Saw not cutting straight

[barbender]

I remove any doubt of whether it needs a touch up or not by always managing to hit dirt, so I have no need to get philosophical about it😁

[LeftFinger]

I don't think this one cuts straight either

[Old Greenhorn]

I think your rakers are too high.

[TreefarmerNN]

"Never dull a sharp saw".   

[Spike60]

Yes Al that is one of the ithings I have change about my maintenance.  Keep it sharp vs waiting too long.  Another tip I picked up here.  It's a lot more fun working with a sharp chain.

I like to touch em up before putting them away at the end of the day. Every saw is ready to  go the next time. LAST thing I want to do before  cutting is to have to sharpen a  chain that was put away dull. 

[Old Greenhorn]

I am firmly with Bob on that one, but probably for different reasons. The result is the same though. For me it's an old firefighter's habit. When the job is done, it's still not over until the gear is cleaned, serviced and ready for the next job. We never left the firehouse after a call until all the gear was completely ready for the next call. Nowadays for me that means getting it sharpened up and cleaned if needed and ready to go again. I don't fuel and refill oil though.
 You (I) never know when a storm is going to do damage through the night and a tree needs clearing. I get calls from neighbors sometimes, and it happens to me too. The last thing I want to do at 3am is sharpen a saw before I can get the job done. It may sound silly to some, but that's the way I think.
 Some habits are hard to break. I haven't run a call in almost ten years now and I still lay out my socks every night so I can find them in the dark and get them on properly without turning on a light.
 I think maybe one reason Bob may do it, and I do also, is that when you have a stable of saws and some get used a lot and some rarely, and others in between, nobody wants to try to keep track of which is ready and which needs work. The easiest (and smartest, I think) is to just have them all ready to go at the same level. If they have an issue, they are 'out of service' until repaired. I only have 7 saws, I can't imagine what Bob would have to do to track his menagerie of wood whackers.

[doc henderson]

all my scrubs go into the drawer, pant shirt pant shirt.  I grab the top two and get dressed going out the door.  My Neice lived with us a bit, and as women may do, asked why she and my wife had to do it that way.  My wife told her, "that is how he does it so just do it that way".  I could get a call and leave, and my wife would ask the next morning, "did you have to go out last night or was I dreaming"?  I wish I had said, "do not worry your pretty little head about it", but I did not.  Most of what happened at my work over the past 30+ years, she has no clue of at least the worst of it.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well I am trying to work a lot of that stuff out of my memory. The ugly's, I call them. But when I was was running, I had a longer list of stuff I would do so that I could dress at various stages as I passed through the house on the way out the door and usually had two very different options depending on whether I was responding to an EMS call or a fire job and which crew I was on duty with that day/night. It also varied by season. In the fall I took all temperature sensitive 'stuff' out of my jump bag and kept it in the house and warm until needed. That lube for NPA's don't work so good when it's frozen.  The goal was always to not wake the family and most times I was successful. Sometimes I would get back into bed at 5 am and the wife never knew I went out, which was best. I never shared what went down, either way. But we did have a code between the wife and I. If she sensed I had a rough job or night, she would just ask how it went and if I was 'OK'. If I said "the patient was cooperative", she knew that meant it was a DOA or similar with nothing we could do. Otherwise any other was was just "all went fine" or "Taxi job". Nobody needs to know that stuff.

[Spike60]

Tom, you are correct in my motivation to stay on top of the chains is there are too many saws around here. Be real easy to lose yract of things.

Same applies to fuel. I usually only keep 4 to 5 saws fueled up at any one time. Usually some sort of 50, 60, 70, cc mix. The "on duty" saws. The rest are dry and empty. Losing tract of a chain is one thing, but I sure don't want to have a saw sitting with a half tank of fuel for who knows how long.

[Al_Smith]

I'm guility of not running the saws dry prior to longer storage .However some times it's not been a problem .Just nearly every large saw,over 100 cc's have sat for 5-6 years since they've been started .One,an 084 Stihl however fired right up after about 5 years more or less of sitting idle .That said I'm pretty good at rebuilding carbs as a result of my lack of paying attention .
Lately however my problem has been with fuel lines degrading and collapsing .Two examples both Husqvarna,281 and 2100 models .Took me a long time to figure that out and the replacement hoses were only about 5-6 dollars . Considering those hoses most likely were OEM and at least 25-30 years old ,not so bad .Saying that if trouble shooting were easy anybody could do it.

[barbender]

I never run my saws or anything else out of gas for storage. I run non ethanol premium in all of my small gas engines and have never had an issue.