I was sure that new polymer cutterhead teeth were just overpriced hype, but after putting a set through 200 hours on the Willamette, they've outlasted the old steel ones by double and saved me a full day of downtime for changes.

What other gear upgrades have you guys tried that actually lived up to the marketing talk?

3 comments

3 Comments

I swapped my standard saw chain for one of those low-kickback carbide tipped loops on my firewood saw a while back, and it was a similar kind of surprise. I figured it'd just be marketing fluff like ceramic coatings on a pan, but that chain chewed through a pile of old barn beams with nails in em like they were butter. The teeth held their edge way longer than the standard ones, and I didn't even have to stop and sharpen mid-job, which is usually my breaking point. Only downside is they're a pain to sharpen yourself, so you gotta send em out, but the time saved on downtime makes up for it easy.

stone.thomas3mo ago

Read a forum post about those new ceramic coated chipper blades. Guy said they ran cooler and held an edge way longer than he expected, even in dirty wood. Might be worth looking into.

lopez.ivan3mo ago

Yeah, the part about them holding up in dirty wood is what got me. I used to roll my eyes at any "coated" tool hype, figured it was just marketing. But my buddy runs a tree service and put a set through absolute punishment, like chipping old fence posts full of grit. He said the edge was still cutting clean after jobs that would have wrecked his old blades. Makes me wonder what else I've been wrong about.