Chainsaw questions

14 years ago

Just a quick question on chainsaw use . . .

I bought an 18" saw from Lowes to take down a couple of trees in my back yard and for future clean up of fallen limbs, etc.

This is my first chainsaw, but I diligently read the manual, read around on the internet & felt pretty confident about starting to saw. Indeed, I made short work of the first tree (a 25ft evergreen) the cuts that took me hours on a similar tree were cake with this saw. Then I started running into trouble.

My chain keeps bucking off the blade (not breaking) -- I'm not touching dirt or catching it on anything except the tree.

Unfortunately the chain no longer rotates on the blade well. It looks like one or two rakers are a bit chewed up.

So, I figured I had screwed it all up, headed out and bought a new chain, vowing not to repeat, checked the tension, which seemed right according to the manual & lo and behold the same thing happens . . . only this time it rotates freely except one of the links seems bound up.

Any insights onto what I am doing wrong or how I might be able to fix these chains? I can't afford to keep buying new chains for this thing. . .

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Comments (3)

edsacre
14 years ago
Do you have bar oil and is it oiling properly. You should be able to see it flying off the chain onto a piece of wood when running.
Can you rotate the chain by hand?
The bar and the slot the blade runs in may have been damaged causing the blade to bind up.
turnage (8a TX)
14 years ago
I'd check the nose sprocket on the bar. You may have damaged one of the teeth when you knocked the chain off. Or it could have a small wood chip in there that's causing it to bind.

New chains tend to "stretch" as they wear in. The metal doesn't actually stretch, it's just all those rivets and links wearing against one another that causes the chain to grow a little. So you need to keep an eye on the tension. And you can minimize the wear a little by soaking the new chain in regular motor oil for a few minutes before you put it on.

I think every time I ever knocked a chain off it was when I was sawing through a limb that was under a bind. When the limb popped loose, it hit the chain and knocked it off.
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computeruser
14 years ago
You can file or peen the burs on the drive links back into shape, so if your chains are correct for the saw/bar combo you're running, you shouldn't need to buy any more chains.

Take the bar off, clean the groove out, and look for any defects in the groove.

Look at the tip sprocket. Is it turning freely? Damaged?

Look at the drive sprocket on the saw. Everything look OK?

Remount, retension the chain properly, and try again.

I've found that some bars like to throw chains more than others. It's usually the skinny ones with narrow tips, like the Oregon DoubleGuard91 (both Intenz and non-Intenz) bars that were used on Echo saws in the past. A swap to Oregon's wider bodied Pro91 bars solved the chainthrow issue on all the Echos we were running.