Two ways that I know of....1. Buy a chain breaker, and not the P.O.S. Bell from walmart! or 2. use a dremel or bench grinder and grind off the tips of the link and then use a hammer and punch. (grind it just until you are grinding the sideplate a little.
Do one link, then test fit it before you do a second!
Thanks. I'm thinking I'll use a dremel rotary tool with a small grinding stone attachment to grind the end off a pin.
Grinding the pin tips off does not make it unuseable if you put a tiny tackweld over the pin to secure the sideplate when re-assembling. I do this all the time because I use #40 roller chain which is too big for the masterlink to fit easily without loosing the clip, so I eliminated it with grinding and welding. You can barely see the spot afterwards and its as strong as new if you don't grind into the sideplate too far, and keep the tack small so you don't overheat the sideplate. This works on any chain too big for a bike chainbreaker, all the way up into streetbike sizes and heavy industrial chains. (I learned this trick working as a Millwright rebuilding a sawmill with huge chaindriven saws)A hammer, a punch the right size and a small 1/4 socket works for me. I don't own a breaker and grinding off the pin makes it unusable again.
Support the link over the opening of the socket, line up the end of the punch carefully and give it good whack with the hammer. The trick is to use the right size punch and it must be long enough to drive the pin completely out of the roller.
To put the chain back together you just reverse the process being careful to not drive the pin in too far or squash the side plates so that the roller binds.
Tom
Not a bad idea if you know what you're doing but have you ever looked at some of the welds on builds here? OMG, I can only imagine what a chain would look like after some of our "welders" got through with it.
Tom