So... engine oil vs chain oil

[Travis Edwards]

For me it comes down to the economics, using my ms660 for a week solid, cross cutting & ripping I will use 30 lt of fuel & 12 lt of oil for the bar. By not using bar oil at $2 a lt more I could buy a new bar every 6 weeks of use, which I don't, I just have a saving. Bars & chains get hot but untill the point where smoke starts appearing off the chain there isn't a problem, keeping the chain sharp, bar rails square & correct groove width has the greatest effect on bar life rather than what oil you run.
regards inter

I agree with the keeping chain sharp rails square etc. But lubrication not only extends the life of the bar and chain but also the powerhead. I have tried the "cheaper" option, and have seen a bar destroyed rather quickly because of it (not on my saw but one that was working alongside me, and sharpened/maintained by me from that point on.) It was proven that the motor oil was simply not carrying to the bottom edge of the bar in a great enough quantity to lubricate the chain/bar sufficiently. May have just been the fact it was a husky though...lol

[InterTD6]

I've seen lots of trashed bars & chains on saws that ran bar oil but just wern't maintained, I have never run bar oil & get good life from my bars & no problems with chain link wear, most of the people I know in the timber industry buy a 44 of engine oil for their dozers & use that for 2 stroke lube (25:1) & bar oil. I only differ in using full synthetic at 50:1 because I dont like the smoke.
Chain speed is everything in cross cutting & ripping, I started out falling with a 076 & the cutting speed of that compared with my 660 is like chalk & cheese the 660 being probably 20% quicker, I never hold full throttle at any time, 7/8 cross cutting & 3/4 ripping but always as close to top revs as I can, because it cuts quicker & gets rid of the sawdust in the cut which will bog a saw down, plus its easier on my body because your not leaning into the saw, its cutting on its own.
regards inter

[robduca]

Canola oil is sometimes used as the base oil for "veggie bar oil" , the other base material they use in biodegrable bar oil is animal fat or tallow. Basically all they do with the base is add a tackifier and sometimes they add water and a detergent because of the following.

I've run bar oil in the saw and canola in the Aux oiler. It does not need to be tacky for the Aux oiler because the delivery point is on the cutting side of the bar so it does not have to travel around the nose to get into the action zone. Currently I buy canola on special whenever I can find it but it's still ~$3.50 a litre, I would be very interested to find a cheap bulk source for Canola - are you able to sell any of your oil?

One of the main reasons I want to eventually switch to non-mineral bar oil is my wife wants to use the sawdust I make in her horse stable.

Funny thing about this is the canola oil will be mixed with Tallow. We produce bio diesel out of tallow mainly but we have managed to buy some canola at a reasonable price.

So am i better to mix canola and tallow? What ratio is best?

I will find out if we can sell some canola if u like BobL. How much would you be interested in??

Thanks

Rob Duca

[BobL]

In regards to the revs/speed of cut thing. I often find that I only roughly 3/4 squeeze the throttle trigger and will generally cut as fast as at full throttle and find it cuts more "comfortably" and if the going gets a bit tough or the revs start to drop due to loading the saw up I simply squeeze the throttle a little harder. I also seem to get exceptional service from my saws both in chain life and in powerhead life. I find if your chain is nicely sharpened that it will feed nicely at 80% revs and you can feel when it goes off and will then not cut as well even at full revs.

A pro CS should be able to run on wide open throttle (WOT) for for tank after tank of fuel. They are deliberately designed to run WOT for ~ 2,500 hours before needing a new piston/cylinder . If the throttle has to be feather back to 80% then the CS is just not set up right.

On my 880 milling saw with a modified muffler, I tune it slightly rich to reach a max of ~ 11600 rpm where it is just starting the 4-stroke burble. When running in the cut I always run it on WOT ( I have a throttle lock which I use occasionally see brass knob on MC throttle below) and I just vary the load or pressure on the saw till it seems to be cutting optimally generating nice chips and a good cutting speed. If I have the log on a slope, when the chain is sharp at the start of a slab I hardly have to push at all, I just lean lightly on the saw wrap handle with my knee or though saw and it generally self feeds nicely. As it cuts further down a wide slab the chain slowly gets blunt and I will have to lean a little more but I'm never ever pushing hard.

