I drive by a little group of hedge/Osage Orange/Bois d’ arc trees by the highway everyday and noticed a few weeks ago a tree service had cut one side of a dual trunk tree down to keep it out of the power lines. The closest house is about 1/4 mile away so I was unsure exactly who the land owner was. One day this week I saw the owner trimming a fence line by the trees so I did a quick u-turn tho talk to him. I asked if he had plans for the wood and he said I was the third person to ask him about it. He declined to let the others have it but I guess the third time was the charm. He told me where the gate was and said I could drive right up to it. I told him I’d be back the following day with a trailer and some saws. I was so excited that I went home and sharpened the chains on my MS250 and MS391. I felt like a high school boy getting dressed up to pick up my prom date . The next day I drove in and got my first close look. That stuff was WAY bigger standing next to it than it was driving by it at 55mph! The larger rounds were 18-20” in diameter. I started cutting it up and loading it on the trailer. I loaded the trailer with all that I thought it could handle. It’s just a little 5x10 single axle utility trailer. There was a lot more there than I had realized and I’ll have to go back for at least another load and a half. I’ll get the rest of it this next weekend.
Size is always deceiving when you drive by it quick. Good on you for asking as the worst thing they could say is no. My holy grail score if any exist around here. Congrats on your first. Id be hurrying back sooner for the rest.
Nice find! Good to see someone else using a Timberline sharpener, too. I hand file mostly, but like the Timberline every few sharpenings for keeping everything consistent. Then there's a grinder for chains I really bung up on metal or rocks.
That's a great score. Sure happy you got permission to grab it. We have a little bit a friend gave us in OH on the way back from a Backwoods Savage GTG in '22. Got the chunks into a couple 55gal drums, should be dry now...lol
I’ve been using the Timberline for about 9-10 years now. It seems like every year I figure out a new “trick” to make set up and using it easier. It’s just in the last year that I feel like I really have it dialed in.
The biggest thing that helped me with consistency is, I made a shim 0.055" thick out of brass, longer than the Timberline body and narrow enough at the top to fit inside the width of the top channel, but tapered wider at the bottom so it hits the cutter teeth on both sides of the chain. So the end profile is a trapezoid, if that makes sense. For 3/8 pitch chain, that puts the cutter in the exact same place you would run your file with 20% of it above the tooth to get a good hook. Smaller pitches need a thicker shim, and if you like more or less hook you would also need to adjust the shim thickness. I set the Timberline lightly on the bar, slide the spacer in so that it's bridging at least three cutter teeth, then clamp the Timberline down as it rests lightly on the shim. You need to have it barely touching, so when you pull the chain forward it spits the shim out. That and using a pair of cheap brass slide calipers from Amazon to match the cutter lengths from side to side have made a big difference in getting the chain consistent and then keeping the jig placement and tooth profile consistent from one sharpening to the next.
Sure. I'm going to try to sneak these in while the forum is acting civil. LOL. I made my first shim out of two pieces, just to test the concept, because that's what I had. You see it has to be narrower at the top to fit all the way up into the bar channel on the jig, but it still has to be wide enough at the bottom to catch the tips of the cutters on opposite sides of the chain. In the second photo, the shim is made for a different pitch chain, so it is thicker, but it shows the true shape better: To use the shim to set the jig up, you just pick the thickness that matches the chain pitch (more detail about that just ahead) and lay it across three cutter teeth on the chain: Then just sit the jig down on the shim evenly but LIGHTLY, and clamp it down. After it's clamped, pull the chain forward towards the bar tip, and the chain will drag the shim out. Then you set the stop and go to sharpening. It's hard to see in the photo, but this is the newer two-piece stop - MUCH easier to use than the older one-piece one, and worth the $15 it costs to get the newer syle.: The original shim I cobbled up for the 3/8 pitch chain I usually use worked so well I made shims for my other two pitches. Since I knew it was going to work I splurged and bought solid stock to make these out of. The 3/8 is 0.065" thick (not 0.055" as I originally posted - I misremembered!), 0.075" thick for 3/16 pitch, and 0.100" thick for 5/32 pitch. You'd think the math would work out more evenly split, but these thicknesses work for the amount of hook I prefer on each chain. You can easily increase or decrease the thicknesses to get the hook profile you want, or even make several for each pitch if you have different chains for different wood. I'm usually cutting different species on any given chore, so I just use one profile that feeds well but stays sharp in hardwoods.: While I'm taking photos and typing, I thought I'd include a couple other tips that make using the Timberline easier for me. The calipers are just a cheap pair from Amazon, two for $8 or some such, but they are small enough to work well measuring cutter teeth and getting them even from one side to the other. I try to sharpen the side that looks like it will need the most taken off first, set my calipers to that length and lock them in place with a piece of black tape, sharpen all teh cutters on one side, then just match the other side to that. The carbide cutter bits throw some hideously sharp, fine shavings, and I used to feel them hitting my face and arms. I definitely encourage using safety glasses and latex or work gloves because of this, but I also learned to oil the bit every few teeth to mitigate the flying shards. Any light oil will work, 3-in-1 or ATF works well, and I had an extra needle oiler bottle that turned out to work really well for this. You need to oil the cutter shaft anyway, so keep the bottle handy and oil the cutter teeth every so often to bind the chips up and keep them from flying everywhere. I also keep a chip brush handy to sweep away the accumulated chips as needed: I hope this helps someone else! Good luck!
