I haven't seen a straight up answer to this so I hope not waste anyone's time with this. but what do you set the rakers or depth gauges (whichever you wish to call them) at for milling.
It does not matter whether you are milling or crosscutting but rakers should not be set to a constant depth but to what is called a constant angle. This angle is between the top of the raker the cutting tip of the cutter and the wood. The reason for this is as the cutter wears and gullet gets wider, using a constant depth like 0.030" will change this angle and the cutter will not be able to grab as much wood. Eventually CS operators who do not know about this give up on the chain and buy another one whereas those who know about this can keep their chains cutting until what's left of the cutters start to break off.
More details are provided in this post
http://www.arboristsite.com/milling-saw-mills/93458-8.htm#post4107285 (look at the section on RAKER ANGLE)
If you look on the Baileys website you will see some raker depth gauges are available with different depth settings in steps of 0.005" from 0.020 right up to 0.050 but there is no need to pay out for a complete set of these.
The easiest way to do set a raker angle is to use a Carlton File-O-Plate or similar raker setting devices. The problem with this is the angle that is generates is too wussy (~4.5º) and I recommend an angle of 6º as a starting angle since this is how new chains are made. There is no single angle that is best. For small softwoods using a big saw angles as high as ~7.5º or higher can be used. For really hard big woods and smaller saws 4.5º might be all they can manage. Just be aware that at very high angles the saw will be very grabby and produce more kickback (not an issue for milling), more vibe, and a small increase in B&C wear.
An easy way to check your raker angles is to measure your gullet width and raker depth with a vernier calliper.
For a 6º raker angle the raker depth should be 1/10th of the gullet width.
An even easier way is to use a Digital Angle finder (DAF)
rakersetting.m4v - YouTube
Of course I don't do this every time I touch the rakers, I just check them every dozen or so times I touch up, in between I will swipe the rakers by eye a couple of times after every second or third touch up.
Using a constant raker angle means you don't need to worry about the cutters being the same length. I'm also not fussed about getting the exact same raker angle - usually somewhere between 6 and 7 degrees seems to work.
Every CS operator I know that tries this method continues to use it as it enables chains to last a lot longer and to cut more efficiently than the constant depth raker method.
