Lotta good info being thrown around. Fiddy on everything for me except the long bar, which is 63. Only reason for 63 was that the deal I found happened to be that gauge.
Ok my opinion.... You're never going to see a strength advantage as a failure always propagates from a defect, as little as a scratch trumps thickness. Weakest link. Oiling difference is meaningless at the oil volume vs speed ratios we are dealing with. A worn .050" bar cleans up nicely, sometimes immediately accepting a. 063" chain. I know my stihl chains in .050" have the driver half at .050" and the other half at .063". So when someone says to you that the gauge changes kerf, hp required, bar binding and drag..... Sorry the ramblings of a anal machinist.
So a thicker piece of metal isn't stronger? Doesn't sound logical to me. Maybe I'm reading the post wrong.
Thicker is stronger but on a stihl chain for example the part of the link that is giving you the tensile strength is the same across all the gauges. But what I was saying is that the .013" variance isn't going to make a difference as to snapping chains. Examine a broken chain under a lens and you will see that the failure wasn't do to a tensile strength failure but rather a defect or fatigue failure. And in that case such a small thickness doesn't help much.
The outside width of the chain is only 13 thousandths wider in 63 gauge compared to 50 gauge. Not enough to talk about. But having snapped over a hundred chains in my career . I can guarantee that 63 ga is stronger than 50 ga. Yes big bow bellied bared racing saws have more actual horsepower and torque than most all fallin saws. But, put a good set of dogs on a race saw and get up on a spring board, 3 boards high. Take your race saw and dog in for starting your Humboldt face on a big hard old growth western hemlock and see how long it takes to rip your chain in half. It happens. I don't know a timber faller running 660 s ect that used 50 ga chain. .063 ga only. I have run 50 gauge on 266 s, 044s, 371+372s ect with 32" bars . And even those little saws would break a chain on occasion. 5 cube saws and bigger would wreck them pretty quick. Especially on 36" bars.
