Originally Posted by
akatsuki
You can make your own chain for much less than Kryptonite (although no insurance of course, I will see if I can find the post, but basically get a hardened steel chain from Home Depot)....
Uhhhh, , , , I dunno about that.
The chains at hardware stores are almost certainly not case-hardened. While the spool may say "hardened", it probably
really means "tempered" or "annealed". Normal load-bearing chains are almost never case-hardened because such chains give little warning before they snap. The metal gets harder and stronger but also gets more brittle.
This thread ("brokenrobot", the second-last post) has someone who tried to find case-hardened chain, and never did:
http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/in...p/t-97510.html
The only fairly-common source of case-hardened chain I know of is to go to an auto-body shop that does frame straightening, and have them order some of the chain that they use. ...The bikeforums post mentions logging as well, so I'll have to ask around about that.
Grade-80 or grade-70 chain might be a fairly good choice as well. For example--grade-70 chain is usually rated for about 4X the load limits that regular cheap hardware store chain of the same size is.
~