Buying Advice BX23SLSB-R with wood chipper?

[tractorisland]

Hello All. Getting very close to purchasing a BX23S. We have a 5 acre lot w/ lots of woods that need work. I have piles & piles of branches on the ground & we got tired of hauling them to the chipper pile a year or so ago. We have a limited budget, don't need to mow, would like to be able to lift some heavy things now & again & dig the occasional hole. I have a friend that has an older version of the 23S & he freaking LOVES the thing. My main question:

Has anyone used the BX23S with a PTO woodchipper? Can you recommend a brand & model that worked well for you?

Huge investment for us. Really want to be able to look back at this purchase 10 years from now & still be super happy about it. The chipping will be essential.

A follow up question: close dealer that sticks to msrp vs. more distant dealer that may offer something in the way of discounts? I really want support when I need it, but I am already pretty **** inaccessible (island) & the $ side is pretty tight.

Thanks in advance from a new member!

 

[jeff9366]

I have a cousin in Coupevdlle, Whidbey Island, with a 1940's Ferguson tractor.

There is an itinerant tractor mechanic on Whidbey Island who my cousin has found quite good at repairs and fairly priced.

BXs have only 9" of ground clearance. I recommend 12" to 14" of ground clearance for woods work, so you can rollover downed tree limbs/trunks without scraping the tractor's undercarriage.
On a BX there is a vulnerable cooling fan underneath.

I had a high-end Wallenstein PTO powered chipper. Fine the first year. After the first year chippers are too much work keeping the blades sharp and correctly adjusted. I sold the chipper in year two. Now I burn.

Chipper works best if you are chipping just one type of verdure: i.e.: Christmas tree limbs, so blades can be set for a single hardness of material.

 

[dougtrr2]

I have a BX24 with backhoe, 8 acres of woods and I have been very happy with it. The points made by Jeff about ground clearance a fan vulnerability are valid and should be considered. But in my woods I have several paths that I stay on so the clearance in not much of an issue. Also many times I leave my mower on which provides some protection.
A severe storm went through our area and I was considering a Wallenstein chipper. As I was cleaning up the debris around the house I realized that many of my branches are so twisted that I don't think they would feed easily into a chipper. For now I am just burning and that is quick and works well. On my nine acres I lost 65 trees. Or more correctly 65 trees big enough to sell were damaged, many more too small to sell or unsalable are there too.

Doug in SW IA

 

[CHDinCT]

As you might see from my avatar, I have a BX25 and owned a Wallenstein BX42 chipper. I think the BX42 is rated for 18hp minimum, which was close enough to the 17.7 (IIRC) PTO horsepower on my BX25. Pretty sure the new BX23S is rated the same. Was very happy with the BX42 chipper overall. Very well made (in Canada) and a pretty good match to my BX25. It was actually better at chipping larger limbs than twiggy stuff. Two situations I found it was less than ideal - as I stated, chipping up twiggy stuff, say under 1/2" and evergreen limbs with lots of needles on them. Sometimes the twiggy stuff would just get wound around the disc or come out in long 8"-12" whisppy strings. What I did was mix those in with thicker limbs to help grind them up better. Just couldn't feed a lot of small stuff all by itself. On the evergreen needles, they would fall off and pack up inside the chipper after awhile, so I gave up trying to chip those, or waited a good long while for the needles to all fall off.

If I were buying again, I'd look at the unit that has a chipper and shredder so you can feed the small stuff into the shredder, which is what it's designed for. Unfortunately, that unit was a few hundred more than the straight chipper, and I think only went up to 3" for chipping (vs 4" for the BX42). Bigger units have options for hydraulic feed, which would be the cat's meow, but most of them are too big and heavy for a BX, plus they spec out for more hydraulic flow (gpm) than our BX's deliver.

So, the BX23S can definitely handle a chipper up to a certain size, and if you've got a lot of twiggy stuff, think about one with an integrated shredder.

 

[ericm979]

Yep. I've had two chippers- a MacKissick chipper/shredder on a Kubota B7100 and a Woodmaxx 8H on the current Branson. The Woodmaxx is far better at chipping wood, as you'd expect, but not as good at chipping small stuff as the shredder is. The MackKissck's current retail price is higher than the Woodmaxx's!

Keep in mind with chipper capacity that branches have bends and stubs so you usually can't get a stem that's the diameter of the max capacity actually into the chipper. I got really good at angling branches just right to get the MacKissck to eat them but it takes time and you have to prep the branches appropriately when cutting them.

 

[PaulL2]

I've got a BX2350, same HP as you're looking at. I drive a Chinese made rip-off of the BX42. Looks like that design's been around so long that it's out of patent, and just about every factory in China makes one.

I imported it direct from aliexpress, the website of the company I got it from is Compact tractor PTO driven Wood chipper shredder
BX42, the person I dealt with was Daisy (I presume that's not her Chinese name) daisy@lefa-cz.com. It's a bit hair raising importing direct - I wasn't sure whether it'd really turn up or they'd keep my money and I'd see nothing. But it did turn up, and bonus it came in a steel crate that I'm going to cut down into a transport box for the pallet forks on the back.

Chippers in NZ are expensive, particularly Canadian ones, it may be different in your part of the world, so importing may not be worth your while. If a genuine article was remotely close to an Chinese one I'd take the Canadian one in a flash.

My BX drives the BX42 just fine. It likes harder wood more than leafy and wet mulch - and the output chute blocks if you feed it too much wet stuff. The chute has a reducing diameter, so can block, not sure if that's a design flaw in the original design or in the Chinese ripoff.

It is a fair bit of work and time to feed your green waste into it, with 5 acres I'd question why you'd chip. I only do it because I use the mulch, and I have a small enough property I can't have a trash pile nor burn. I tend to cut everything of burnable size (and a bit below) into firewood, and then chip all the remaining branches, and I'm used to chopping them into pieces that the chipper will eat (it doesn't like bent branches much, happy with long straight branches). It works well and leaves everything tidy. But I can't imagine doing that for 5 acres of woods unless I had a lot of time on my hands.

 

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

It is a fair bit of work and time to feed your green waste into it, with 5 acres I'd question why you'd chip. I only do it because I use the mulch, and I have a small enough property I can't have a trash pile nor burn. ... But I can't imagine doing that for 5 acres of woods unless I had a lot of time on my hands.

If it's a one-time project (like when I took out 13 trees a couple of years ago) I rent a good sized chipper with hydraulic feed. The routine fallen branches just get burned. I only have one acre.

5 acres of woods? You will wear yourself out chipping. Burn piles are a LOT less work, and in your neck of the woods, fire hazard is pretty low.

 

[drb1215]

I have a BX23S and use it in the woods all the time. I don't have a chipper, so I burn my brush piles instead. Because of the low ground clearance, I'd recommend getting a skid plate to protect the fan underneath. This is the one I have BXpanded Under Armor. Very easy to install and remove.

-Dan

 

[dragoneggs]

I will chime in on the local vs. distant. I really like supporting my local businesses when it comes to things like tractors or other items where maintenance is an issue. I like doing my own as much as possible but it is really nice to go walking into the local shop and they know you and want to help. Sure you can learn a lot on youtube but the camaraderie developed over a long period of time with face to face is worth the price difference.

Do you want a guy 'down the street' to help you when you need it? Then support him. Not much more to be said.

 

[s219]

Based on my experience with chippers, I'd suspect that the BX won't have enough PTO power to drive one of useful size. But look at the available chippers, see what their HP requirement is, and decide for yourself. I suspect you'd want higher HP. I have run my chipper (Wallenstein BX-42S with 4"x10" throat) off 29HP and 32HP tractors and wouldn't want to go lower in HP, or to a smaller throat.

Second, chipping old dry limbs is harder on the chipper and tractor, so be aware of that. Fresh cut green wood lubricates and cools the chipper knives. Old dry wood can't and actually gets hot enough to start fires when chipped! Note I am talking about typical PTO/flywheel chippers here, with knives. Some of the big pro chippers (ie, Vermeer) with drums and multiple cutters do better.