I have a tacho permanently mounted on the wrap handle (see picture) and note it seems to cut optimally at WOT with the revs between 9.5 and 10.5k. These rpms are not because I back off the throttle but because the self feeding and my leaning load drops the rpm, but I'm still at WOT. If the going get's rough I leave the saw at WOT and just ease up on the pressure. You see I also have a temp gauge permanently on the saw, this also tells me if something is starting to go wrong that is below my ability to hear or feel changes in the saw.



Where I do find the ability to feather the throttle very useful is when starting or restarting or finishing the cut. This is to reduce possibility of the chain coming off at the start, and to reduce the roughness of the cut when starting and stopping mid-slab.

BTW, 2500 hours equals (1.5 billion revs at 10k rpm);
5 hours a day, 5 days a week for 100 weeks, or ~2 years!
or
5 hours a day, 1 day a week for 500 weeks that ~10 years!
or
5 hours a day, 1 day a month for 500 months that ~40 years!

[BobL]

Funny thing about this is the canola oil will be mixed with Tallow. We produce bio diesel out of tallow mainly but we have managed to buy some canola at a reasonable price.

So am i better to mix canola and tallow? What ratio is best?

Sorry if I confused you, biodegradable bar oil is either Tallow based OR Veggie oil based. You can just use the Canola as is but if it were me I would add a little tackifier, you have to read the tackifier info itself to see how much it increases the viscosity and stickiness by and how much you would need.

This calls for an experiment or two - might stay back a little after work next week and do a bit of testing.

I will find out if we can sell some canola if u like BobL. How much would you be interested in??

I'll PM you about this.

[BobL]

I've seen lots of trashed bars & chains on saws that ran bar oil but just wern't maintained,

Yep - I agree there. Maintenance is easily as important as the oil used, maybe more.

I have never run bar oil & get good life from my bars & no problems with chain link wear, most of the people I know in the timber industry buy a 44 of engine oil for their dozers & use that for 2 stroke lube (25:1) & bar oil. I only differ in using full synthetic at 50:1 because I dont like the smoke.

It's not just what you see that worries me, there's a lot of gunk you cannot see as well. Anyway the synthetic is just a way superior lube oil all round.l

Chain speed is everything in cross cutting & ripping, I started out falling with a 076 & the cutting speed of that compared with my 660 is like chalk & cheese the 660 being probably 20% quicker, I never hold full throttle at any time, 7/8 cross cutting & 3/4 ripping but always as close to top revs as I can, because it cuts quicker & gets rid of the sawdust in the cut which will bog a saw down, plus its easier on my body because your not leaning into the saw, its cutting on its own.
regards inter

I've found that unless a tacho is used, holding the throttle at any position near max is very subjective. Operators might think they are at 3/4 throttle but the remaining 1/4 throw does very little significant, maybe adds a couple of hundred rpm and then just stretches the cable or linkages a little. CS engines are like very few other engines and are deliberately designed to run WOT - that is when the max amount of fuel and air gets into the cylinder and it generates the most power, the revs (or working torque) should then be adjusted by varying the load not the throttle.

[Travis Edwards]

A pro CS should be able to run on wide open throttle (WOT) for for tank after tank of fuel. They are deliberately designed to run WOT for ~ 2,500 hours before needing a new piston/cylinder . If the throttle has to be feather back to 80% then the CS is just not set up right.

My saw is set up fine what i was saying is that I dont need to have it singing at full throttle when i can pull the revs back a marginal amount make it more controllable, less irritating to myself and others and should i need to feed it harder due to loading it up then I can. just makes for an all round more pleasant experience.

