Thanks for all the notes, guys. Just for clarification, I was and still am curious about how you deal with the flared side plates of a PC chain. And FWIW, I'm not breaking them to throw them away. I'm shortening them but saving for re-use the links I remove.

If I need to break a chain in the sense of BREAK! ("Oh, dang!") I'm pretty sure I could do that without a chain tool.