okay dawn so i have heard yeah i'm still figuring it out
you still figured out how to work your camera here buddy see
oh god so i know how to do this i know you know how to do this but one of the main
questions that i have from friends is what is the appropriate there we are tension for a chainsaw
chain i've heard a couple things like you know i have heard that oh this one see that seems a
little bit tight to me but some somebody told me once you know you should just just be able to see
you know the bottom tooth on there so what do you think is the best way to tighten the chain
and for how tight it should be okay dave you're on the right track you're you're pretty accurate
this saw here yeah i it might be a little tight it is a a little slightly tighter than it should be
although it is uh set at a good tension dave okay so you say it's the right tension yeah what does
that even mean so what that means dave is i'm pulling the chain yeah half an inch okay and
it springs back on its own okay well does that have anything to do with how old the chain is
or like is it any less springy depending on the age of the chain or the wear of the chain
absolutely dave so if you buy a brand new chainsaw or you buy a new chain for yourself okay
chain's brand new out of the box you have to actually put it a little tighter than what this
saw is why is that because a brand new chain will stretch within the first 10 to 15 minutes of use
okay okay so if i put a new chain on for a customer and i know they're going out
with it i put it on a little tighter okay especially if i know the customer doesn't
really know how to use chainsaws or doesn't have the same experience as is what i would
and the reason i do that is because i know the chain will stay at the proper tension after he's
used it for a little while okay so you're assuming that he isn't going to check the tension after
that 10 to 15 minutes and that it should be right in that kind of sweet spot that we're looking for
um you know after that 10 to 15 minutes absolutely dave but i always educate my customers okay
okay i put on if i put on a new chain i educate them look this is the tension you want
do that a couple more times there so you can just barely see i go for the half inch pull down
okay and then with the half inch pull down it looks like you can just see almost the top of
that the drive length the drive link okay so you were accurate in your in the introduction of the
video date okay you know you've learned that over the the months you've spent with me yep
uh but again uh i'll just reiterate what i said when i send off a a chainsaw with a new chain to
a customer i educate them this is the tension you want right your chain will get loose in the first
10 to 15 minutes stop your saw i tell them let it cool do not adjust your chain when it's hot okay
go ahead and thank that dave um so i think when it's hot it's stretched out exactly right exactly
right so why do you think you wouldn't want to adjust it when it's hot they even stretch
so what's that what's that going to do then so once the chain cools down you're worried
that if so if you had it let's say a little bit on the tight side when the chain was hot and the
saw has just been running and you go and you know it's a little bit too tight i feel like
there might be some damage caused once that chain contracts from cooling absolutely dave
so what's going to happen is if you adjust your chain to this tension when it's it's super hot
like you said it will contract when it cools is there an issue with that though
there is so if your chain is too tight what's going to happen is you're going
to wear out your bar prematurely and the chain prematurely even if your saw is oiling
the bar and chain properly okay okay it's going to create more friction because everything's tight
now the extreme the extreme damage that you will get if you over tighten a chain or you
over tighten it when it's hot yep especially here in the winter we get cold winters yep
that chain could contract so much yeah and i've seen it you've seen this i've seen this to where
the crankshaft snapped come on remember that 455 i showed you in the shop here with the snapped
crankshaft yes i don't know if you took that home if i sold that to you or not i don't remember but
i have a chainsaw that came in the shop a snapped crankshaft and that's all from
having the chain too tight so you're telling me there's enough force on that chain when
it contracts when it's hot that it'll snap the crankshaft yeah once it contracts yes
so it cools down and it and it snaps the crank absolutely it's kind of hard to believe yeah so if
you live in north america where it gets cold here yeah it's not that hard to believe so a lot of the
viewers here today live in hotter climates they don't see minus 30 40 degrees celsius
right celsius with the sea yeah not fahrenheit um so it's extremely cold it gets super tight
and what happens is people will actually go and use the chainsaw with a super tight
chain right so they're using it it's heating up they're using it it's extremely tight yep
and then poof the crankshaft breaks well and some of the newer saws dave the metal
is not as strong as it was in older chainsaws where the manufacturing process was different
right so okay i guess my next question is so let's say it's minus 30 celsius for those of us up here
in canada should you be setting your chain any looser than if you're in a hotter climate or
if it's in the summer here when it's 30 degrees celsius uh not necessarily so what you would want
to do or what i do is i'll adjust my chain at the temperature that i'll be using the saw okay
so let's say i had this saw stored in my basement to keep it nice and dry and warm and winter right
i would not adjust it in my basement in the heat what i would do is bring it outside in the shop
or in the shed where it's cold right so that when i adjust and i'm adjusting it
at the cold temperature then when i go to use it right it'll stay
at that tension right however if the saw warms up and it's extremely loose like let's say the
chain's loose i'm i'm still cutting wood all day right the chain's super loose because it it's hot
you can adjust it hot but if you do it hot be super careful that you don't go too far too far
right so there's a bit of an acclimation process that you do kind of like if you own a fish you
you drop it in the in the tank with uh you know to get used to the temperature it's kind of like
the same thing exactly exactly so cool like climbing a mountain and getting yes so to get
the oxygen going okay cool so just the half inch mark that's another demo here now are you doing
