Chipper - Shredder Safety

[JackIL]

I had a very sobering experience today that I share in hopes it may help others. A friend and I were chipping brush at our Church using my Chipper - Shredder. I was operating a chain saw and he was feeding the chipper. He disengaged the chipper to clear a piece that was too large for the chute, but failed to let it come to a complete halt before inserting his hand to remove the wood. It took the ends off the index and 2 middle fingers of his right hand. I rushed him to the emergency room just a few blocks away where he underwent outpatient (yes, outpatient) surgery and was released to return home.

Since this is the season many of us our operating chippers and shredders, please, please keep your wits about you when dealing with these potentially dangerous machines.

JackIL

 

[GaryM]

Sorry to hear of your friend's accident. It could have been much worse. I assume that they could not reattach?

I'm getting ready to rent a chipper, so this is a timely reminder.

 

[DavidInNH]

I'm really sorry to hear about your buddy. I understand that finger injuries are really painful.

I did so many stupid things with my old chipper shredder its a wonder I still have all of my digits. I'm really glad I sprung for hydraulic feed on the new one - my hands never get close to the blades and there is a full width bar to reverse the feed if a tree grabs you.

I would also encourage everyone to be extra careful when running the shredder. My old shredder would really grab the stock. On occasion, my hand would come along for the read (especially on things with thorns, or little broken off branches and gloves). I always made sure my arm was at right angles to the edge of the chute. I would rather have a bruised (or even broken) forearm than to get my arm run into those shredder flail blades.

 

[Fireman_dcb]

A reminder on some basics:
1.) When feeding in a limb - keep your chin out of the way. I've seen a long limb start to snap up and down and catch the person feeding the chipper right in the jaw. Was told it felt like he got hit with a baseball bat.
2.) ALWAYS make sure that the emergecy stop/ reverse bar is in excellent working shape.
3.) Feed limbs in so that any "Y" is facing away from the machine- so that it can't grab you and pull you in.
4.) When you start to get tired, you tend to get lazy/ sloppy - STOP!

 

[DavidInNH]

Good advice - especially #4.

 

[dmccarty]

Fireman_dcb,

"3.) Feed limbs in so that any "Y" is facing away from the machine- so that it can't grab you and pull you in."

And in case anyone missed the importance of 3. A tree
triming company in my area lost a worker a couple of years
ago in a chipper. He was loading a Y shapped branch into the
chipper. It caught him and pulled him head first into the
chipper.......

The really sick thing is that they had a Help Wanted Sign up
the week after the accident. Now they certainly had to find
new help and they have to advertise but everytime I would
see that Help Wanted Sign I kinda cringed and pulled my head
into my shoulders like a turtle.....

Just pay attention to #3. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Later,
Dan McCarty

 

[Darren]

The machines usually have a rotor that's designed to have enough inertia that the shock of impact with branches doesn't slow it much. All that weight means when you shut it down, the rotor with the cutters can still be moving quite awhile after you think it may have stopped. The gotcha is that there's usually very little noise at that time especially given the noise levels you've been subjected to even with ear protection. I didn't time it but I did wait and continuously check the thing once to see when it finally stopped. I was surprised by how long it took. Seemed like longer than five minutes.

From experience, I've come to expect that material can be thrown out of ANY opening even with guards in place.

 

[gmason]

Jack, sorry to hear this terrible news.
Hopefully we all learn from our mistakes and NEVER make them again.

I've got a big commercial chipper that has a 12" capacity with upper and lower hydraulic rollers. This make it very convenient but more dangerous too.

Here's a few of my experiences with chipping branches/wood.

The dry limbs can really be dangerous. Once the limb is grabbed into the rollers and hit the blades of the chipper, the vibration comes back and sometime there can be just enough of a rhythm that a limb will crack a will go flying wherever it wants.

Also with dry branches, a limb will break off leaving just a little nub. This little nub can and will grab onto anything it can, shirt, gloves, pants, hats.

Green limbs are like switches that your mother used to have you go out back and get so she could give you a wippen. They sting pretty good, but are bad anywhere around the face.

I rarely ever let other people through stuff into the chute, I usually operate the chipper and feed it and 2-4 people bring me the wood. That's about what it takes to keep the chipper chipping and not just running. I've learned to respect it and I'm always careful as to where my hands and gloves are. I've been bumped in the head with a branch that rolled over, but nothing worse than that after about 100hrs of chipping.

People often want to "borrow" it, but I have always explained that this tool is way to dangerous to operate unless you've had experience on it. My wife still doesn't operate it, she pulls the limbs up for me to load.

Mine does take 4-6 minutes for the flywheel to stop after I've disengaged the clutch. In the meantime the hydraulics pump is still operating and has the potential there.

gary

 

[Soundguy]

Heck, look at the stored energy in a brush cutter... my 5' hog takes over a minute to stop spinning once disengaged.

Soundguy

 

[GlennT]

I have found that I need to stand on the left side of anything that I feed into the chute. If I stand on the right side of the material, it really gives me a flogging.