Thread: Chainsaw oil.

Yep cheaper the better. I bought some very sticky chain oil once and had chains binding, and for the first time in 30 years I had a sproket tip bugga up then another. So I mixed it 50/50 with cheap engine oil to use it up. Then went back to engine oil or used hydraulic oil what ever I could get cheap.

My vote is for not using it. Having analysed some of this stuff and knowing what's in it my preference is it doesn't matter how cheap it is I don't want to mill in a constant fog of it.

as a tree lopper starting out, i used sump oil (used oil from a mechanic) for 7 or 8 years, daily. it was looking after an engine just before i got it so reconed it could (and did) look after the chain. problem was the black spray i would leave around.

This topic has been gone over quite a few times in the past, If you dont mind wasting a dollar of two every time you cut then bar oil if for you, but if your like me, use a saw professionally & have done a few simple sums to work out that it costs more to use bar oil in the long run, then the cheapest new engine oil is the stuff to use.
regards inter

Originally Posted by BobL

My vote is for not using it. Having analysed some of this stuff and knowing what's in it my preference is it doesn't matter how cheap it is I don't want to mill in a constant fog of it.

Thats probably fair enough Bob, because you use canola, but would chain oil be any better for you than engine oil?

Originally Posted by glenn k

Thats probably fair enough Bob, because you use canola, but would chain oil be any better for you than engine oil?

I think most chain oils have some slight advantage over engine oil for higher chain speed saws because more chain oils will survive the trip around the bar nose and stay on the shain. It's also not worth loading the chain on a chain saw up with more of any oil on the non cutting side of the bar because more oil just comes of at the nose. A good example of this the Husky 3120 which can push out up to 54 mL/min but much of that never makes it around to the cutting side of the bar and great gobbies of oil drip off the nose and an Aux oiler is still need with this saw when running a mill. The 880 only delivers a max of 38 mL/min but about the same amount of oil gets around the bar nose as the 3120.

Dedicated slabbers have slower chain speeds and since the centrifugal force depends on the chain speed squared they can use a less sticky oil like engine oil. I understand the pressures between the bar and chain are higher with slabbers than CS's, so that is maybe why veggie oils are not up to being used on a slabber.

On my mill I only use canola in the Aux oiler but still chew thru a fair bit of bar oil in the saw itself because some still comes off at the nose before even making it around to the cutting side. I understand where you guys that earn a living from milling are coming from and keeping costs down is always tough. I'm a bit surprised that there are not more industrial (ie non-food-grade) sources of canola around. One guy in the States gets non-food grade Olive oil for about $2 a gallon - that would be excellent stuff to use because it has an even higher specific heat that canola and much higher specific heat than mineral oil. A high specific heat removes more heat from the bar than a low specific heat lube.

This topic is discussed ad nauseum on the arboriste site where bar oil is one half to one third our prices but a lot of operators are switching to the veggie oils or a 50/50 mix. I've been meaning to catch up with RobD and try some canola/tallow mix which could be an interesting experience.

i buy 10l drums of 20w40 from supper cheep for $30 each. been using this oil for teh past 4 years. and have not seen excess bar wear. i go threw an average of 1 of these drums a week. compared to stihl bar oil at $33/5l drum then its 1/2 teh price.

in a year ill save $1872 a year in oil. how many bars is that?

caltex chain and bar $60 for 20L drum as has a tack agent in it

Originally Posted by BobL

[snip]. I'm a bit surprised that there are not more industrial (ie non-food-grade) sources of canola around. One guy in the States gets non-food grade Olive oil for about $2 a gallon - that would be excellent stuff to use because it has an even higher specific heat that canola and much higher specific heat than mineral oil. A high specific heat removes more heat from the bar than a low specific heat lube.

[snip]

Hi Bob. I don't think Olive (while smelling good) would be as good a lube as high Erucic acid canola or sunflower oil as IIRC it doesn't have near the film or shear strength of the other two. As CJR said, Caltex @ $60/20 litres incl. GST, or if in Melbourne call Tru Blu oils, last year their bar and chain oil was down around $46/20 litres. I'd be a little concerned using engine oil or any oil without a little tackifier in it, particularly on long bars. Talking to the blenders I know, you don't need much (some have too much) but a little tackifier is usually needed. Bar and chain oil isn't anything trick, but as Bob said the tackifier helps it stay put around the tip and onto the bottom rails where it's actually needed.

It sounds like some of you have looked into this, so can I ask "if ALL the oil was flung off going around the nose, would it cause significant wear to the chain/ bar?" (I'm sure we can suppose this isn't the case even with the thinnest of oils, that All is flung off.) Every half a revolution it gets more oil pumped back on. I compare that to my moto cross bike's chain (plain not O-ring) that gets a squirt of oil every 5hrs of riding if it's lucky. Relatively speaking the chain on my saws are bathed in oil going through 100 ml every 1/2hr of operation. I'm just questioning asking a salesman/ manufacturer, "Do I need to buy this more-expensive-oil or will this cheaper engine oil do?" as opposed to "expreince" which has shown me that there isn't significant wear/ strech in a chain by the time you've filed the teeth away, even when using old/ used engine oil. Hope this doesn't come across as being too opinionated but I feel the gist of the thread was "Will engine oil look after my chain?". BTW I use Stihl bar and chain $120/20lt now that I can afford it.

I buy from Otech in Deception Bay (nth Bris) somewhere between $60 and $70 for 20litres, makes it about $3.50/litre, I wouldn't bother with engine oil used or otherwise, too many nasties in the used

Pete

SK, first there are a couple of significant differences in your bike chain vs a saw chain.

