Have to cross cut some wood....

[dean]

Some kind of gum tree that I can't split. Any tips on sawing along the grain? I know the saw has to be parallel to the grain, but is there a special kind of chain that's better used for this?

Thanks

Dean

[www]

Hi Dean, this is Dean :-p

You can buy special rip chains for chainsaws, obviously designed to cut with the grain of the wood. Any good chainsaw retailer should sell them, if not, Granberg sells good ripping chain -

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[Dave in Fairfax]

I must be missing something. You wanted to CROSS cut some wood, but you're asking about ripping.... You CAN rip with a crosscut chain, but it'll load up pretty fast. Make sure that your bar is a fair amount bigger than the log so that you can leave lots of room to clear the trash near the powerhead.

Dave in Fairfax

[barry]

Depends. You could buy ripping chain, as others mention. Different cutter-geometry: some like scribing knives & some like chisels with edge perp. bar.

The chips will be _much_ longer than when cross-cutting, and pretty stringy. Some saws will clog up around the sprocket in seconds. Some will just spit them out. Try it. One little saw I have is _much_ better at ripping than a much bigger, more powerful one.

At the least, figure on not cutting that close to the engine. And, make sure that chain-oiling is ok.

HTH, J

[George]

Turners rip the side of a piece, not the end. They keep the speed up for best shaving ejection and walk the bar through the cut for less resistance, tilting nose down up to half way along the bar, then rocking to nose up. The middle trim follows, with bar parallel, then the motion is repeated until the piece is cut through.

Skip-tooth chain works well, but it has a tendency to bounce a bit when returning to cross cuts, and can fatigue the operator with its rate of feed.

Ripping chain is more suitable to chainsaw mills where endgrain is the target. it sucks at anything else.