Palms and chainsaws...

comgreserv

What tips and tricks do you all have for cutting palms. I try to avoid them but at the moment I seem to be winning all my palm quotes (Time to revise my quoting I think)
A local fella suggested removing the rakers on the chain? Good idea or too dangerous? Dedicated palm chain as a result no doubt cos it would rip through the firewood pile!

Cheers in advance lads

newguy18

i advise against removing the rakers[depth gauges].The rakers as we all know limits how much wood contacts the cutter tooth,less rakers=more wood bites and more resistance plus removing rakers makes the saw more likely to kickback.On real booty palms a reaming cut works pretty well,but also i find myself sharpening my chain every 4th or 5th cut on most palms i remove.for whatever reason i seem to grab a 660 with a 25" bar for palms,carbide tipped chain seems to do well on palms,maybe do to the sand and grit in palms?

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old schooler

comgreserv

Cheers Newguy for your quick reply. I thought that given the cell structure in palms is different to normal trees ie higher water content and all mushy, that reducing/removing the rakers would prevent it from clogging up as much.
This is why I asked the question 1st instead of asking what I did wrong later...

Eric Frei

LOL, I used to drop the rakers down real low for palms, like 1.5mm of clearance to the cutter. It would grab like crazy but cut unreal .... deadly. Got copped off for it on my arb coarse and had to calm it down a bit.

Long term it will bugger the crankcase bearing/seal, not good, and never ever do it for trees.

My advice is, no more than 0.030" (0.75mm) on the depth guages and make it a dedicated palm chain.

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KevinE

G'day mate! I don't have anywhere near the experience that others here do, but I have removed a few palms here & there. I'm in Adelaide, but have been over there to Perth (my brother in law & his wife live at Inglewood) From memory, you have a similar distribution of palm species as us? My observations are that it definitely depends on which species of palm is involved as to how you tackle it. I.E Canary Island date palms are in a class of their own lol! Cotton palms & some of the fan palms aren't much fun either! Cocos are a lot easier (at the size they grow to here, not in the tropics!) Alexanders & Bangalows only grow small here & are the easiest (the guys up north would tackle golden cane palms as big as most of the Alexanders & Bangalows here lol!)

The last date palm I did, I used Eric's method of a "winged bore cut" with a 260c with a F/C 3/8 chain & the rakers down (5 strokes with a flat bastard file each lol!). It worked well, but I encountered 2 probs doing this: 1. the date palm segmented up as I was cutting it. 2. the clutch & sprocket kept getting wrapped in fibrous materiel & jamming up (as happens every time I cut a date palm!). But it was much, much easier than any other way I've tried. & I finally found a good use for that tool-less chain tensioner! The bar was coming off very often to clean up. Next time, I'll take 2 similar saws & a helper to clean up & re-assemble while I'm cutting. It worked much better on a cotton palm though I suspect it'll be even better on Cocos etc!

I've learned the hard way to remove the fronds first! I cut off the leafy, non spikey stuff from every frond 1st, then, with a downward cut only, I cut off the evil parts with the pole saw & very carefully pick them up!

I managed to pin 2 fingers together by cutting upwards with the frond still intact about 4-5 years ago! The weight of the leafy stuff dragged the whole frond down the pole saw, straight into my hand! My wife used to work with me then & she had to get pliers from the toolbox & pull the mongrel out! It only hurt for a second lol!

I'm a slow learner; managed to get one in a thumb joint too before I worked out the above method!