You’re right Garry, the used motor oil is toxic, but to ease my conscience in matters like these I try to take a step back and visualize the whole picture.
What does it take to make a brand new plastic bottle of biodegradable oil to turn up at my stairs? The whole production line and all the transportation involved etc.
I can’t judge wether enviromental effects will even out in this case but i believe in the -using what you already have- lifestyle.
I think I’ve mentioned before producing even a state of the art eco car have 20 times greater enviromental effect than what will leave the exhaust pipe (on dino) of an old car during its lifetime.
Politicians want us to consume, buy new and junk the old, in order to keep the economy going. Natural resources left for generations to come is tomorrows problem.
I’m sorry! I get carried away
I use recycled motor oil in my saws
I figure it is absorbed in the wood or sawdust and since all of that winds up in the wood stove or recently in my truck there is no issues
Incidentally i also use recycled transmission fluid and used motor oil to heat my needle valve controlled hot tub fire tube boiler.
I largely agree Jo, and was wondering the same things about the total picture of carbon footprints when I wrote previously. The energy embodied in the new petro chemical plastic jug, the transportation and manufacturing very likely offset any atmospheric CO2 benefits. If the used oil is refined and used again, it becomes more complex to estimate the balance. I am still concerned about intentionally dispersing known toxins into otherwise clean environments, and especially on me. Although, the 2 stroke fumes probably are in the same category - great at repelling mosquitoes…
All of our lifestyles and supply chains are bad news for our long term survival, fruit from around the globe, etc, etc, we’re way beyond a carbon balance.
Garry I believe most chain oil is petroleum based anyways. Some sites seem to claim its made from recycled oil anyways. I have bought stihl biodegradable oil before but it’s hard to get here and there is that darn packaging and delivery chain again… I try to cut and drag logs away in wetlands to avoid the problems usually preferring to cut on solid ground anyways. I don’t know the best answer since I know I am a better stewart of nature then any of the commercial alternatives willing to sell me a solution. I would love to see a link to a better more friendly oil if you have one.
Best regards, David Baillie
The following link has a good summary of oil compositions, and characteristics.
From what I can gather David, you are correct, most chain oils available in north America, especially the better priced ones are petroleum based. But it seems that petroleum based doesn’t always mean not biodegradable, based on information above. I have been fooled by the tacking agents, the general consistency led me to always believe they were largely vegetable based. I suspect that with tightening environmental standards in some jurisdictions that the industry is tending towards biodegradable.
Looking a bit further, I found this opinion on the use of motor oil, new or used:
To me it makes sense that the tacking agents are quite important to the function of the oil, and to prevent it being flung freely. Interestingly, the studies cited on the vegetable oils indicate superior protection and at least some indications of significantly reduced consumption, which might make the higher price a draw. And then there’s the probable dioxin and aromatic hydrocarbon contamination concerns, not an issue with commercial products.
Lots of different prospectives on lubrication here. Interasting talk indeed.
In my oppinion the type and quality of chain oil is the least inportant thing to worry about when we talk about chainsaws. If it flows, its good. Althugh l avoid used engine oil becouse the clothes and hands get black quickly. A much more important thing is 2t oil. I have repaired lots of 2t engines ruined only bi mixing cheap oil with petrol. Usualy piston rings are first to suffer, they get glued in place by sooty greesy residue from unburned oil…
We own 2 of the first generation of Stihl chainsaws. Yes, they are heawy, rugh and feel like holding a enduro in your hand, a full tank saw weighs about 16kg (34 pounds) and if you dont have some balls grown, you wuldnt eaven start it. It kicks on the rope like a angry stalion. But it is such a fun saw to work with. And it runs continuously for 40 years. If it cant cut trugh, it breaks trugh! The power and torque are amazeing.
Ok now to the topic of lubrication. I mentioned this saw becouse in adition to a built in bar oil pump it allso has a hand pump built in near the handle. This gives it some of that " hunan interaction" Steve U. likes to tell us about. Why is this usefull? You can respond to different oil viscositys/quality when seeing obvious sighs of oil lack, yet spare lots of oil with good conditions.
