bigfellascott wrote:happyhunter wrote:It's pretty easy to sharpen the chain. I do it often to keep the thing cutting well. You can feel when it needs a sharpen by hoe easily the chain is slicing through the wood. After a few sharpening cycles you will need to file down the depth gauges to keep the chain cutting to the correct depth.
Or you do what I do and just buy the Stihl 2in1 sharpeners - they do the cutters and rakers in the one motion so you never have to worry about them not being set correctly. Bloody brilliant little things really, I also just use a file and guide but do love the 2in1 setups, nice and quick and the other thing to keep an eye on is making sure the cutters are all the same length, you will notice after a while one side being long than the other (which is often why you saw starts cutting round cuts instead of straight), you have a weak and a strong side when it comes to filing, I usually just use a small shifter and find the shortest cutter and adjust the shifter to fit it then use that to check the length of each cutter I sharpen and just sharpen until they are all the same length as the shifter, you don't have to do it every time just when you start to notice the cutters getting uneven length wise.
+1 on the 2 in 1 sharpener systems. I just switched to one of these and love it (not the Stihl one, but same sort of thing). So quick, efficient and accurate, especially used along with the little bar clamp thing that I hammer into a nearby log. Makes it way more stable. That's a good idea for gauging the raker heights, going to have to pinch that one.
I've just finished cutting up a heap of big logs (about the size of my torso), think they're river/spotted gum or something. Whatever it is, its bloody hard timber with dense, tight, interwoven grain, a real bastard to split. I've been sharpening after every second log (maybe 12 to fifteen cuts), and top the fuel and bar oil each time. As mentioned here a few times, the shavings are the best clue that the chain is getting blunt.