Was limbing with the 194t yesterday. Cutting a bigger round under tension and it briefly binds, i pull straight back and chain jumps off. Take it apart, reset chain, check brake & tension and restart...wont spin. Checked bar (12") and no bend or pinched groove and tried again...same result. Finished up with 261. Stopped at OPE dealer on the way home and asked the mechanic. He said bent drive links and could file them down. Didnt check last night and wondering if worth the effort. $19 for new chain and other was only sharpened twice so lots of meat left on the teeth. Anyone ever do this? Worth the effort? I bent a 16" chain years back and ended up tossing it as links were bent.
If it’s bad toss it. It will just end up wearing the bar out prematurely and keep getting jammed or jumping. Trashing a new chain is hard, but the saw will perform better with new straight chain.
Take chain hold it up stretched out and sight down it, might have to do this a few times to find the deviation. In some cases, if the things are not obviously trashed, you might be able just bend it back by hand. I see a lot of these and on about a 75% basis I can straighten them out. Yes, I check them for free travel down a bar. Now if a link is bent only option is to replace link/s or replace chain. Sometimes it is just the drive link that has burrs on it and a file or rotary tool resolves that.
When I have thrown a chain I find that the drivers are mushroomed from hitting the drive sprocket binding it in the bar. I’ll find the ones that got hammered and grind them flat. Haven’t run into a bent chain.
A bent drive link needs to be replaced but often when a chain is thrown it just buggers a drive drive link or links ( small burs). Use your flat raker file to smooth them up & your good to go. Take a bar off & just pull the chain around by hand, it won’t take long to determine the burred up drive links. File, check, repeat.
Checked the links and could see the little burrs/dings. Filed them and tried it in the bar. Did this several times and finally got them all. PITA to do (my eyes and hands dont work as well as they used to) and thankful it was only a 12" chain. Now it will be the back up chain. Thanks for you help guys!
I had the same thing happen to me a few days ago, after throwing a chain when cutting a lot of small cedar limbs. Some of the drivers got dinged up, really hard to see, but I figured it out after checking and cleaning the bar really good, and still having the problem. I dressed them up with a sanding disk on a grinder by clamping a run of the chain down to my welding table to keep it from jumping around and then hitting the drivers with the grinder. Took me a couple of attempts but managed to get it cleaned up and running smooth on the bar again. If I had actually been trying to make a living with the saw, I would have probably tossed the chain, but since being retired, my time is not so tight that I can't take the time to fix stuff like that.
Kind of the same here. I was going to toss the chain but had time today and fixed it. Good thing i checked and the chain i bought is semi chisel. The one i had was full. Only use full chisel.
I am experimenting with some semi-chisel right now on a couple of my saws. If both are sharpened right, semi-chisel suits me pretty good because I am cutting a lot of dirty wood. I tried one of the Stihl semi-chisel safety chains for my first chain in the 261CM I bought and does good, and it did really good on my last sharpening but I don't think I will buy anymore safety chain, as I don't like having to cut down the extra metal when it's time to do the rakers. And I started out with a semi-chisel on the 462 Cm I bought with the 28" bar. It's done pretty darned good. And I cut a big stump off really low and ended up slicing the dirt some before I was done, and it still cut ok afterwards. I have only sharpened it twice and haven't even touch the rakers yet on that chain. But I have a full chisel, skip tooth chain for it still in the box for back up. I think maybe I will run Full Chisel on some of my saws and possibly keep Semi-Chisel on others.
I had a chain recently that got buggered up when it got thrown and it drove me mad trying to get it to spin on the bar but I guess I was hardheaded and kept trying and I had a "one more time" in me and got it fixed. It gave a proud moment, lol. Like yours, Brad, it had a lot of meat left on the cutters, would have been a shame to give it up. A lesson learned was that it was such a PITA, I decided to be more diligent about doing my cutting more carefully so as to (hopefully) prevent chain throws.
Most of the bent/ deformed loops I see are from the ground guys de-limbing and such so 14-20" bars. Sometimes the big bar chains are burred up on the drive links - so depending which of my shops I am at I use either the Dremmel or very high speed minature air die grinder to eliminate the burrs.
Yeah i couldnt figure out why it wouldnt spin after i reassembled it. Figured it was bent chain. Luckily my OPE dealer was on the way home so i stopped. This was a paying job i was doing cutting up a big white oak limb hung up. Undercutting a limb under tension and it bound briefly and threw the chain. Glad i did save the chain and discovered the other is semi
I use full chisel for the most part. I have a couple semi chisel. Not that often i cut dirty/skidded wood.
Those chains are worth fixing. I have done quite a few. It does help to check the drivers with a magnifier to see which ones are bad. It is like Warner said in his post.
I did a few then tried it while the bar was off the saw. Found more, repeat and kept doing that. It wouldve been easier just to do them all as though i was sharpening it. Chain rides nice and smooth now. Yet again have learned something on the forum!