After all, bar oil has different viscositys when the saw is cool and when it is warmed up! The reseroar heats considerably!
This fine sawdust buildup on the wheels is sawdust that was not removed from the cut with the rest of the sawdust. Making the set larger and a larger hook angle will create more coarse sawdust the blade would remove during the cut. This does not completely eliminate the fine sawdust that freezes to everything during slower feed speeds in wintertime sawing.
The enemy of all saws when ripping lumber in cold weather is fine sawdust. The above methods are only treating the symptoms of the fine small sawdust and not eliminating it. Creating an every other tooth saw eliminates fine sawdust and all the problems acociated this condition.
Many mills would simply close down around me during the winter months because of this. Saw problems on top of saw problems…wavy lumber off the band saws / thick and thin off of the head saws. Slowing down the speed of the saws to half speed would require changing pulleys, belts and a loss of horse power and not really practical. Altering the saw blades for frozen timber is very simple and practical solution.
I wish I could take credit for figuring all this out, but I can’t. An old time sawmiller shared this with me and I found him to be correct, proved it throughout years of every day winter operations, it was like magic!
Just passing along some good advise for those on this site who may be experiencing issues with their mills during the winter months.
Are you talking about wider bandsaw blades? Perhaps we are comparing different experiences. My experience is with the 1 1/2" blades, we were able to cut fairly successfully in wood at -20C. The skip tooth sharpening would be hard to achieve on an automatic sharpener. The thin bandsaw blades also seem to be very sensitive to all the teeth being the same.
Green spuce actually cuts better frozen, less “furry” in the cut, less friction it seemed.
Don’t forget the chain in bar and chain oil. If the oil gets thrown of at the tip each rivet will wear making the chain stretch. If the adjuster can’t keep chain tite before the teeth are gone it has stretched enough to wear the sprockets, both drive and bar tip.
Doing some pondering here on wood pellets. Does anyone have knowledge or experience on the heat output per pound compared with cord wood?
I know a cord of dry oak weighs about 4000 # and that much weight in pellets would cost a whole lot more than a cord of oak, but would I get more useable heat from them?
I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind spending that much for pellet heat. It would be cheaper to burn propane.
Wood pellets are more about user-ease of use than anyhting else AndrewH.
Buy. Dump-in, pour and use.
Three different relatives use these.
Stove system will not work without electricity for the combustion pan air blower; the feed auger motor; and often a heat jacket air blower.
Two of my gifted out small gasoline personal use generators are for two of these relatives to be able to keep their pellet stoves working come a winter power outage need heat event.
The pellet stove in comparison to an in-room wood stove are blowers&auger cycle motors; NOISY.
Go to a stove supplier store and look at the always on-hand pellets stove spare parts: combustion pans, motors, augurs feeds.
Bulk wood stoves: fire bricks and doors ropes.
Thanks fellows for the responses. I also found this table of btu/cord of different species. https://chimneysweeponline.com/howood.htm
I’m thinking of making a chip or chunk feeder for my boiler and wondered about pellets as a backup. Well according to these charts it would have to be a real emergency to go that route.
I’m no expert, but as I understand, the combustion temperatures in a gasifier should be so high that all contaminants are broken down. A waste oil furnace would probably not completely incinerate dangerous compounds.
There really shouldn’t be heavy metals in the oil, there will be metals from engine wear, mostly iron. I suppose there would be trace amounts of babbitt metal, including some lead, but it would be trace amounts. I believe the main concerns would be dioxins and aromatic hydrocarbon compounds, and those should be completely decomposed in a properly operating gasifier.
We used narrow bandsaw blades, but I hand sharpened them with a bandsaw grinder.
No experience sawing Pine, we do not have Pine in our neck of the woods, mainly Oaks, Hickorys, Ash, Sycamore, Maples and Walnut.
Slower feeding rates at the same saw speeds creates fine sawdust that causes all sorts of issues in frozen timber.
I have outlined how to correct this problem when sawing the Hardwoods listed above and offered this information up for any of our members who may experience trouble sawing logs during the frozen timber months. This will end their saw problems and it works every time.