[InterTD6]

Its just my personal preference to run with those throttle openings, I just reckon that flat out running produces the most heat & shutting down after that might not be the best in the long run, I will only idle a saw for 10 seconds or so after using it to cool it down. After you have had your finger on the trigger of a saw for a few years you know exactly where the throttle position is. Also when ripping if I were to hold full throttle on my 660 I would have to really lean on it to have it cut good & not be bouncing of the rev limiter as only about 12" of the bar is in the log & I would not be able to do that day after day
regards inter

[BobL]

Its just my personal preference to run with those throttle openings, I just reckon that flat out running produces the most heat & shutting down after that might not be the best in the long run, I will only idle a saw for 10 seconds or so after using it to cool it down. After you have had your finger on the trigger of a saw for a few years you know exactly where the throttle position is. Also when ripping if I were to hold full throttle on my 660 I would have to really lean on it to have it cut good & not be bouncing of the rev limiter as only about 12" of the bar is in the log & I would not be able to do that day after day
regards inter

Yep - I agree - trying to cut sitting on the coil rev limit is a complete waste of time, and cutting/milling small stuff does not need WOT with a saw like a 660, come to think of it it probably doesn't even need a 660.
I also use a reduced throttle when milling smaller stuff but I don't mill all that much stuff under 18" becaus that all goes in the chipper so I tend not to think about it.

My point is that is that in big wood don't be scared to run a pro saw, as they say, ". . . like you stole it" (appropriate maintenance etc still applies). On big logs, chains can be set to self feed at WOT such that the rpm of the saw under its own weight and touching the wood drops the RPM about 1000 RPM below max. Then adding a little extra load they will drop more revs. When CS milling the overall load can be in the form of a sloped log, plus that of an operator leaning on the saw. This means the CS miller can then use a throttle lock (ie cable tie or other) and control the revs by saw pressure alone. I'm not a fit person but can still mill like this day after day. I find the hardest physical part about CS milling is lifting and handling the slabs and boards and I usually have a loader with forks on site to help me with that. Running the CS mill is physically the easy bit. What really wears me out is if I have to mill with my finger on the actual CS trigger. This means my arms are spread apart all day making it awkward to apply forward pressure on the mill. A remote throttle located high up on the saw or mill is the single biggest ergonomic improvement CS millers can make to their setup.

Having a temp gauge on the saw is very interesting.

eg I can make the saw temperature increase by doing things like
- letting the chain go blunt
- cutting bigger slabs
- pushing harder
- turning off the Aux oiler
OK - nothing outside what is to be expected there but what will be interesting is, what process causes how much temp increases. I've not recorded any numbers yet because I really need to embed the sensor in the manifold before I get too excited. The temp gauge sensor is currently located on the hottest external part of the engine, just above the exhaust manifold which means that it is still in the cooling air stream hence it is affected by the air movement. This currently makes interpreting the actual temp readings is a bit tricky which is why I need to embed the sensor into the manifold itself ASAIGATI.

However, one thing is pretty consistent and that is that it takes a lot longer to cool down a saw than one might think. On the 076 I used to used 30 second cool down on small log milling and 1 minute on bigger slabs. What the temp gauge indicates is that it takes more than 5 minutes to cool the 880 down to a sort of constant temperature after cutting any sized slab. In this case one might then think that 10 seconds worth of cooling is not worth worrying about but it's not just air alone that cools a CS motor, the amount of cooling provided by the small amout of fuel taken in at idle is still quite significant and 10 seconds can take a lot of heat out of a hot P&C. Anyway for the moment I have increased my cooling down time to at least 2 minutes. I do that by placing the mill on a transportable table and just let it idle down while I mess around with the rails and the slab.

[artme]

That was 20 years ago using the 2nd hand ATF, now its the cheap engine oil, which is probably recycled oil anyhow. Exposure to the nasties in the exhaust fumes are the biggest risk to health.
regards inter

True! most, if not all cheap engine oil is recycled oil, but it must meet certain standards with regards to contaminants and toxins. In Europe nearly every single drop of oil recycled. The cleaning processes thes days are excellent so there should be no problems.