hardnose bar

had a hardnose bar given to me today, cleaned it up. seems of is .063 , so i twill work for me. do they have a special purpose or no?

They'll make an acceptable boat anchor.

Sorry; they’re just older and a bit more difficult to work with. You'll have to run your chain a bit loose. Hard nosed bars are hard on both bar and chain.

I'd suggest you have it as a back up. Maybe you've got an old chain that'll fit it and you need to cut through a nail likely area on a home remodel and that bar would be great then.

Think of them as your rock skis.

They're useful when cutting in material or situations so dirty as to quickly foul/destroy a sprocket-tip bar. I have used them for cutting dirty stumps, roots below the soil line when preparing to pull a stump out, and for cutting items that are submerged in water when doing log jam removals/woody debris management/riparian corridor restoration work.

For the things that they're good at, they're the right choice. For everything else...

They tend to run hot in my experience; the sprocket tip is the norm now.

Local tree guy runs(or did run) them on his 038s, they're common around here on construction sites...no sprocket to damage.

As has been said, they're for dirty stuff. But with all the wear and tear on the bar itself and chain, running so much hotter, the looser chain, I think they're more of a hassle than they're worth. But they're still usable of course.

Jeff

Sprocket tip bars will also take a remarkable amount of dirt before they fail. The avergae joe will not have problems with one failing.