computeruser
Feeling the Heat
16" bar on an 80cc saw...maybe for racing, or some unique use - if I was cutting up used telephone poles and running carbide chain, for example.
Back when I did more cutting for cash than I do nowadays, I found that I tended to do my best felling on larger trees with a short bar. 36-40" tree with a 20" on the 7900 or 066, for example, produced better results than I got with a 28" or longer bar. In these instances, you were plunging, doing your back cut from both sides, and having the power to really dig in and cut FAST with that bar was essential to getting everything to fall as desired.
Even for firewood, the shorter bar is nice - you can block your firewood out of a stack of logs still sitting on the trailer without having to hold the saw off from the log you were cutting and without worrying about sticking your bar into the trailer sides or floor, for example. Especially helpful ability to have when the logs were loaded on the trailer with a loader, but you don't have one at home to unload the logs with.
I should also add that the East Coast/Midwest versus PNW logging technique thing has a lot to do with the fact that the "limbing" required of a straight Oak, Cherry, or Maple trunk is of an entirely different sort than you'd see on a conifer in the west. We don't wear calk boots, don't walk down the trunks of our trees and limb off dozens upon dozens of branches. So we don't need a long bar to save bending over as we walk the trunk, because we're probably going to cut the top off just below the first branch, skid out a clear, branch-free stem, and leave the top for the landowner to collect for his firewood. And even when we're doing softwood pulp cutting here in the midwest, and particularly on commercial manage stands, the trees tend to be small enough that you're not walking on them, you're walking alongside of them, and the ability to limb both sides of the tree with a short bar is advantageous and much less fatiguing than with a big saw/long bar, since you're operating in the knee-shoulder height range.
Back when I did more cutting for cash than I do nowadays, I found that I tended to do my best felling on larger trees with a short bar. 36-40" tree with a 20" on the 7900 or 066, for example, produced better results than I got with a 28" or longer bar. In these instances, you were plunging, doing your back cut from both sides, and having the power to really dig in and cut FAST with that bar was essential to getting everything to fall as desired.
Even for firewood, the shorter bar is nice - you can block your firewood out of a stack of logs still sitting on the trailer without having to hold the saw off from the log you were cutting and without worrying about sticking your bar into the trailer sides or floor, for example. Especially helpful ability to have when the logs were loaded on the trailer with a loader, but you don't have one at home to unload the logs with.
I should also add that the East Coast/Midwest versus PNW logging technique thing has a lot to do with the fact that the "limbing" required of a straight Oak, Cherry, or Maple trunk is of an entirely different sort than you'd see on a conifer in the west. We don't wear calk boots, don't walk down the trunks of our trees and limb off dozens upon dozens of branches. So we don't need a long bar to save bending over as we walk the trunk, because we're probably going to cut the top off just below the first branch, skid out a clear, branch-free stem, and leave the top for the landowner to collect for his firewood. And even when we're doing softwood pulp cutting here in the midwest, and particularly on commercial manage stands, the trees tend to be small enough that you're not walking on them, you're walking alongside of them, and the ability to limb both sides of the tree with a short bar is advantageous and much less fatiguing than with a big saw/long bar, since you're operating in the knee-shoulder height range.
