Oregon Bar

[Stumper]

it's not enough to consider just the cost of the bar ... a cheap bar can be the cause of expensive problems throughout a saw.

first cost to add is inventory of chains -- with a soft metal bar like the Powermatch you find yourself throwing chains away before the cutters can get filed back to where the cuttin' starts getting good -- the drivers are all worn out (grunge collects in the groove and the bar gets "slow" because the worn drivers can't clean the groove) and the chain won't setup on top of the bar -- rather than being smooth, the side of the wood on a cut looks like the cutters were wandering all over the place (because they are!). The extra pull also wears the rivits, and so the chain gets hot and loose, and starts slapping the bar right where it comes back at the nose, banging a dent in the rails--which causes the chain inventory to start collapsing sooner .. and etc.

next to add is the wear to the clutch and clutch drum caused by a cheap bar -- chains that don't setup right -cause the bar's rails and groove are too soft to give the support that the chain needs - create wasted pull, and that adds more heat into the clutch and drum and bearing, and shaft, and seals, and ...

The earth is flat. The sun revolves around the earth. Unicorn horn is powerful aphrodesiac. Sheesh Molecule. I don't deny that there are differences in bar quality. I won't even argue that the bar that wears most rapidly will accelerate chain wear more than the bar that resists wear but I sure have gotten a lot of years of service out of Powermatch, Prolite and even cheap laminated stock bars. They lasted through chain after chain and didn't tear up anything. :alien:

 

[John Ellison]

I have used mainly Oregon Powermatch bars for years and have always gotten what I consider good life from them. To me it seems like they are even better than they were fifteen + years ago when I first started using them. Maybe I am just less abusive than I used to be. It has been a long time since I have seen a new bar with rails of different thickness.
I am not even willing to try a better?/more expensive bar because of the weight difference.

John

 

[Molecule]

Stumper and John -- it's not only a matter of getting "years+" use out of an Oregon Powermatch ... I've had a little 16" one on a Homelite SuperEZ for ?-15 yrs. And, I went thru 2x as many chains for that bar as I went thru on a Prolite. Even within the Oregon lineup, the Prolite is a far better bar than the Powermatch, because even though its laminated (of which I've never seen a failure, AIS), the steel is better and harder. I returned a recent Powermatch I bought because even without using it, I could tell from the sort of dead sound/feel that it had, that the steel was too soft.

Like you say, there are "those people" who would have us believe "The earth is flat. The sun revolves around the earth. Unicorn horn is powerful aphrodesiac. [and] Sheesh ..." Truth. These are often the same ones who will argue that it's ok to sell a 6800 as a "parts saw with good compression," when it is a parts saw with no measurable compression and a burned up piston *and badly dinged and scored cylinder...

But, being as you are a man of reason, take a look at the chain history you have had for your own bar stock. Admittedly some of the history will have to be subjective (this bar got light wood, this one frozen etc.) but, would you say that your PowerMatch chains last as long as your ProLite chains, staying within the Oregon product line? My experience, by a factor of maybe 2, would be no.

That's my point on considering bar+chain+clutch cost, even if one stays within the Oregon lineup.