A chainsaw is an important tool. It is not surprising you can find one in almost every garage. This is especially true for people who live in rural areas or work in the woods. If you own a chainsaw, you should know how to use it. Not just that, you should know the importance of having it properly maintained.
There are some incidents that might occur and you will need to know how to put a chain on a chainsaw to move forward. For instance, the chain of your chainsaw could fall off and/or get stuck in a piece of wood. Your chain could also stretch out from too much heat which is a resultant effect of too much use.
It is not a difficult process. Just follow the steps I’ve mapped out for you, and you can learn how to easily put a chain on a chainsaw.
How To Put A Chain On A Chainsaw – Step By Step Guide.
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Cleaning
The first step is to clean the bar and the saw. But before you do any of that, you must first consider being safe. Chainsaws are dangerous tools and if mishandled, could lead to an accident that might cause you to lose a body part. You should always have protective gloves on every time you use a chainsaw.
Now that that’s out of the way, you should clean your saw because there might be remnants of debris or wood on it. You can use a paintbrush for the cleaning.
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Removing The Parts
Next, you should remove the parts that make up the saw. You can do this using a half-inch chainsaw wrench. Usually, some manufacturers include one when you buy a chainsaw. But if that’s not the case for you, you can easily get one from a market.
Using the wrench, you can loosen the bolts and the nuts on the saw. After you have done that, your next step should be releasing the bar’s tension on the chainsaw. To release the tension on the chainsaw’s bar, you should remove the bar nuts that are on the saw.
Once you have accomplished this, make sure to keep safe the bolts, the nuts, and everything else you removed. You don’t want to have to look for them when it’s time to assemble all the parts back together.
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Chain Positioning
This step is crucial so you have to be attentive whilst doing it. You have to position the chain so that the teeth of the chain doesn’t face your direction. If the teeth facing you when you hold the saw, that means it is the wrong direction.
Next, the chain has to be positioned around the sprocket. When that’s done, you can proceed to align it with the bar’s grooves. Summarily, you are doing two things: first, you’re wrapping the saw chain around the sprocket, and then you’re aligning it with the grooves of the bar.
Lastly, pull the saw chain and then adjust the tension on the saw. You can adjust it to the point you prefer. And once that’s done, you should tighten the screen to secure tension where you prefer it to be.
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Assembling
At this point, you have fixed the chain. What you have to do next is put the housing back on (i.e everything you had to disassemble) with the bolts and nuts you had removed earlier.
You should make sure the holes on the saw and in the housing are aligned before inserting the nuts. When you’ve got that right, you should check the tension on the chain one last time before tightening the screws.
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Testing
You’re done with the fixing, but the last step is testing if it works. Start the chain up and rev it a couple of times. Then use it on a piece of wood to see if it’s working the way it should. If it’s not working fine, then you may need to readjust the tension. But if it’s functioning well, then you’ve done a great job.
Final Thoughts for Putting a Chain on a Chainsaw
As you can see from the steps I gave above, putting a chain on your chainsaw is not tedious work. As a matter of fact, it is something you can do without having to hire a professional. Like I said at the beginning of the article, always make sure to use the required safety gear to keep yourself safe.
Last update on 2024-03-27 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
