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Chainsaw bar oil

Fun YouTube channel for sure. And I find it impressive how much content he can continuously output! I could never seem to be that productive-in anything,lol!
 
Project Farms favorite bar & chain oil is Harvest King, but that’s not a brand I’ve seen around here. Maybe someday he’ll do another test with bar & chain oils from national chains like Tractor Supply, Home Depot and Lowes. TSC used to carry my preferred oil, but during Covid the price went up and the quality went down. Now I buy 4 gallons of generic bar & chain oil at Home Depot in order to get a quantity discount. I’m not about to spend the money to get pricey Stihl or Husqvarna oil especially after seeing the video.

I’ve read many sawyers in Europe using the cheapest vegetable oil they can find since it’s biodegradable. That would be interesting to add to the testing done by PF. Has anyone here had good luck using vegetable oil by chance?

Tip: If you use your chainsaws a lot then occasionally rinse out the oil tank with a little bit of your gas & oil mix to remove any sediment. Then refill with fresh bar oil.
 
Chainsaw bar oil is just your standard plain old straight-weight motor oil, but it has additives to it to make the oil "tacky" so it tends to stay in place better on the hot bar & chain while in operation - it resists being slung off. (If you took slo-mo video of a bar tip you'd be able to see the difference in the sling-off of bar oil vs motor oil.) If I didn't already have about a gallon and a half of bar oil left over from my small engine shop, I'd probably just go down to local dollar store and if they didn't have a quart of bar oil (they often do until they are sold out) I'd just get some straight weight oil (or better yet, hypoid gear oil) but Just have to be aware that bar, chain and sprocket would wear much more quickly and couldn't handle deep, long cuts like ripping a big log very well.

That said, I really never even considered there to be a "Best" bar and chain oil - around here, the best oil was the lowest priced oil.. so often it would depend on a shop's buying power and margin tolerance (Buy cases of oil by the truckload factory direct, and tolerance for thin margins, you could sell out that truckload in a few months - when dealers couldn't BUY bar oil for under $6/gallon, this one guy was getting truckloads at $3/gallon and then selling at $9/gallon, and made better margins than local dealers could trying to compete with him...) No one cared what brand it was, they just cared about the bottom line price.
 
Kent Reisdorph said:
Y'all must do some heavy chainsaw work. I think I used about a gallon of bar oil in the past year.
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Volunteer tree cutting work during natural disasters like after tornadoes and winter storm and then the occasional chainsaw milling goes thru a lot of oil & gas especially on the bigger saws over 80cc’s. A gallon might last me about one or two months and oddly it cost over twice the price of my gas&oil mix.

Also, store bought pre-mix gas at the chain stores is a big ripoff which can cause engine problems. Check out YouTube videos from Chicanic about the number of problems that her small engine shop see with people using pre-mix gas. I personally use ethanol free gas with a quality oil mix at 1/5th the price of pre-mix gas.

 
Karl Loeblein said:
Volunteer tree cutting work during natural disasters like after tornadoes and winter storm and then the occasional chainsaw milling goes thru a lot of oil & gas especially on the bigger saws over 80cc’s. A gallon might last me about one or two months and oddly it cost over twice the price of my gas&oil mix.

Also, store bought pre-mix gas at the chain stores is a big ripoff which can cause engine problems. Check out YouTube videos from Chicanic about the number of problems that her small engine shop see with people using pre-mix gas. I personally use ethanol free gas with a quality oil mix at 1/5th the price of pre-mix gas.

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I use regular unleaded. There's only one or 2 places in town that sell ethanol-free fuel and I figure it never sits in my saws all that long. My brush cutter gets even less use and it's been fine. I'm thinking it may have been a problem at one time, but by now manufacturers are making engine parts compatible with the prevailing fuel types.

I think these pre-mix things are just a cash grab, playing on people's fears. I'm guessing the people that swear they've had problems are the ones that have open fuel cans in the rain in the back of their trucks.
 
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We had trouble with rats in the winter chewing on the Sthl bar oil container. They seemed to always chew holes in the bottom making an oil spill mess. Had to finally store the oil in the fireproof paint locker.
 
robo hippy said:
His tool reviews are second to none. Do check them out for just about any tool you are looking for. He has done them on chainsaw sharpeners, and cordless chainsaws too.

robo hippy
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I would agree with that.
 
Brian Gustin said:
If you took slo-mo video of a bar tip you'd be able to see the difference in the sling-off of bar oil vs motor oil.
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This made me remember that some people I know didn't realize they were supposed to use the "oil sling" method to test the saw before use. I was taught this: aim the tip close to something like a flat, clean board and run the saw for a few second at a fairly high speed. I aim it at a piece of 2x4, top of a stump/end of a log, a smooth rock, or whatever I is around. Should see a line of oil slung off the tip of the chain.

