Thread: Ripping fence posts

Have you considered taking them to a commercial mill? Old fence posts are notoriously hard on chains! You also lose a lot of wood each cut. The cost may well be cheaper than replacing your chain at $30 a pop and possible wear to your bar and sprocket.

Rick

Softbreeze, hows your back? I find a longer bar (eg 36 inch) means far less bending over when cutting fence posts. Both ways, it helps to be able to clip the chainsaw handle to your waist belt. 3/8th is fine. Ripping chain would be ideal, but cross-cutting will do it too.

clip your saw to your belt why?

i riped for a few years with a 60cc stihl with a 20" bar. running 3/8 chian.

take your saw to your vice and get a grinder. cut off 2 teath and lever 2 on. continue this right around teh chian. this will double your output.

always cut streight down dont tilt teh saw roll teh log. this will make life easy.

start on end by cutting streight into teh log from the end. this will give you a grove to start on. turn around and rip along the log keeping the angel as low as possable using the doge in teh top of teh log and plunging in.

if the logs are solid its best to put them up on bolsters and cut right threw with each cut.

you can make a set of ramps to get teh logs up so u aint bending.

you should be able to do 20 per hour pretty easily. we had a bloke woring for us that would punch out 300+ in a day. workign with a 440 with a 16" bar.

You have to counter the saw trying to pull you forward. No problem for a few posts, but all day its a challenge. Either your lower back does this, or with a clip to your belt your legs do this. My legs are far better at doing this. Carl, is your 'post cutting' chain 2 cutters, two missing, two cutters, two missing etc? Why this, not just skip?

if u clip the saw to you cant sit the saw on top of the log. the dogs prevent teh saw from beign pulled forward. i had no trouble ripping all day like this.

that chain is a kindo skip chian but cuts mutch faster. a standard skip chain simply has the cutters spaced a bit farther apart (l extra link between cutters).

Another thing I found with ripping splits is to knock your rakers back more than your normal cutting.

I've cut a few out using my 372, 24" bar and normal crosscutting 3/8 chain. I say a few and don't mean 500 or more. I found it worked fine.

Biggest thing is to find a bit of a set-up which suits you, if you can - get the billet up of the ground, if you can't - accept that body positioning will make you work areas you wouldn't normally work.

It's like anything if you had to do 30 or 40 thousand, yeah you'd push 'em out pretty quick. If you only have to do 20-30 and you have the saw and the billets, why not? it's just your time and a bit of fuel and after all that's what split posts are - a quick cheap post...

I'm with sigidi on this, "knock your rakers back more than your normal cutting."
no need to change angles of cutters either. For a beginner mark your sections & cut lines with a crayon & straight edge. A 90cc saw with a 24" sprocket nose bar & 3/8 chisel chain is probably the best combination for weight & power, modify the bottom dogs so they dig in & rest the saw on the logs while cutting that way your only guiding the saw while cutting & not resisting the pulling forces. Let the saw cut & dont bog it down, you should be only on about 1/2 - 3/4 throttle & not working the saw too hard.
regards inter

Fair enough, I guess we are all shown different ways. But my posts were as straight as an arrow!

Too true - I reckon there isn't such a thing as the definitive way to rip a split post and as we where all taught by different people we'd do it differently. What works for me (getting someone else to do 'em) might not work for you??

Wow, I never realized how good these forums are!!! Thanks guys this is all really helpfull. I have only got to cut about 40 odd 8' posts for a set of cattle yards. I really enjoy cutting timber and sawing, so I thought I'd cut them myself. I like the idea of grinding off a few teeth on the chain... does this provide a real noticeable difference? Anyway it'll be another great day out in the bush!!

attacking the chain with the grinder (removign those cutters adn taking down teh depth gauges) will almost double cuttign speed. and halve the effort involved.

Just a mention that stockyards are usually built with round timber & not split posts, less damage to man & beast if rammed, flung or pushed against.
regards inter

How far would you recommend I take the depth gauges down? The posts are for the outside of the yards with steel cattle rails... makes an excellent yard that is very quiet and strong.

For 40 posts & be able to use the chain again for cross cutting, take .005" off, (say 1 file stroke with a mill file), there is a gauge you can get which covers the cutter & you file off the protruding raker.
regards inter