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Saturday, August 22, 2015

Chain sawing

I'm not a lumberjack, but I do have 5 acres of property, of which about half is woods.  When the weather has been co-operating, I have been trying to make my house safer from wildfires by removing trees that grow very near the house.

Additionally I have been thinning trees and removing limbs up to a high level, as well as clearing brush and slash from the forest floor.  The result is a safer place to live, although definitely not as natural-looking.  This summer, the natural look seems to be "burned up", which I have no interest in.


So I clear trees.

I'm pretty hard on chainsaw chains though.  I have about 10 of them, so that I can get through a couple of days' work without having to make a run to town and have them re-sharpened.

Re-sharpening the chains is a pain in the neck, because I lose at least an hour taking them to town, and then lose another hour picking them up the following day - not to mention the expense...
I have a hand-file for sharpening the chains, which I have never bothered to use.  It takes way less time to simply swap chains and keep cutting, and then take the chains in for sharpening later on.

My time off is limited, and so is weather-friendly cutting time.  When snow is on the ground, you don't want to be clearing the forest, and you can't even burn for about 6 months of the year.  It makes for a narrow time window to cut and burn stuff.

Long story short - Taking a lot of time to sharpen chains didn't work for me.  Here's the solution:

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