I use deep fry oil to lubricate chainsaw and hedge cutter bar

I'm now running recycled deep fry oil as my only chainsaw lubricant. It's cordless electric, so not mixing with gas.

If it clogs up, I'll find a way to clean it. During the warm weather, it flows really well.

The oil is also used to lubricate cutter bars on hedge trimmers. These formerly got almost nothing, so performance should improve.

When the chain warms up, I smell french fries. On Saturday, Lilly, a friend's dog, was found carefully licking the chainsaw clean.

- I had an unfortunate experience with some bodies pigs getting loose and ending up in the wood shed where I was storing several of these totes !

-The fry oil seemed to have a laxative effect on them, on hot summer days when that end of that house has been baking in the sun there is a notable
porcine tang in the air, and this is after removing a hundred years of wood chips and earth to a far corner of the property.

I have heard other stories from Bio-Diesel users! You may want to make sure that area is at lest vermin-proof ! Big AL

Dale, you will love using this...I have always used pure fresh Canola Oil or Peanut Oil as a lubricant for my saws and some other outdoor tools. It works great, smells great, and doesn't really "gum up" as bad as many folks insists it will. I always found it funny that those that say this won't work...haven't ever really used it...

Buying in bulk is great, and less expensive than regular bar oil...especially for milling work, which uses a lot of oil.

Love to here what you think about it after a while...

I try not to buy things. The oil is free. I get it from Ambrosia, an up scale eatery. They change the oil regularly. It settles out to be quite clean.

A guy at the saw shop warned me that I could start a fire. My bar doesn't run that hot. He didn't know the flash point or how the oils compared. He's the same one who told me that hand sharpening of the hedge cutter bar would cause it to become unbalanced and lose teeth. I've done it four times so far. Sharpening costs $90, which is more than the cost of a new cutter bar on the E-go machine. I now lube it with vegetable oil.

I think...used oil is more than acceptable. We buy it just because we can use it for cooking or other applications...

I am told all the time about it "burning the metal" or overheating...Seems to always come from vendors trying to either sell bar oil or sharpening services...

Hand sharpening is the way we have been doing it all my life. I can understand if we don't know how to keep a set angle or be consistence in "grind angle" that going out of balance is possible. I have to use a jig every third sharpening for my larger ripping chain...I am sill using a "hand jig," so this spending $$ to sharpen is a "red herring," and sales ploy as far as I am concerned. I sent my band saw blades away and few other "edged products" more for convenience than necessity...but the cost is more than acceptable as our sharpening fellow pickups and drops off free of charge, and his sharpening fees are very inexpensive. $90 seems crazy, and I wouldn't pay that either!!

The E-go hedge cutter is a $200 tool. Half of that is for battery and charger. So, the body of the machine is $100 new. It seems a little bit more crazy now. With every sharpening, I can cut slightly thicker material.

I'm very generous with the oil. When cutting dead, dry stumps, I'll dip the bar in oil. Hedge cutters get a quarter cup in one go. It softens evergreen gum that sticks to the bar. Once softened, the goo scrapes off as the machine is used.

Sludge at the bottom of the containers will feed the microbes in hugelkultur beds.

Look at how clean the oil settles out to.

I'm always finding chainsaw oil, when doing clean up work and in recycling piles. Now it will be saved for winter. It's been 4 months since I bought any, and I use it most days.

Dale Hodgins wrote:I'm now running recycled deep fry oil as my only chainsaw lubricant. It's cordless electric, so not mixing with gas.

If it clogs up, I'll find a way to clean it. During the warm weather, it flows really well.

This isn't as far out there as you'd think. When I worked for the US Forest Service in northern Idaho we used a biodegradable bar oil made from rapeseed. If anything, we thought it flowed almost a little TOO well for summer weight but it would probably be great for a winter weight oil. I've never seen it sold in stores. We had enough chainsaws operating out of that ranger station to justify buying bar oil by the 55 gallon drum, which is what it came in.

Dale Hodgins wrote:When the chain warms up, I smell french fries.

I sincerely hope most readers are smart enough to figure this out for themselves, but feel compelled to caution against attempting this in anything but an urban environment - unless you feel like starring in an episode of "man vs. bear."

I will use it at my wilderness property. The risk is minimal. Our bears eat fish. Dogs and vermin like oil.

I hope to one day feed the sludge to fish. A thin layer of oil can kill mosquito larvae.

My hair has been super shiny lately. When I'm in the trees, sawdust often rains down on me. I wonder if I smell like French fries.

There's been one unexpected side effect. My hair is feeling really soft and manageable. I do a lot of over head cutting. Some oily sawdust ends up in my hair. I regularly rake the sawdust from it, but the oil sticks.

I used to shampoo the hell out of it, to get rid of the stench of petroleum. Now a light wash does it.

It's somewhat silkier than the coat of an Irish Setter. Not since Farrah Fawcett discovered Wella Balsam, has there been such an amazing transformation. 😅

I used to work in a kitchen, i regularly used cooking oils for my bicycle. Nothing else i ever used was as smooth, easy to clean, or shifted better than wvo. The only con was frequent oiling. I filled an old mustard bottle, filled with oil, where i kept my bike, and gave a squirt and pedal when it seemed needed.

Dale you're missing out... Need to run some text with that photo. "I was cue ball bald until I started using fryer oil in my saw... Look at me now!"

Sorry.... Couldn't stop myself. I have an old Tecumseh engine original equipment on a Troy-Bilt tiller, well over 40 years old, really smokes and uses oil, I run canola oil in there about 50/50 with SAE 30. Sure smells good! Your used fry oil would work too. I bet the bio-diesel crowd has big filters a person could use... Been using canola in the saws too. Both saws are old, I don't think the canola hurts them.