small chipper

[souNdguy]

Just got the OK from the CFO to get a small chipper. so far am looking at the 2.5 hp electrical ones, and the 5.5 hp gas jobs. anyone have comments on either?

what brought this about is that yearly I clean our fence line and it usually yeilds a bunch on 1/4 to 1/2" sapplings, with an occasional 1" green weed or similar. normally I just lay them over with the machhette or swing flig and let nature take over.. however... apparrently the wife is getting tired of the couple weeks it takes for them to get flattened by the animals.

thus last week i got a walk behind string trimmer to neat up the fence line and around the buildings where the tractor can't get... and now have the 'ok' for a small light duty chipper for said small material.

( no need for limbs or anything like that.. )

any opinions?

I have power out on the farm and out on theremote farm property.. so I can use the laoder and brush tines to scoop up the clippings and take them to a spot to chip if needed.. so gas or electric will work for me..

it's so rare that I get the OK for a real tool other than a hand tool that I always like to jump on it before she changes her mind. luckilly she is much impressed with the walk behind string trimmer

soundguy

 

[Rockytop1]

DR makes a 3 point hitch chipper powered by 540 PTO that can easily handle up to 3 or 4 inch branches.

 

[souNdguy]

not really looking for something I'll need a tractor to tote, or a bank loan to buy.. DR = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$money..


soudnguy

 

[RWK in WI]

Just a thought. Some small chippers have a very small side chute for woody material and use the large hopper for soft vegetation. Side branches on small brush won't go through the side chute. A real pain.
There is a difference between chippers - for brush and shreders - for soft vegetation

 

[paul]

I understand your needs are minimal, so my comment is not helpful to you:

Used one of those 3pt Dr chippers once or twice, and wow - was slow and work & pointless. Now, it was a well built machine, but the throat was small, and it had no feeder rolls. So you had to cut the branches up small (no 'y's or such...) to get them pushed into the machine. And stand there hand feeding every stick into the the machine until it was about gone. Pretty much needed the chainsaw idling beside me to cut all the 'y's down to size.

Ugh.

I see now DR sells a power feed chipper. Wonder if they work better for getting limbs through them? I thought the DR model we used was built well enough, but just too much work for what you got out of it.

For what you need, good question. I'd prefer the gas model, until it got time to keep the little gas engine maintained for infrequent uses..... Sigh.

--->Paul

 

[Pops1532]

One of my customers offered me a used but in like new condition gas powered chipper/shredder for $100. After trying it, I passed. I ran a couple of 3/4-1" limbs through it. I was unimpressed. It was painfully slow to use. Don't remember the brand but I'm pretty sure it had an 8 horse B&S engine. The owner used it for shredding leaves. He said it was slow and would get plugged up easily.

 

[john in la]

Chris;
I have a older Craftsman gas chipper that I bought used. It looked like had little use when I bought it and PO said he was selling it to get a bigger better model.
Looking back if I was smart I should have read between the lines and questioned why he needed a better model.

Worse piece of cr@p I ever bought. You have to feed it slow or it clogs up. Anything that is flexible like leaves needs to be run two or three times because it squeezes between the cutting teeth.

Its been in back of barn for years so do not know condition it is in now; but if I had know you wanted one I would have given it to you while you were here just to haul it off.

Pile the stuff up and run over it with a brush cutter several times. Save your cash for something you really want.
Heck buy a goat and you can get rid of the string trimmer also.

 

[ericlb]

soundguy i had a 3.5 hp model, it would chew up vines thistles, ect any woody stuff up to about 1 inch took a very long time and had to be fed slowley in order to let the engine spin the flywheel back up to speed, , i gave it to my f.i.l. 5 years ago, its still sitting in his barn, in the exact same spot, he couldnt find a use for it on his farm, just not enough power, id look at at least a 8hp model if your going to spend the money ,

 

[Ed Ridgeway CO]

Chris you might want to save your money and find another way to dispose of the brush
I don't think you will be happy with a small chipper they are just too darn slow.
I had a DR chipper well built machine would chip a 4 inch log but a 4 inch log to me is firewood.What I wanted to chip was pine branches.It was powerful enough but I had to trim all the branches off.Even as big and powerful as it was it was so slow and so much work that and I had to stuff the branches in by hand and that put my hand way too close to the cutter for my comfort, I sold it.
I was thinking about one of the DR 3pt chippers supposed to be self feeding but it doesn't look to be any better.
This won't solve your brush problem but might save you some money.
Ed in CO

 

[Sean in PA]

If you can find a good used older one, you might like it better than one of the newer cheaper built ones.

