Well, I wish I could say a few positive things about this chain. I mounted it on my Stihl MS361 and went to cut up two felled ash trees for firewood. It never made it through one tank of fuel before it was too dull to cut any further. I tried both bucking and noodle cutting. There was no comparison between this chain and Oregon 72LGX or Husqvarna X-Cut. In all, I would give those two brands and A and this Upstart CSC-D72 a D+. You might be able to cut softwoods with it (cottonwood, poplar, linden, etc.) but forget about ash or oak. It simply did not last, got hot, and eventually started to smoke. I'll sharpen it and try again, but I doubt that will show much improvement over the out-of-the box performance I observed.
The ash I was working on had been felled about three weeks ago and was clean. By comparison, I had noodle cut and buck cut some big rounds using Archer semi-chisel with a Stihl MS441 M-tronic, and it did a beautiful job for a full tank of usage. Archer chain is not much more expensive than the the Upstart (maybe $5 a loop higher). Given the choice between these two inexpensive brands, Archer wins hands down. Now, what do I do with five loops of this? Thanks for the read.
