Recommendations for wood chipper for small material

[ning]

I was going to ask whether the OP needs the chips.

I was looking at a forestry mulcher head a few weeks ago, but most seem to be for skid steers with a voracious appetite for hydraulic flow.

So I realized that a 3pt flail or brush hog may do some of it, but perhaps either a hammer flail, or I saw someone mention chains on the brush hog.

I took down a bunch of brush and slim trees (~20' oaks that were growing in the brush so they're relatively straight and the branches thin) recently and they're currently just lying on the ground; I've been wondering if I can just drive over them with my brush cutter...

 

[CliffordK]

I took down a bunch of brush and slim trees (~20' oaks that were growing in the brush so they're relatively straight and the branches thin) recently and they're currently just lying on the ground; I've been wondering if I can just drive over them with my brush cutter...

I had some issues brush hogging at Mom's house a couple of years ago. She had a number of oak branches down 3 or 4" in size. I did OK for a while. It didn't destroy them, but would whittle them down a bit and keep going.

However, her brush hog was old. I don't know if the PTO bolt was supposed to sheer, but it didn't. And, eventually it loosened the gears in the gearbox, and they started spinning freely. I think a tightly connected slip disk clutch might have been a benefit, but it didn't have one.

I haven't given up on brush hogging, but I am looking for more robust options.

 

[ning]

My thought was to use loppers to remove the bigger wood from all the branch wood and then probably raise the brush cutter, back tractor to some branches, and lower it on them. The ground was wet and slippery there till recently so I haven't given it a go, but I'm guessing that it would only somewhat shred them and leave a sparse mess that wouldn't really decay for a long since so much of it would still be little sprigs of oak that aren't in contact with the ground for the most part.. I may try it if I haven't cleaned it all up the hard way (cutting to length hauling it to my burn pile) next time I have the cutter on.

 

[ponytug]

I took down a bunch of brush and slim trees (~20' oaks that were growing in the brush so they're relatively straight and the branches thin) recently and they're currently just lying on the ground; I've been wondering if I can just drive over them with my brush cutter...

FWIW: I've done that. It works, in a sense. The branches get chopped into 2' and smaller chunks. That works for my pastures. I tried double passing it when it was freshly cut, but it seemed to me as if the bigger chunks that avoided the blades the first time did a good job of evading the blades on the second pass. Now, I come back a year later and give it another pass and then it seems to be small enough to decompose well.

All the best,

Peter