Hey I was just doing my Class B fallers cert course (for fire department line construction).
The forest service guys use only full skip chain, and it seemed to work better for falling than my full comp (full house) chain. Field sharpening full skip is a lot easier when your sitting in soot & ash too with half as many cutters.
Any opinions on which to use for carving?
I'm thinking full skip for falling & bucking and full house for blocking out & detail. Honestly, I'm not sure now.
I know there are some current & former fallers on the left coast list. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
During the years I spent falling timber we never NEVER did any field sharpening. We always had our nosebag (small backpack) that we would pack in to our gas and oil location that was nearby the felling area. In the nosebag you had your lunch, some first aid gear, saw parts that are sometimes needed (spark plug, starter rope, sprocket, etc) and your three or four bench grinder sharpened spare chains. The basic rule for deciding which chain to use was simple, most all the timber we fall here on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula is second growth and most of it is less than three feet in diameter for which I would equip my 066 with a 28 inch bar with full comp chisel bit (square tooth) chain. In larger timber,most of the time sitka spruce, I would run up to a 40 inch bar with skip tooth chisel bit (square tooth) chain. The logic is that the longer your bar the more sawdust you are pulling each revolution of the chain. The more teeth on full comp actually cuts too much sawdust for the 40 inch long saw kerf and will bind up the chain and rob you of chain speed and cut slower than skip tooth. The skip tooth has enough room between teeth to allow for the large amount of sawdust generated by the longer bar. Again we never field sharpen while falling timber.
Now we go to the side of the mountain for the logging part. Same saw, 066 stihl, only it is used much less and in more dirty conditions. The firefighters have special carbide chain for dirty conditions from what I hear, but us dumb loggers just use the cheap stuff, full comp round file chain. Mainly because loggers usually don't pack a nosebag and if you do you leave it on the landing (a long way up the hill) so we use round file chain and just field sharpen the saw with a file. Round file chain is just easier to get sharp than square tooth when using a round file and again if the bar is long then skip tooth makes sense. Less teeth would take less time to sharpen but on a short bar you would have to grind your rakers shorter and when you hit rocks you really mess up the teeth with short rakers so you really arn't saving any time.
Hope this helps, it's not writen in stone but try this simple experiment, cut through a nail with both types of chain and try to use your saw, the full comp will cut through the nail and although more dull it will still cut, the skip tooth won't cut after hitting the nail if it even makes it through the nail.
If you can, get the special firefighter chain. But don't expect to be able to sharpen carbide chain with a regular file..........dave
Hope you are doing well. I'm still using your Dremel sharpening trick that you showed me. Also checked out the wolf pack vid you did on saw sharpening.
We do use carbide chain at the fire station for demolition stuff- vent holes in roofs and overhaul after a fire. It runs $80-100 per chain and has to be sharpened with a diamond tipped grinder. We just throw it away when it's missing more than 5 teeth.