Among the many things I did for cash when I was younger, I used to trim and fell trees.
I am one of those wierd people who actually reads contracts before he signs them and reads instruction manuals before operating the new equipment they come with.
When I first started trimming trees and purchased tools of the trade, I read extensively about chain saw use, not only the included owners manuals, but whatever I could find on the subject. One of the most important things I found, which saved me considerable time and effort using a chain saw was how to sharpen the chain saw blades.
Most people know how to sharpen the blades or they send them out to be sharpened. What most novices do not know is the setting of the bumpers in front of the teeth they sharpen. The bumpers are those little rounded humps in front of each tooth that keep the blade from taking too deep a cut and stalling the motor. Bumpers also help reduce kickback of the chain saw. If you set the bumpers too low, you may end up taking a deeper cut per tooth than you or the saw can handle. If you set the bumper too high, you end up making sawdust and exerting extra effort by trying to force the chain saw to cut faster.
You can buy bumper adjusting guides that come with different height setters at most places that sell chain saws, but they are not a common item at hardware stores. For the 16" 33cc Homelite Supereze chain saw I own, I use the .025 bumper height. The height depends on the saws power and your physical abilities. I buy three sets of chains (Per recommendations of the literature I read.) and use them until the teeth are worn down too far to sharpen anymore. I then throw away the chains AND the drive sprocket that propelled them and buy a new drive sprocket and three new chains. If you sharpen the chain teeth correctly and set the height of the bumpers according to saws power and your ability to control the saws bite, the weight of the saw practically cuts through the wood by itself and the result are curls of wood chips coming off the cut. When the chips start looking like sawdust, change blades or resharpen and reset bumpers, and go back to cutting again.
The manually operated chain saw is human powered, so you would want to set a much shallower cut height for the bumper than you would with a power saw. Measure the original height when you buy the chain, and if it feels good when using it, maintain that height. If you have difficulty cutting with it, you can make the bite of each tooth shallower by sharpening the blade and leaving the bumper alone. It is highly unlikely that the average person among us will ever put a lot of wear on a manual chain saw, but it is still nice to know how to sharpen them.
SAFETY CHAIN for power chain saws. I don't like them and I won't buy them. They have a longer bumper on them with a shallower cut and they are a pain in the butt to reset the bumper after sharpening. I buy the professional style chain in as thin a blade as I can get. The thin blades wear out faster from resharpening and resetting, but they slice through wood like crazy, and my time is worth more per hour than the cost of replacing blades and blade sprockets.
Bountyhunter
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