I have an old Troybilt Super Tomahawk chipper shredder with an 8hp Tecumseh engine. The owner's manual says it's rated up to 3 1/2" branches, but I've put some as large as 4" through it. It has a side chute for the actual branches that have any stiffness to them at all, and a large hopper on top for twigs and leaves. The chute on the side angles from about 8" across at the opening down to about 4" at the cutter end, and the taper does a good job of allowing branches with "Y"'s to be fed in as long as you put them in with the base of the "Y" first. It is slow but it gets the job done, and I wouldn't be without something like it since I'm slowly clearing my land and always have a small amount of brush to deal with. Listening to stories from others who have newer ones makes me glad I have the old workhorse. I've been looking at the newer ones, and I notice that they have a lot of safety features that my older one doesn't have, plus the newer ones have a lot of parts made out of plastic, including the feeder chute and other things. The only feature that I've seen on some of the newer ones that I think would be nice is the ones that are built to be a walk behind lawn vacuum that shreds leaves as it vacuums them, but they have a chipper chute on them as what seems like an afterthought.

I don't have a fireplace or any way to burn wood for heat, so I give away any larger pieces so someone else can benefit from it. Over the last 8 years I built up a pile of pine and other trash tree trunks that nobody wants for firewood, and last month I finally rented a tow behind hydraulic chipper with a self-feed that was rated for 8" pieces. It was amazing to see how fast we went through that pile of wood. We were done so quick that we were inspired to go out and cut down some more small trees that were next on our list just so we could make use of the chipper while we had it for that one day.

Having a small one just to keep up with things over time is great, but I plan to rent a big one once every few years as needed.

 

[douglloyd]

Glad to hear the string trimmer is working out. I ran mine all over the pasture yesterday, going after spots I could not hit with the shredder. Used up four trimmer lines and two tanks of gas.

I used nylon ties to attach the tube with extra trim lines to the handle. Also, these run hot, so bring along a little nylon bristle brush to keep the vent open on top - gets clogged with grass and is hard to restart when hot.

Wish my CFO was more open to tool purchases

Doug

 

[Abnormal]

A little Dsl & a match gets rid of my trimmings real cheap.

 

[souNdguy]

difficult to burn where I live. we are almost always under no burn orders..

soundguy

 

[souNdguy]

ditto that onthe dust and chaff on thte vents!

mine is open to tool purchases when it is something to work on her stuff.. or to keep the yard / house looking good.

for instance.. she noticed trhe 13yr old rider mower is now starting to consume parts as I keep it running. she's about to the point to tell me to repalce it I think.. vs keeping it alive. we went out looking at a bunch of mowers yesterday.. 99% of them were mtd made.. with different colors on them.. etc..

soundguy

 

[Ecnerwal]

I'd love a good small electric chipper (perhaps actually a hammer-mill, but something to get the job done, and not have another seldom-used gas motor that needs more time maintaining it than using it.) I haven't seen one yet. I occasionally think about home-brewing one, and then I consider all the other projects on the list, and the fact that there's less than a century left for me to get them done in. :shock:

If you can gather the stuff up and you have manure, there's a very simple approach. I have to import manure, but the basic brush pile with manure on top rots stuff down pretty quickly. Of course, if your wife is not happy with it rotting in place, she might not be happy with it rotting in a pile - then again, if you have a manure pile, a brush and manure pile need not look any different if you add enough manure.

 

[Hogleg]

Get a big enough one. A small one can get frustrating. We have a Troy-bilt with a 13 horse techumseh (bad luck tho - troy-bilt out of bizness and now techumseh also). Parts are getting hard to find, so I bought extras. The flail on this chipper will take some serious sticks in the top hopper and the side chipper will cut up to 3-4in stuff if you keep it sharp. Have half a mind to convert it to run off the tractor. I have a 1000 pto option on my larger tractor that could drive it pretty good with a 2-3 to one ratio). Saw someone that did that on the Deere board and it worked pretty well.

My wife likes to use it also. She puts on the ear protection and starts stuffing it. She even named it - Deep Throat!

John

 

[souNdguy]

yep.. got the 'pile at the back of the property... at least one property. other property don't have one

soundguy

 

[Geo-TH,In]

This will take clean up your fence row up to 10 feet off the ground and there is very little to pick up. Does trees and bushes too up to 1 inch and doesn't even work up a sweat. Only 6.5 hp.