some lu...
A small woodlot has the potential to provide a homestead with firewood, lumber, sawdust, compost, p...
Maintaining wooded property, including timber management, making a plan, clear-cut, seed tree, shel...
You'll get the sharpest cutting edge if you file each tooth evenly and pay attention to the angle of the file. A file guide is well worth using because it helps you get the correct angle. For a chipper or a semichisel chain, hold the file at a 90° angle to the guide bar and file each tooth at a 35° angle. For a chisel chain, angle the file handle downward 10° and file each tooth at a 30° angle.
Look for the most damaged cutter (the one with the shortest top length) and file it first. Count how many strokes it takes to file down the damaged edge, then use the same number of strokes on all the cutters to keep them even.
More is not better, here. Use no more strokes than you need to keep the teeth even while filing away damaged areas.
Make contact during the file's forward stroke only, from the inside toward the outside edge. Lift the file for the backward stroke. When you finish filing one cutter, move the chain forward to the next cutter. If you move the chain backward, you'll be working into freshly sharpened teeth instead of away from them.
Every chain has two sets of cutters, those facing to the right, or right-hand cutters, and those facing to the left, or left-hand cutters. File all the teeth of the cutters on one side, then turn the saw and file all the teeth on the other side. File the cutters evenly on both sides, or your saw will pull to the side instead of cutting downward.
In front of the tooth on each cutter is a depth gauge or raker. The raker leads the cutter into the wood and determines how large a bite the tooth takes. If it sticks out too high above the teeth, the chain can't get a good bite and wilt cut like a dull chain. After you've filed the cutter edges several times, you'll have to file down the rakers. Each time you file the teeth, check the chain with the raker gauge that came with your saw (if you don't have a gauge, you can get one from any chainsaw dealer). When you've filed the teeth so far down that the rakers stick out above the gauge, it's time to file down the rakers. With a flat file, remove the part that sticks above the gauge.
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