Had some time off of work yesterday and set about cleaning up some red oak I had lying around. Mostly the nasty stuff that won't cooperate with a maul. It was a good excuse to fire up the 372 clone that I built during the fall and keep breaking her in with some noodling. It's running better and better every time I use it.
Seems theres always some chunks that need noodling in every load. Makes em easier to stack thats for sure.
.058 gauge, 24" that came with the Tsumura bar. It's an Australian brand I never heard of, but it's doing just fine. I'll run it down to nubs and then pick up an Oregon (my preferred brand).
I am doing most of my noodling with a Tsumura 24" bar with 3/8" X .063 gauge, full chisel, skip tooth chain. I also have recently added a large set of double falling dogs to the saw, and I think the combination is working better then anything else I have tried. The bigger dogs make it easy to get started on a big or small round, because it catches the end of the round more easily and the bigger dogs holds the saw farther away from the end of the round, giving more space for the noodles to disperse more before entering inside the saw and plugging it. And the skip tooth give more room for the the noodles to clear. I practically never plug the saw, now. This is on my MS 362. In all fairness, my little 261 noodles about as fast, with full comp semi-chisel chain but plugs up a lot worse.
X2. My 361 with 22" bar does great for noodling. Single dog though. My 261 the same result as you with 20" bar.
