Originally Posted by sivat
What I find interesting is that no one ever brings up the damage done to the chain by doing this. In addition to putting a lot of stress on the chain at the bb end (which is similiar to the stress made by skidding and accelerating really hard) the stress put on the chain at the cog end can't be good. You're basically crushing the links into each other. Its not the worst thing you can do, but is isn't good.
I was also going to bring this up before the thread got ridiculous. While I've had mostly good experience with the rotafix method (and I do own a chainwhip), I have also cracked one of the rollers on a chain by not having the chain aligned/stacked properly. Something to watch out for.