How many hours do you guys generally get out of a bar?

[HemlockKing]

Title. Curious

[Raider Bill]

Generally till I run out of money :D :D

[HemlockKing]

I seem to get 300 give or take 100 . Probably the most I got was 500 hours. Is this normal? I'm a self taught guy so I just wanted to make sure I shouldn't be getting more life out of a bar? I clean the rail grooves often, flip the bar, try my best to keep filings from the bar tip sprocket, file bur off. Etc

[sawguy21]

@Raider Bill Or until ya pass out, whichever comes first. 300 hours seems reasonable with proper care and use of a quality bar. Of course bad things happen but bars like chains and spark plugs are consumable.

[Patrick NC]

200-300 sounds about right. Except for the last 2 Husqvarna bars I had which I got a grand total of 20 hours out of. 1 my fault, 1 not. 

[Tacotodd]

In my limited experience, my Stihl bars are much less susceptible to wear than the Oregon bars that I no longer use. You just have to run a spacer of sorts on a Husky, and VERY SLIGHTLY modify & (depending) modify driver link count. It might be the right count, it might not. Try an old chain for certain. I'm still playing with mine, but I've got it all down for my 20" & 28" setups. BTW, they are much harder (my bar rail dresser file won't touch my Stihl like they do my Oregon's). Just make sure that Stihl pt# starts with 3003 if replacing an Oregon that ends with a D009.

[HemlockKing]

Taco, I use to exclusively use Oregon bars, files etc, been using stihl, the steel is just higher quality for sure

[Real1shepherd]

When I was loggin' and using obviously better quality Oregon bars than what they make now.....I looked at it as bars per season, not hrs. I can't ever remember using up more than two bars per saw, per season. So if we're doing the hr thing....that's more like 600+hrs per bar.

But then...the bars can still be dressed and re-grooved by a pro.....so they're not really dead at that point.

Flipping the bars at least once a day, replacing the sprocket tip at the first signs of wear, keeping the rails closed tight for the gauge chain you're using and dressing down any wear lip on the outside rails, help a lot to lengthen the life of your bars.

Kevin

[Skeans1]

My longest life bars have been my sugihara's, after which would been Cannon and finally the Stihl bars. The Sugitand Cannon bars both will out last powerheads the steel is a lot harder in them vs a Stihl bar. As of lately the last 6 months or so I've been running the Stihl light weight 32/36 both of which have put down a lot of footage, but I'm noticing they wear about like an Oregon does or use to. My first sugihara is from 2013 almost 10 years old other then one tip and a couple of light dressings I haven't touched it.

[Al_Smith]

Hard for me to say. I think I spun the tip loose on a cheap Oregon on a PM 610 Mac once .I have a little S-25 DA Poulan I bought in around 1974-75 I've redressed with a belt sander lots of times, still does fine. Hard nose bar BTW ,saw puts out a lot of oil not stingy like they are today .
Once again bringing up the old oil debate but this time about  bar oil .Get stingy with it ,buy more bars and chains .Every saw I own the oiler is set wide open no matter how long the bar is .

[thecfarm]

All I can tell you is a long time, maybe a year? 
I do cut my stumps low, and I do mean low. I am claiming back a grown up pasture and need to bush hog over the stumps.
But I do keep a spare bar on hand. I just head to the tractor shed and put a new one on.

[Al_Smith]

You get in a conversation like this some times it's apples to oranges .Those west coast fellers are cutting live growing soft woods .Those compared to dead standing shag bark hickory or EAB killed ash is like cutting balsa wood .The dead hard woods are like concrete .
Obviously the hard woods would make  more wearing conditions  than the soft woods .Like maybe getting one tank of fuel before you file the chain .Some times not that much .Trying to push a dull chain is not the thing to do, hard on everything including the operator .--2 cents --

[Real1shepherd]

Bait.

It has more to do with plunge cutting into hardwood often, than hardwood versus softwood on bar life. And even more to do with keeping the chain razor sharp at all times along with the right raker height.

When I had my farm in MO, I didn't notice accelerated bar wear with hardwoods versus the softwoods of the PNW.

Kevin

[Al_Smith]

I doubt I've cut more than a dozen pines in my lifetime .They aren't hard but the pine pitch becomes glue if you don't clean it off in a timely manner .Makes me wonder why they have to use glue for plywood .We don't have coast redwoods or Douglas fir here in the corn fields .Got oaks though .big ones .
Never the less it makes a lot of difference on hardwoods if they are living or grave yard dead .I had to remove two relatively young sugar maples 18" about two years ago .They were like balsa compared to a dead ash or shag bark hickory or a dead white oak for that matter .

[Real1shepherd]

Most tree species get 'harder' when they are standing dead and not rotten....softwoods too. Some of the best built homes in the US were framed with Doug fir. Cutting into that wood to remodel or drive nails into, once aged, becomes like an exercise in using dimensional hardwood. DF is extremely strong and the perfect grain pattern for building.....like a fine wine, it gets better with age.

On my farm in MO, I took living and standing dead Burr oak, White Oak and Black walnut. Ohio doesn't have a lock on hardwoods versus the rest of the country that I know of. Now, if we were having a discussion about the hardwood trees down in Australia, they have some real brutes.

Kevin

[Al_Smith]

No of course not nor do we  have all the corn either for that matter .This area I live in is not high impact logging like about 3 counties in southern Ohio .The state is diverse .From the flat lands in the north west to hills like West Virginia in the south .Those are so steep the only thing you can do is farm the tops and the valleys  .In between you have the timber or raise mountain goats .Lots of white tail deer though  .BTW the white pine used in the Stihl Timber Sports series comes from Ohio or did at one time.200 plus  acres of it some where in the eastern side which is pine country . 

[Gearbox]

I don't keep track but I dress them often and keep them sharp . I run them down until the drivers start to bottom out . I blew a tip last winter liming when I cut a limb and caught the next at WOT first time in years .

[ehp]

it depends on what the saw is doing , the landing saw in the summer may go 80 hours to 100 hours then the bar is screwed , the sand here just kills the bar rails , On the saw falling timber I can go 200 to 300 hours on a bar and I'm running the good stihl bars 

[Al_Smith]

Well look at it like this .They claim a chainsaw bar makes a good knife ,machete ,cutting instrument of some kind .So it's not a total loss .

[HemlockKing]

Well look at it like this .They claim a chainsaw bar makes a good knife ,machete ,cutting instrument of some kind .So it's not a total loss .

I never throw away a old bar... that's good hard steel! I'm not sure but I will find a use for it eventually 

[Tacotodd]

YES! Just look back on here at where @joe_indi made an awesome clever from one. They are excellent high carbon steel.