half inch from the bottom or the top and does it matter uh you can go from the top here if you want
okay oh there it is so i just saw the tip of that drive link and you know what guys is a drive link
is approximately half an inch in length okay so let me see that again because i didn't know that
so that drive link under here is approximately half an inch
so if you're just seeing the tip of it you should be good to go
now you told me and now i know this for the viewers you told me that there was a special
trick that you should be doing when you tighten the bar of a chainsaw and that's to do with
the um how high you have this or where this sits in order to make sure that you don't wreck
anything when you tighten the bar so what i'll do here dave is i'm going to loosen the chain okay
and uh yeah see right there that's what i'm talking about and here's the trick dave
is anytime you adjust a chainsaw and by the way
i have made a video in the past and the link is in the top right hand corner of the
screen here at the info button yep and i've also put the link in the video description
always hold your bar up why because what can happen is if you don't hold the bar up and you
tighten up the nuts is the chain might be looser than it should be see how looser that chain is
than previously and i have not adjusted i have not played with the adjustment screw here
okay so you haven't touched the adjuster there no i haven't and you can see it goes down
further yeah way more than if the bar is up okay so why don't you just tighten it with why don't
you just adjust it with the bar all the way down what's the difference if you adjust it with the
bar down yep and you tighten up the nuts yep you might find that after a very small amount of use
it's loose again and another tip okay another tip guys after you hold the bar up and you tighten up
the nuts just the the motion of tightening up the nuts yep will tighten up the chain a bit as well
okay so if you adjust your chain but you haven't tight tightened up the nuts and you're wondering
why is the chain tighter after i tighten up the nuts well that's normal okay so you want to take
that in consideration that when you check your tension here holding the bar up that when you
tighten up the nuts that chain will get tighter just a little bit just a little bit okay so it
may be just a little bit looser exactly than what you think it was and or where it should be and
then you tighten the bar nuts and it should bring it in so um now the theory behind tightening that
looks good there the theory behind having the bar at the top or as high as it goes is that because
when you're using the chainsaw you're pressing down exactly okay exactly so even though you've
tightened up the nuts the the bar will want to work its way up got it right to the top right and
when the bar is up the chain is slightly tighter and then you're keeping the same tension from
adjusted the chain right when you're using the chainsaw okay so you want to adjust the bar for
the optimum tension because that's what it's going to see when you're pressing it into the wood
absolutely makes sense to me and another tip is regularly check your chain tension
a good time to check that is when you stop to refuel and re-oil your saw right same so when you
have it on its side yeah and you're done putting the oil and the gas in it and the bar oil i should
say um that's when you check your tension exactly and probably a good way to know actually too sorry
to interrupt your don probably a good way to know if you're actually if the oiling system
is working on your chain as well absolutely because you will see traces of oil on the
chain drivelings right what i'm going to say now might sound contradictory
but when you refuel and re-oil your barn chain are warm and if your chains excessively loose you
want to readjust it even though i said you shouldn't readjust it when it's warm right
if you do readjust it in between the oiling and gassing and you cannot wait half an
hour for it to cool down because you're cutting wood exactly if that's the case
adjust it in small increments keeping in mind that you're keeping a good tension even after
it's cooled down right okay so you don't want to adjust it when it's hot and just bring it right
tight to where it's just half an inch because if you're done cutting that in that tension still
there and you're in you're in the cold weather months the chain may contract way too much so
you just need to keep in consideration if you're making adjustments in between fueling and you're
cutting still you're gonna be cutting all day make sure that it's a little bit looser than um what it
should be in terms of storage exactly depending on how hot your barn chain are got it now this
all comes with years of experience right so the more you use a chainsaw the more you will learn
about that i highly recommend people watching today you can take a basic chainsaw course
they'll teach you all these things they'll even give you a certificate i highly highly recommend
that it's usually about a hundred bucks okay and some good information especially if you're going
to be operating one of these absolutely good that's why i recommended that it would even be
good for you to get that i'm looking into that awesome for sure is there any other tips that
uh i mean we kind of uh went on a bit of a uh down the path there when we were talking about
chain tension is there anything else that you can talk about now or do you think we covered it
for now i think we covered it pretty good cool if anybody watching has any other questions by
all means comment guys i'm trying to read every single comment for sure and we might even use
your comment in our next video to personally answer your question right because if they're
thinking it they're not going to be the only one right absolutely and again this this is the
whole point of my apprentice videos is to answer questions that that a lot of people are wondering
and maybe they're just timid to ask the question because they feel it's a dumb question so no
no questions a dumb question here right and a lot of your viewers have a ton of experience and that
some of these might not be geared towards them because they they may know um a lot more than
i do for example absolutely yeah there's a lot of good chainsaw guys on youtube for sure with
a lot of experience right but our videos here is to cover the basics yep cover the basics because
not everybody knows everything exactly and there's a lot of new people that are picking up chainsaws
lots of new there's a new generation out there that are are bringing out chainsaws to maintain
the the properties absolutely awesome okay thanks guys thanks for watching thanks guys take care