Too all hand filers..........

Assuming you are talking about the top plate, you should be fine. The 30° angle should cut a little faster, but it will dull a little quicker as well. You can refile it back to 25°, but you're going to waste valuable tooth real estate in doing so.

I touch up my chain after every use with a hand file, only takes a few min. After 10 tanks of gas through my 5100 my chain still fills as sharp as it was when new. I use oregon 72LGX chain and the oregon file. I think there are better files out there though but the oregon's are easy to find.

No.. my chain stays sharp. I even cut the log's in half with the saw to make it easer to load on my truck before I take it to the splitter. I'm very happy with this chain. I'm used to using the 91s chain on my craftsman which dull's quickly. Still throws out big noddles & chunks of wood.

You should be cutting more like 10-12 trees(ok maybe less) before you sharpen. Are you sure you aren't hitting the dirt occasionaly?

I moved to Pennsylvania from Texas, convinced that no wood could be denser than bois d arc (osage orange). Then I put my saw on a locust deadfall right about dusk. Sparks were shooting off the teeth! Had to resharpen every third cut in an 18 inch log. I set them aside for very cold nights.

First of all I'm no expert but imo the 25*cutter while not as sharp as the 30* may last longer...try it out. The critical part is that both side are the same.

If I'm just touching up in the field, I do it by hand with a gentle touch. If I'm serious about sharpening the chain, I do it on my bench at home and use a guide. Rick

You can't hit the dirt at all and expect to maintain a sharp chain. Most people use bars that are too long, and that not only robs the saw of power, but gets you into problems like you appear to be having. If you focus on anything, it should be keeping the saw out of the dirt at all costs (well, almost all costs). Like my daddy always says, "you should always be sharpening a sharp chain, and never a dull one." That's fantasy land for most of us, but you get the idea. As savageactor says, angle consistency is less important than having all the cutters be filed to the same angle. You can even have the cutters on one side shorter than the ones on the other side and not notice it--so long as your rakers are filed down relative to the length of the cutter. You use a raker gauge to measure that. But I'm getting ahead of myself--that's covered next semester in Sharpening 102.

Husky guides have a couple of settings- one more aggressive than the other- for softer wood, IIRC. You can go from one to another at the cost of eating a bit of the tooffs.

I picked up one of these file guides on Ebay for about $25 bucks, looks to be about the same as the Granberg model.
It' nicely made, all die cast aluminum.
Tried it on a few chains ans seems to do a nice job, I haven't used the saw to cut any wood yet but the chains seem nice and sharp.

My father could never sharpen a chain so I bought him one of those contraptions. He couldn't sharpen a chain with that either. I used it a couple of times when I was trying to teach him how to use it. I have to say that it does work and was good to get the chain back to where it should be but that said, I always just file freehand.

This time of year if your hitting the dirt, you are probably hitting frozen dirt. Frozen dirt will dull your chain much much faster than you expect (as I have discovered the hard way many times). The only things that will take the edge off a chain faster are rocks, steel, gravel, and other such hard items (like the cinderblock someone put in my woodpile...1st test cut on a new chain was all it took to find it).

Its hard to get a good edge back on a really dull chain with a hand file, if the cutters are really beat up it may be better to have the chain ground to get it back into shape.

My father was pure murder on his chains. He'd get it hot by cutting with it dull and then run the hot chain into damp ground, mangling and tempering the teeth. The file would get a shine on it as it skipped along the hardened teeth.

Sounds to me like the OP is using an excessively long bar... I use a 20" on my 7900 unless I'm into really BIG wood - i.e. 36" or better.... The short bar is much easier to control, the saw balances better, and it screams through the cuts... In theory you should be able to go through logs at least 2X the bar length, but I find the bucking teeth on a 7900 take a couple inches off that, and that it's easier to line up the cuts if you stick to about 1.5 x the bar length before mounting the big bar, but still a 25" - 30" log should be no problem for a 20" bar.

I freehand sharpen with a Husky file handle that has 25* and 30* angles molded into the shoulders of it - the Oregon chain uses the 25* side... (Minor note - the chain specs should be on the side of the box, listen to them, not what your buddy says!) but it doesn't matter that much as others have said. I would probably just start trying to gradually bring the angle back to 25* as I was sharpening rather than taking a lot of meat off the chain trying to do it all at once.

As to the file guide that Wes had the picture of, I've got one too, and don't use it... It works, but seems like to much "fiddle factor" to get it set up and adjusted, and then go through each tooth with it, IMHO free hand is faster / easier. I feel the same about most all the file guides of different sorts that I've seen, but others opinions may vary.

Gooserider

Some chains have a file guide mark on the cutter links, which makes it easy to hand file close to correct. I've been cutting for 18 years, minimum 10 cords/yr, and never yet have noticed a difference if some cutter links are longer/shorter than others. If you hand file, doesn't make a difference. If you machine grind, then it makes a lot of sense to grind them all to the same lengths, which can waste lots of usable chain. Have to pay attention to the rakers, and if you don't file them down as needed, performance will really slow and work will go up, until the chain will barely cut. For a hand file, I use the Pferd Automatically files the rakers to the correct depth as you file the chain.

Shipper50 said:

I bought a stump vise...

Click to expand...

I've been threatening to buy one of those for the last 30 years and just haven't gotten round to it. I have seen them in use and they can improve your sharpening. They might even encourage you to touch up the chain more often, keeping it sharper.

Since my eyesight is degrading, I probably should get one as it's getting harder to hold the saw and be the right distance for my eyes to focus. I file mostly by braille now.

What, nobody makes trifocals in Canada? Been wearin' them for about 5 years or so now. The old bifocals that served me so well for many years prior started to drive me me crazy trying to peruse things on store shelves...that "middle distance" had detiorated badly. Now my tri's are my everyday, and I have bi's for the computer/shop table/desk type work. Loss of focal range and loss of night vision seem to come with the territory. I remember many years ago being in the car with my mom one evening and her remarking on how she could tell her night vision and her peripheral vision weren't what they once were. I understand, mom. Rick

Can't deal with the lines so I wear progressives. Only prob is that the sweet spot is smaller than a dime and invariably that's right where a drop of sweat landed. Nothing worse than an old man doing the funky chicken, trying to zone in on the sweet spot.