Your bike chain is a roller chain where the cylindrical rollers engage with the sprocket teeth and any motion or movement is occurring between the rollers and their pins within the roller itself, the roller sits stationary on the sprocket and gear.
The lubricant needs to deal with the small relative motion within that environment, although I'm guessing the point pressure loadings would be quite high.
When you lube your chain the oil needs to get inside that roller to do it's job so it has to be thin enough to get in, and once in stay put, but it is relatively sealed by the roller itself.

A saw chain isn't a roller chain so there is inherently more friction to deal with, then there's the sliding action of the drive dogs within the rails (friction) and the cutters and pre-sets across the top of the rail, (more friction) as well as the roller bearing in the sprocket nose needing lubricant too.
Everything that needs the bulk of the lubrication is totally exposed and external (OK, the pins need a little lovin too ) and liable to fling off as we know.

Bar oil isn't very thick initially either. (pre-tackifier)
OK, there are different viscosities available, but generally it's either an ISO 100 or 150 oil (it has a viscosity of either 100 or 150 cSt @ 40*C) which are equivalent to SAE 30 or 40 oils.
How much of that oil makes it around the nose without any tackifier I'm not sure, I've never tested it and how little you can get away with before really increasing wear I honestly don't know. Bob may chime in here as he has done temp tests, at least when running canola and the chain and bar were running significantly hotter with the canola. Whether that was due to a lack of AW and EP additives (and canola has very good base oil properties to begin with, I believe it's quite superior to a Group I mineral oil which is all that's used for bar oil) or lack of tackifier I'd only be guessing.
As an oil, engine oil would be superior to bar oil and a 75W-90 GL5 gear oil would be much better again in terms of reduced wear, they are much more sophisticated oils than poor, simple bar and chain lube. We are really being taken for a ride with bar oil costs, although it may come back to volumes/economies of scale, or at least that's what the blenders will claim.

I'd love to run canola, but I just can't buy it cheap enough and I'd still have to fork out for the right addy package just for my own piece of mind. My bars aren't cheap, (whose are ?) and I go through enough chain as it is and we all know how much more we pay for these 'consumables' here than the US.

Having said all that there are plenty of blokes running straight canola in the US with excellent results and on long bars to boot, but they aren't cutting tough old Aussie hardwood and generating bucket loads of heat, (If I hear one more North American say "sharpen your chain !" when they see a vid of an Aussie cutting timber I'll scream, they just don't get it) or milling it either.

BTW, Stihl B&C lube is blended/bottled by Castrol here, it's the same stuff as in the Castrol bottle

Originally Posted by tdi-rick

Bar oil isn't very thick initially either. (pre-tackifier)
OK, there are different viscosities available, but generally it's either an ISO 100 or 150 oil (it has a viscosity of either 100 or 150 cSt @ 40*C) which are equivalent to SAE 30 or 40 oils.

I think there is some confusion between the needs of slabbers and CS millers. The centrifugal force generated at the nose is proportional to the square of the speed, and the radius of curvature of the nose. Assuming slabbers run around half the chain speed of a CS, they can use use a bar 4 times less stickier than a CS - which is why they can use engine oil. Some small CS mills also use smaller radii noses which just adds to the problem.

Bob may chime in here as he has done temp tests, at least when running canola and the chain and bar were running significantly hotter with the canola. Whether that was due to a lack of AW and EP additives (and canola has very good base oil properties to begin with, I believe it's quite superior to a Group I mineral oil which is all that's used for bar oil) or lack of tackifier I'd only be guessing.

My temperature tests were purely with the aux oiler on or off. Turn the aux oiler off and the engine temp went up - nothing dramatic - maybe 10ºC. I see difference of less than 5ºC in engine temp between using canola and regular bar oil in the aux oiler.

I'd love to run canola, but I just can't buy it cheap enough and I'd still have to fork out for the right addy package just for my own piece of mind. My bars aren't cheap, (whose are ?) and I go through enough chain as it is and we all know how much more we pay for these 'consumables' here than the US.

One issue is getting hold of non-food grade canola. If Coles can sell food grade canola for $2.85/L the cost of non-food grade should be less. If I could get it at say $2/L and add a bit of Tallow (That's all they do in something they call Motion Lotion in the US) then I'd be doing it in the saw as well.

Originally Posted by BobL

[snip]

My temperature tests were purely with the aux oiler on or off. Turn the aux oiler off and the engine temp went up - nothing dramatic - maybe 10ºC. I see difference of less than 5ºC in engine temp between using canola and regular bar oil in the aux oiler.



One issue is getting hold of non-food grade canola. If Coles can sell food grade canola for $2.85/L the cost of non-food grade should be less. If I could get it at say $2/L and add a bit of Tallow (That's all they do in something they call Motion Lotion in the US) then I'd be doing it in the saw as well.

Ahh, I thought you were getting over 10*C diff between running canola and normal bar oil, my bad.

The tallow in the oil thing, that isn't being confused with using tallow and esterfying it, is it to create a very good base oil ?
There are some 'green' oil producers in the US that use tallow just for that (G-Oil ??) rather than, say HOBS (High Oleic Base Stocks) vegetable oils. Just a different take on using a waste or renewable to create lubricating oils.

Wow, canola is more exxy here on the East coast. The cheapest I've seen it was $3.30/litre at Coles (made in Malaysia ??!!) and $3.50/litre at Woolies (Aussie made)
I found one presser that sells by the 20 litre or 220litre drum and 'industrial' level of filtering, but they are a few hours drive away and I haven't enquired into freight costs from there. It's annoying when some of my customers are broad acre farmers and often grow canola but I can't find anyone that presses it.