What's wrong?
When was the last time you replaced the sprocket? Do your sprocket, bar and chain match? Eating chain is not something your saw should be doing. If you don't at least touch up your chain 4 times a day cutting firewood you're running a dull chain and this increases wear on the saw and chain. Unless you are cutting clean wood, touchup the chain more often. Hitting the wood at low speed/ not revving up before you touch the wood is hard on the chain. If you're cutting wood from near a beach, wind blown sand inbeds in the bark and dulls the chains fast. Dragging wood across the ground puts mud in the bark. If in doubt about the dirt in the bark use an axe or hatcht to remove the dirty bark. The bark is harder on the chain than the wood. If you hit something don't keep cutting. Touch up the chain or at least pull it out of the wood and look at it. You're looking for a cutter peened over. Fix it before you continue to cut. Once you peen over the tip where the sideplate of the cutter meets the topplate you lost your cutting edge for that cutter. Looking at the cutters edge, (topplate) if it's shiney 1-2mm then right behind that shiney edge it's brown from sap and bark, your chain is dull. Touch it up. That is a lot of saw for cutting firewood but if the chain isn't sharp it's not going to cut a lot of firewood in a day. Don't think just because you can still cut the chain is ok, if you have to push harder to keep the chips flying your chain needs touched up. Keep an eye on the size of chips the saw is throwing. If you catch yourself pushing to keep the saw cutting your chain is dull. A couple of light strokes with the file should be enough to keep you cutting. Do not expect the chain to stay sharp all day. If you started cutting at 7:30am you should have touched up the chain about 9:30am. Two hours or less. The only way the chain is going to stay sharp till lunch is if you don't use it till lunchtime even if you're cutting really clean wood. Firewood doesn't put me in mind of really clean wood. Sure it'll still cut at lunchtime but the edge on the cutters are in need of a tickle. While you are tickling the chain at luncktime, check the airfilter and get the dust and chips out. One last thing, tighten up the chain, let it cool down first. Don't let it hang slack on the bar where you can count the drive tangs on the underside of the bar when you set the saw down because the chain is hanging out of the rails. A soild nose bar can take that abuse (slack) and a roller nose bar will not fair as well.vince said:
