Here are some pix of the chips made by a Jinma chipper. The card in the pix is the same size as a credit card for size reference. Pix #4 shows where I brushed aside part of the pile so you can see the dark layer underneath. That is the damp layer. Light rain last week only went down about 3-4 inches and the chips held all the water. there are dry chips 5" down in the pile. If you make your mulch too thick, you need to really hit it hard with water to keep the plant roots alive underneath. This pix is a dramatic example of rain never reaching the plants if you had more than 2" of mulch depth.
The last one shows the very light color compared to pine bark and dead leaves today. The coloring of wood chips is very nice compared to cypress mulch or pine bark from a garden center.
Those are some good looking chips. Have any trouble with the chipper since you bought it? How many hours you thinkk you have on it?? Whats the biggest diameter you put through it?
No problems yet except one broken feed drum belt. The feed drum runs off from one 1/2" cheap Chinese made belt. It lasted about 5 hours. I replaced it with a green industrial USA belt. The flywheel has five belts driving it and I expect long life out of those Chinese belts due to the design of sharing the work load over five belts instead of one. The feed drum should use double groove pulleys, but doesn't.
Total time so far is about 8 hours of the PTO running. That means the chipper was actually chipping only about 2-3 hours. You spend more time walking around grabbing the next piece to chip. The ideal plan is to have 2-4 people feeding it so it can chip almost non-stop. This would reduce the hours placed on the tractor engine and also reduce the noise. Chippers are LOUD!!
Dry oak trunks can go up to about 4" before it starts to bog with only 24 PTO HP. Dry pine can be up to 5" before you feel it straining. This is for long continous lengths over 6' long. In short bursts for pieces less than two feet long, you can give it a full 6" piece of oak or pine. More HP would improve performance. 24HP is about the lowest you would want to go with big pieces. A smaller tractor would easily power it to do 1-3" stuff all day long. The biggest worry about using anything smaller is the weight of the chipper itself. It weighs about 800#. That may be too much weight hanging out back.
It is really fun to watch a couple firewood size pieces of wood turn into a bag of mulch in about a minute.
Thanks for all the info. I'm seriously looking into a chipper. Do you have to trim off all the sticking out brances on a Pine for example for the chipper to pull it through? I have about 2 acres of scraggly pine tress to clean up.
Both the Jinma and a big Vermeer will pull most tree tops through by itself with no problem if they are not too bushy. Think of a really full x-mas tree. That would NOT feed by itself. But a scraggly Charlie Brown tree will. The power of the chipper will force most side branches less than 1" in diameter to fold over and continue feeding. You need to limb off the larger stuff with a chainsaw before feeding.
Always insert the larger end of a tree trunk or branch first. If the first foot or two feed OK by itself, the rest probably will. The purpose of the feed drum is to do half of the work for you. If you insert it and it starts feeding by itself, you turn around to go get the next piece and let the chipper work by itself.
The ideal way to chip is to have the front of the tractor lower than the back and the feed chute of the chipper feeding downhill to the flywheel. Gravity is your friend. This lets gravity help you feed the chute and still keep the PTO shaft straight between the PTO of the tractor and the chipper.
I have a Jinma chipper also, I have about 100 hrs on it +/-. Same issue with the feed roller belt , replaced with a Napa A-36. The chipper works well, I do a half a dozen tree jobs a year with it, a couple of decent size clearing jobs. The only issue I have run into besides the roller belt is the teeth on the feed roller wearing down. I have to repoint them with a grinder wheel every now and again. Other than that it works well for what I use it for. It is a heavy unit though at 900 Lbs.
