I have skip tooth chains on my saw. Don't cut quite as fast as the
others, but take less horse power. I have had no problems with cross
cutting or ripping. When cutting them down the middle, you lay the
log down and rip it through the middle, not with one end on the
ground, and cutting down the end grain. End grain is harder to cut,
but flat grain cuts fairly easily. The problem is that you are cutting
in the same direction of the grain, and will get a lot of long
shavings which can plug up your saw. Just angle the saw a bit, and
this will take care of the shaving problem.
robo hippy

On Sep 13, 8:56*am, Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Sat, 13 Sep 2008 14:55:03 +0000, Bob Daun wrote:
Since I know a lot of people cut up their own bowel wood, I have a question.
I was cutting up some pieces from a downed Maple tree in my son's backyard
last week. *The pieces were already about 15-20" lengths and I used his
chainsaw to slice these down the middle to provide more useful starting
pieces and allow me to carry them by myself up to my car. *In doing this, I
noticed that it was much harder to saw the pieces down the middle than to
cross cut them. *Is this typical? *If so, are there chain designs which
would cut better when cutting a block vertically down the middle as opposed
to cross cutting?

Seems to me I recall that ripping chains were available for chain saws.
Are they still? *I don't know.