Stihl describes this clearly in their manuals. I suspect other manufacturers do also. (copy below)

If no sign of oil slung off, the pathway from the tank may be clogged up with sawdust or something. Don't use the saw like that. (if you care about the bar and chain!!)

chainsaw_oil_Stihl_manual.jpg

My Stihl manuals also tell what kind of oil can be used in an emergency of bar oil is not available.

JKJ
 
Having moved away from a major centre I find my nearest Stihl dealer is far away and somewhat pricey on his bar oil. So I have found an interesting source of Lube oil

REGISTRATION SEARCH

www.nulon.com.au www.nulon.com.au
I have used these products for many years on various motor vehicles with great success, found one suitable for my chainsaw bar oil.
 
I'd love to have a good vegetable/other easily biodegradable chain oil recommendation. Not so worried about chain wear, I don't do enough chain sawing for that to be a concern. I do hate the way my saw leaves an oil puddle behind wherever I put it down for a while and I'd rather not be spewing petroleum around the yard. Even more of a concern when I finally go with an electric that I can use inside the shop when it's 5 degrees out, like this morning.
 
Roger Wiegand said:
I do hate the way my saw leaves an oil puddle behind wherever I put it down for a while
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Some are a lot worse than others. I have 5 chainsaws and a couple never leak oil. A friend had one that always made a puddle on the floor.

Have you tried setting down the saw on it's side? On some saws that seems to work better to minimize leaks compared to setting down flat on the bottom. From the path of the oil channel, it seems like it might be better to turn it over so the bar is up but I don't know any who has tried that. If I remember, I set it on a small mat when storing indoors.

I guess a radical idea might be to drain the oil back into the container if the saw won't be used for a while. That sounds like a pain, but a couple of mine (including one big saw with a long bar/chain) are only used rarely.

JKJ
 
Roger Wiegand said:
I'd love to have a good vegetable/other easily biodegradable chain oil recommendation. Not so worried about chain wear, I don't do enough chain sawing for that to be a concern. I do hate the way my saw leaves an oil puddle behind wherever I put it down for a while and I'd rather not be spewing petroleum around the yard. Even more of a concern when I finally go with an electric that I can use inside the shop when it's 5 degrees out, like this morning.
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Ryobi chain oil
Husqvarna chain oil

It's available but tends to be more expensive than standard oil. The Ryobi squib claims "96.5% biodegradability after 28 days", Husqvarna doesn't say other than "biodegradable". I think my son uses Husqvarna brand in his timber frame operation.
 
I had a saw that always leaked a little oil. Commented about that when I took it in for a tune up and the guys replaced the gasket on the oil seal, and no problems after that.

robo hippy
 
robo hippy said:
I had a saw that always leaked a little oil. Commented about that when I took it in for a tune up and the guys replaced the gasket on the oil seal, and no problems after that.
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A neighbor took his saw to the repair shop numerous times and they weren't smart enough to fix it. I'd ask for the name of your shop but sadly he's passed on.

JKJ
 
Yes, storing the saw on its side slows, but does not stop the dripping. Haven't tried upside down, but I'm willing to try. It's a relatively new Husquavarna, and it has done it since day 1. I didn't think much about it since every saw I've used since the 1962 monster Pioneer has leaked, more or less. Thought it was just the nature of the beast. (That old Pioneer had a manual oiler, I can tell you your thumb got tired of pumping after a day's sawing.)

Thanks for the references to the biodegradable oils.
 
@ the last 3 posts - Chainsaws - most all of them, will experience oil dripping/puddling after use frequently simply because the oil gets slung off the chain and onto the bar cover, where it inevitably follows the path of gravity.
Many saws did not experience that issue (or a very limited amount of it) from the design of the bar cover (The ones with more nooks and crannies and the way they might "lean" off vertical when set on level ground (oil would gather in those nooks & crannies) - often you can reduce that issue by cleaning out under the bar cover (sawdust/oil mix) after use.
Other saws were notorious for seeping oil through the oiler hole due to oil tank pressurization as temperatures and atmospheric pressure changes, while others (such as Stihl) had oil hoses of rubber that mated with the oiler pump and just "press fit" in the oil tank hole - after a while the rubber would harden and shrink and no longer seal very well.

My biggest puddlers when they came in the shop were Stihl and Husqvarna logger saws, and some of the Homelite and McCulloch saws that had 2-piece oil tanks that were bolted together with a cork gasket. But most of the rest, unless the clutch & chain brake areas were cleaned out/wiped off, would always end up with a wet spot when parked on dry concrete floor..

There was often LESS dripping/puddling when they were using regular motor oil instead of bar oil (bar oil is a lot stickier) but they also had problems with sprockets and chains and bars burning up (blueing) and rapid wear.
 
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