Chainsaw Repair

Speaking of Breakers, Spinners, presets, and tie straps

When you start to buy Stihl presets, they make no mention of the gauge (.050,.058,&.063) I was visiting Cut4fun this afternoon and I brought this up. So we got some Stihl RS33 off the nail and measured the thickness of the drivers. They were .050" where they run though the bar rails BUT were .063" between the tie straps.

In the Internet link supplied in the post earlier about Oregon presets, I noticed the preset numbers were the same for .050" & .058" with a different preset number for the "75" chain. Cut4fun measured some Oregon LGX72 chain and it was .050" where the driver runs through the bar rails but .058" between the tie straps.

With the presets, there is a shoulder where the driver link rides on the rivet. It is a larger diameter than where the rivet goes through the tie strap. The length of this shoulder has to be the same as the thickness of the driver link within the body of the chain itself.

With Oregon chain if you use a .050" preset on .063" gauge chain, it will bind up and be stiff because the shoulder is not long enough. With Oregon, .050" gauge presets will work fine on .058" chain. But .063" presets on .050" chain will be sloppy.

Cut4fun had mentioned years ago that Oregon presets would not work on Stihl chain because the joint would bind. That is because his Oregon presets were for Oregon .050" chain and they had a .058" shoulder on the rivet. Where as Stihl 3/8 chain has drivers that are all .063 thick between the tie straps.

The moral to this story is that Oregon presets for .050" gauge 3/8 chain will mostly work with Oregon .058" gauge chain.

With Stihl 3/8 presets, one size fits all three RS gauges (.050", .058", & .063")

What counts is the thickness of the driver links up inside the chain.

Here is when I started catching on to this stuff.  I was way late to figure out what was going on.