Slabbing cookies with chain mill

[Seaman]

I cut three two inch slabs , 24 inches wide, 6 feet long from a green hickory crotch today, saw cut perfect.
I then laid a 30 inch maple, bout 9 inches thick, cookie on the hickory and proceeded to cut a 2 inch cookie. Saw bar climbed terribly, in the first 12 inches, bowing up in center .

In front of the new customer of course, who is a custom furniture builder. Read future business I hope. He said he wasn't worried, figure it out , and left his wood here.

Do I need to sharpen a chain at 25 or 35 deg for crosscutting?

Thanks,
Frank

[terrifictimbersllc]

I wouldn't think so and wondering if either your chain got dull somehow, or the cookie section was real dry. I don't have a lot of experience with them but once cut some off of a 4' diameter red oak stump with 15 degree sharpened 5 skip chain and it went really well.

[Gasawyer]

Frank I would think that to cut the cookies you would need to have chain angle to at least 25°. Keep us posted on what you find. Tod

[beenthere]

Prolly should know from your previous posts, but can you give us a refresher course on what you are using now, and what sharpening angles you are using ??

;)

[losttheplot]

You might have dulled the cutters on one side of the chain, perhaps ingrown dirt in the crotch you cut previously.

Try taking the saw out of the mill and cutting a couple of cookies from the end of a different log.
If the saw cuts straight its the wood your milling causing trouble, if it cuts crooked its the chain/bar.

Hope this helps.
LTP.

[terrifictimbersllc]

Would you like your stump professionally trimmed?  :D :D

48" Red oak stump sawn with chain filed for ripping, believe it was Carlton ripping chain taken to 5 skip, then ground 15 degree top plate and 75 degree vertical, then filed with a 7/32 file.   



  

One of the cookies. Not sure how it crumbled on drying!  ;D


 

[Seaman]

Going to swap chains, will let you know.

[terrifictimbersllc]

On Monday, I chain slabbed a butt  9 foot by 40 inch ash log and its second 7 foot by up to 50 inch upper crotch  second log.  Actually I was quite nervous beforehand, because of a prior experience ripping ash heartwood by chain,  that in these 2 logs I might meet my match.  The first, opening cut was murder, only about a foot wide, achingly slow, and the bar climbed 3/4".  With my fears, I blamed it on the wood, but with my hope, I put a new chain on for the second cut.  In this, I was just going through the motions.  I felt like a dead man walking.  But it went like butter.  The first chain was ground and filed, and no way, when it first approached the wood, was it not as sharp as the second.  It must have dulled somehow from grit in the first inches of the first cut.  It was difficult wood and I went through 10 chains to achieve 400 sq ft of sawn area altogether.  No way one can depend just on one chain or two.

[Seaman]

So I put on new chain, it cut up on maple cookie, then cut a perfect hickory slab 6 feet long, then cut up on a walnut cookie.
I have cut oak cookies with the same sharpening profile just fine. Only thing I can think of that is diff since cutting oak is that on Oregon's recommendation, I stopped sharpening with a undercut. Can't see how that would affect.
Back at it tomorrow. 

[terrifictimbersllc]

By undercut, do you mean a slight upward angle of the file?

[Seaman]

Yes, but I am sharpening with an Oregon grinder, because I was having a lot of trouble keeping the right and left teeth at the same angle.

[terrifictimbersllc]

Guessing that would be the adjustment where one tilts the gullet upwards 10 degrees toward the wheel?  I do that in all grinding.   

I have found that a filed chain is sharper than CBN ground chains (I use the Dinasaw Cyclone wheel from baileys and really like it because the profile doesn't change).  Not sure about chains ground with a pink wheel as I don't do that anymore.  I can keep consistent angles with an Oregon file guide which has 15 degrees marked on it.  I'm doing it sitting down at a workbench in good light, on a bar clamped in my woodworker vise.   I had more trouble doing it standing.   Agree that consistent top plate filing angle is everything for cuts that don't climb or dive.