Understanding Chain Ident.

Over the last few chainsaw maintenance courses that I've run, it's become obvious that there is some confusion over how to identify a chain. So, if this is something that you're not entirely sure about, here's your chance to get it nailed. Read on for more information...

Perhaps the easiest way to find out how to identify the chain correctly is to have a look at the following table. We'll just stick to Oregon, Stihl and Husqvarna...

	Oregon	Stihl	Husqvarna
No. on drive link	ID #. Look up in filing table.	Chain gauge. Ignore for now.	ID #. Look up in filing table.
No. on depth gauge.	Depth gauge setting in thousandths of an inch.	Chain pitch. Look up in filing table.	N/A

For Oregon and Stihl chains you'll also need to compare the cutter profile with that described in the filing table - that way you'll ensure you are looking at the relevant chain information.

Take a look at this previous post if you need to convert between Stihl's terminology for cutter profiles and others... Name Your Chain

Name Your Chain...

Until now, I've tried to keep it as unconfusing as I can - but I'll forgive you if you lose it a bit on this one. It's not(?) hard, it's just that each manufacturer has it's own terminology and that leads to confusion.

So, let's take a look, after the jump, at what all these odd terms that we find on the filing tables mean...

Whilst we were looking at the Oregon filing table did you notice that they didn't refer to the cutter profiles using the same names as we used earlier? No? Look again.

Let's take a look at the list below to see our naming convention, along with Oregon's (in red) and Stihl's (in green):

• Chisel: Round Ground Chisel: Super


• Semi-chisel: Micro Chisel: Micro


• Chipper: Chipper: Standard

Stihl also refer to their cutters as normal height and low profile, for which they use the terms "Rapid" and "Micro" respectively.