Cool Hand Luke

By Jeff Petercsak

Use a “Pro” chain instead of a safety chain on your saw. The extra safety measures for kickback are not necessary for use on ice. When buying new chains take your saw to the store to insure a proper fit or you can count the links on your chain.  Although Pro chains will be faster than safety chains, you can still modify them a bit for more speed.

•First remove the rakers. This can be used with a grinding disc on a Dremel or die grinder

•Second with the grinding disc rub off the back corner of the cutting tooth.

                          Standard                Modified

When grinding the chain be careful not to touch the sharp edge, and dig down to the rivets of the chain.

Sharpening Your Chain:

You can sharpen your chain many ways.

•Chain grinder- Get your chain ground down every so often to reset cutting angle.  As this angle will become changed over multiple sharpening this will make it difficult to cut straight.

•File- this can be done with a guide or free hand.

1.Place the saw on a solid surface or in a bench vise to begin, make sure you are using the correct size file for your chain, you can ask this when you purchase your saw, a file handle is also required so that the right pressure to the file can be applied, the file must be pressed hard enough to cut the tooth. Start with the correct position and file drawn back

2.Push the file across the tooth while pushing down and back; also maintain the original angle of your chain. Start again from the beginning of the stroke and repeat until the top of the chain has a straight sharp edge, continue through all the teeth until the entire chain is sharp, if your tooth angles are not the same on both sides of your chain then the saw will not cut in a straight line, most chains have a small line at the back of the tooth to help you maintain the proper angle.

•Chain Saw Sharpening Stones- use these in a Dremel for fast convenient sharpening. Be careful as the more you sharpen this way the more likely you are to change the angle of your cutting surface. Make sure that the sharpening stone is rotating into the tooth.

Standard Chain links

Modified Chain links