I’ve been around sharpening chains since the 50s
And tool and cutter grinding since the 70s.
We have a saying too..”This ain’t my first Rodeo”
I have a small feeling that (at least it smells a little bit like that) we are talking here about the old "craftsmen - academic - world - war".
Both worlds coexist, sometimes there are some shares, sometimes there´s confrontation.
Ideally they share much, but that´s maybe the case only for very few people. Maybe a technical engineer with a very high preference for practical work in the laboratory. There maybe the two worlds go hand in hand.
On the other side most people are more on one of the two sides, that´s the nature of it.
I stand more on the 'academic' or theoretical side. That´s my nature of person, and that fits my skills more.
I´m aware that here in the forum I´m maybe in the smaller party with this approach. Of course due to the nature of the materia here. A chainsaw is a practical machine, we do practical work with it, use it and make something out of it.
I got to the topic 'from the other side'. In fact I came to the topic of chainsaws like the German saying 'the virgin to a child'.
I always helped my father with wood work, producing fire wood for personal use in the family´s small forest. I used the axe, carried wood, helped with transport and so on. I never touched the chainsaw or felled a tree.
Last year my father died. Noone wants to sell the small family wood or let someone else do the work there. My mother and my sister won´t touch the chainsaw. So that´s my business now. Not as a duty, I like to.
I made a course learning things about security, theoretical felling techniques and so on. And the course had its practical and we did some felling and limbing work in the forest.
In the meantime I did some personal work with the saw and it makes fun. I disassembled the whole 034S leaving alone the crankcase. I cleaned all parts of it and restored faulty parts. I learned to tune the carb. I´m not capable of hand filing so I bought a small grinder and learned to use it for my needs. I worked practical with the saw and read a lot about the topic in the net, mainly in forums like this here. I came across BobL´s thread about the FOP gauge and was fascinated. Then I made my personal raker gauge, wrote the software and published all of it here. That´s the story.
I never pretended to have decades of practical chainsaw experience. I know what a skip chain is, but I don´t own one and maybe never will use one (no personal need).
My approach is theoretical because a) it suits my nature and b) because of the lack of practical experience. I have to work with what I have...
I´m very well aware that many if not the most people here in this forum know practically way way more about saws, felling, chains and so on than me.
I only concentrated isolated on one specific point of the chain story. A point that falls well into my theoretical skills.
So though lacking practical aspects, I thought that I could give something back to the community that maybe many here aren´t capable of.
I can do geometry, do calculations, do some programming. And my English is hopefully good enough to communicate this all. Development goes further, at least my software supported approach is something new, as Del_ already mentioned.
And hopefully my practical side is at least good enough to brifge over to the practical world. At least I could produce my depth gauges. And I have not two left hands as we say in Germany, I can use the chainsaw to make my own fire wood.
So maybe we can get out of this theory-praxis trap.
Some arguments here make me feel like 'here comes Mr. Clever and Smart, hiding behind words, theory, a computer, absolutely no clue about real life' and some of you are describing me like 'the king looking down to the hard working farmers'.
Simply no. It cost me some energy and time to make this all happen. This has something to do with idealism.
I hope that some of you may read between the lines what sort of person I also am.
So hopefully these 'two worlds' find together. I´m a theoretical person hopefully interested enough in practical things. And I hoped to find some people here from the 'practical side' who don´t fear using software or some theoretical explanations.
I got saws from 22 to 137 cc.
6 size chains
Full Comp, semi and full skip
3 cutter profiles. Some square grind
From at least 7 manufacturers.
And the same bar fits from a 43cc to 100cc I’m building.
And I run from 16”-41” on the same saw
Fresh pine that cuts like butter.
20+ year dead locust that throws sparks.
How many gauges?
Maybe too many for your use case?
Did I already mention that my approach is maybe not suitable for everyone´s needs
Maybe I underrated reality in this point. I assumed that many users maybe only do variations in bar length, chainsaw power, semi chisel / full chisel. Then you only need on raker depth gauge (assuming one cutting angle needed). You need more when using different chain pitches, different driving link gauges (type 2, type 1 should be independant), different cutter profiles (nomal/low profile) and different manufacturers.
I have no clue how this is distributed in reality. I only assumed that many users have this kind of setup, where the variations lead to only one or maybe two different raker depth gauges. I won´t start a poll here
Enjoy the forum. But folks here also have some knowledge and why they make the decisions they do.
Absolutely yes. See argumentation above
I maybe over reacted about your reactions to my posts.
If you think so. Sorry.
If I can ever help....let me know.
No problem. Another saying in Germany: "Who likes to deal out, will sometimes land on the receiving end".
BTW arrogance could be detected on 'both sides'. The theorist can´t understand the aversion of practical folk towards software and things like that, the practical one can´t understand the aversion of the theorist to simply work with tools and why the heck there may be reasons to work with numbers, measurements and computers all the time.
There won´t be usable results in the end if one of the sides is neglected I think.
It looks like you are really close to that as it is. This way it won't alter what is optimal on the "frontend" Honestly at this point you are best to free hand another one of two flat strokes after your last gauge then run 'er home. I always tell people when teaching them how to work a progressive plate gauge is that " It's like kissing you sister...It feels strange at first but if you do it long enough, you'll get used to it.
