However, you should make a habit of cleaning out the bar groove. The drive links don’t require sharpening like the cutter and guide do. Without drive links, a chain would not be able to stay on the chainsaw, which would make it impossible to do any meaningful work. It keeps the chain attached and aligned with the chainsaw bar. The drive link has a simple, yet very important function. The bread on both sides are the tie straps, and the meat/cheese in the middle is the drive link. If this isn’t clear for you, think of a chainsaw chain as a sandwhich.

The rivets and tie straps of a chain (which we’ll cover next) fasten to both sides of the chain’s drive links. Drive Linkĭrive links are the shark-tooth shaped links that are in the middle of every chainsaw chain. Basically, the guide is actually guiding the cutter into the wood, hence the name. The way the guide determines depth, is by controlling the amount of open space between the tip of the cutter, and the base of the chain. In other words, the depth determines the “aggressiveness” of your cut. The depth determines how much wood is removed with each chip. The function of the guide, is to determine the depth of the cut. However, it’s an important control mechanism that impacts your chain’s cutting speed and safety. The guide itself isn’t doing any cutting.

The guide and the cutter are both a part of the same chain link. The guide is the small sloped metal piece that’s immediately in front of the cutter. We’ll get into that more in the section about chainsaw chain types below.īut first, let’s talk about that little bump that comes before the cutter. The shape of the cutter is also a factor in the determining chain type. The cutter type that you use will influence the shape, speed, and aggressiveness of a cut. So, when you finish cutting through a thick log, you literally did it one chip at a time. When the chain moves, the links flex, and they cut small rounded chunks from the wood. It’s not slicing clean through a tree in a straight line (like you would slice through a ham). A chainsaw chain cuts through a log, simply by chipping away at it. The cutter is the part of the chain that’s actually doing the cutting. Match the number above to the component in the picture below:Įach of these components have a different function, we’ll cover further details below. Each part has a specific purpose, and without any of the 5 components a chainsaw chain would not work (or completely fall apart!). Let’s get to it! Chainsaw Chain PartsĪ chainsaw chain is made up of 5 main parts. We’re going to cover each of these in detail, and by the end of this post you should know everything you need to know about chainsaw chains. In order to understand chainsaw chains, you need to know about 3 things:

Understanding rivet sizes