Hi! (First post.)
I have an odd question: I am a timberframer and we use a lot of straight-from-the-mill material -- mostly white oak. Last year we bought an Echo CS670 to help buck up timbers and rough out joints. Can't say enough good stuff about the saw. We run a 24" bar (way more than we need, really) with a 3/8 pitch chain.
Here's the odd question: recently I bought a PFERD sharpening set-up that holds a 7/32" round file and a flat mill file in the proper orientation to sharpen the tooth and lower the depth stop at the same time. Now, I sharpen things by hand all day every day in order to be able to do the work I do. I've gotten to be pretty decent at sharpening edges, including a pair of chain-mortising machines we use that have 1" wide saw chains, but I haven't tackled standard chain saws before now.
After two complete sharpening passes (I did the whole job a second time, just to make sure I was getting it right), and checking with a light to make sure I was keening up all the cutting edges, I now have a chain which is soooo aggressive that it's not really optimal for the job I need it to do! Yes, the saw will race through an oak 8"x10" in 4 seconds, but it grabs, bucks, can even bog the saw down if I let it dig, and it splits out the surface of the timber way worse than before -- and this can be a big deal for me.
So, I'm guessing the PFERD device cuts the depth stops way too low for my needs. Should I switch to hand filing without the device, and set the depth stops by feeler guage? Is there a "hardwoods" depth setting which is less aggressive than perhaps a softwoods or "high-speed-felling" depth setting would be?
Many thanks!
-Sam
I have an odd question: I am a timberframer and we use a lot of straight-from-the-mill material -- mostly white oak. Last year we bought an Echo CS670 to help buck up timbers and rough out joints. Can't say enough good stuff about the saw. We run a 24" bar (way more than we need, really) with a 3/8 pitch chain.
Here's the odd question: recently I bought a PFERD sharpening set-up that holds a 7/32" round file and a flat mill file in the proper orientation to sharpen the tooth and lower the depth stop at the same time. Now, I sharpen things by hand all day every day in order to be able to do the work I do. I've gotten to be pretty decent at sharpening edges, including a pair of chain-mortising machines we use that have 1" wide saw chains, but I haven't tackled standard chain saws before now.
After two complete sharpening passes (I did the whole job a second time, just to make sure I was getting it right), and checking with a light to make sure I was keening up all the cutting edges, I now have a chain which is soooo aggressive that it's not really optimal for the job I need it to do! Yes, the saw will race through an oak 8"x10" in 4 seconds, but it grabs, bucks, can even bog the saw down if I let it dig, and it splits out the surface of the timber way worse than before -- and this can be a big deal for me.
So, I'm guessing the PFERD device cuts the depth stops way too low for my needs. Should I switch to hand filing without the device, and set the depth stops by feeler guage? Is there a "hardwoods" depth setting which is less aggressive than perhaps a softwoods or "high-speed-felling" depth setting would be?
Many thanks!
-Sam
Last edited:
