STIHL 2 and 1 Chain Sharpening Tool

Hey, hi, I'm Tim Carter, Ask the Builder

And I'm here today, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about how to field dress a chain on a steel chainsaw

You know, when you're out in the woods cutting, you know, anybody can take a chainsaw back to a dealer

or maybe you can take it home. But let's say you're out in the field cutting all day

I'm here to tell you you're going to want to field dress that chain multiple times during the day to keep the chain as sharp as possible

which keeps the chain cutting as fast as possible. It causes the least amount of wear on the saw

and it keeps you safe as can be. Let me show you how it's done

There are several tools that you can use to sharpen a chain out in the field

but I'm here to tell you that we're going to use the two and one tool made by steel

because it takes all the guesswork out of it. To use the two and one steel sharpening tool it best to have the saw stationary and the steel stump vise is the tool to make that happen Set the saw in the stump vise and tighten the clamp to the bar so that the bar and saw will not move

When tightening the bolt, make sure that the bolt is in the middle of the bar

Okay, I've got the saw in the stump vise and it's tightened up

Now here is the wonderful two and one tool that I showed you before

and here's what you need to know. This is really pretty important. On a chain, you've got cutting teeth and you have what's called a raker, but the official name of that is the depth limiter. And these are really important because as you sharpen the tooth on the chain, on one of the teeth, what happens is because of the way it's manufactured, the tooth kind of drops down. It gets kind of shorter

which means that you also have to file at the same time the raker or the depth delimiter

And that's what this magical tool does. If you do it the other way, you have to have multiple tools and you have to know what you're doing

It can be a little complicated. That why this tool is really really a good idea to use This is really a unique tool because it got a round file that fits in the circular groove of the tooth

and it's got a flat file that sits on top of the raker

And when you push the file through the saw or the chain, it sharpens both things at the same time

It's really important to make sure that it's aligned correctly, and there are lines on top of this tool that should be parallel with a bar

And you only sharpen it pushing the file through the tooth. Let me show you how it's done

It's that simple. And you generally only need to maybe touch each tooth just a couple of times, maybe a third one, and that's it

That's all you need to do to dress that field chain. I think you understand how simple it is to field dress a chain, you know, when you're out in the woods

especially using the two-and-one file system by steel. It really takes all the guesswork out of the process

I also want to remind you it so very very important all the time to wear all of the protective gear In other words when you working with these chains you got to have on heavy gloves

The reason why these chains are very, very sharp and you can get cut easily

You need to read the safety manuals. You need to do everything possible to stay safe at all times because these things cut really quickly

They cut really fast and you just don't want to get hurt

It's that simple and you don't want anyone around you to get hurt. So sharpening a chain in the field really pretty simple

It's really easy to do if you use these wonderful 2-1 files from steel

I'm Tim Carter for Ask theBuilder.com. If you want to discover more home improvement tips, go to askthebuilder.com