Woodland Mill vs. Woodmax chipper?

[5030]

Don't heat with wood anymore, used to however. At my age, propane is light years easier. I do own a pair of pellet stoves (that also burn field corn) when it bitter cold out to supplement the propane furnace but only as a backup heat source. One in the house and one in the machine shop. The shop is also heated with propane, in floor pex heat.

 

[bigtiller]

Mine too. But, burning in OK is limited to select days that usually don't align with my schedule. Right temp, high humidity and little wind all happening on my days off is rare. makes hard to burn

Did the OK. state bill to eradicate all cedar trees in the state pass yet? There's an incentive to purchase a chipper.

 

[ericm979]

I think the minimum HP requirement for the WM-8 is way too low. I would not want much less than the 32 pto HP I have now. I could use more, even when sticking to material 4" or less.

 

[MJZ]

I think the minimum HP requirement for the WM-8 is way too low. I would not want much less than the 32 pto HP I have now. I could use more, even when sticking to material 4" or less.

Good to know

 

[MJZ]

Did the OK. state bill to eradicate all cedar trees in the state pass yet? There's an incentive to purchase a chipper.

It has passed the house. I will look for the incentive language! If you have any additional insight plz let me know

 

[KeithT]

I got a woodmaxx 8800 about a year ago. At the time there was some sort of a sale. I think I only paid around $2500 for it. This made the decision very easy for me, brand new. It was cheaper than a lot of the used ones I was looking at. I’ve got about six hours on it. I’ve never had any issues, have never had any clogging. I run it on my Yanmar YT 359. I have run up to 8 inch diameter through it as well with no issue.

 

[MJZ]

I got a woodmaxx 8800 about a year ago. At the time there was some sort of a sale. I think I only paid around $2500 for it. This made the decision very easy for me, brand new. It was cheaper than a lot of the used ones I was looking at. I’ve got about six hours on it. I’ve never had any issues, have never had any clogging. I run it on my Yanmar YT 359. I have run up to 8 inch diameter through it as well with no issue.

Ah, great info. Thanks. Helpful. At this point I may just go with the 8800. I will be using many many hours as we clear cedars amd clean up from fires. We will see...

 

[JimRB]

If you rented big chippers, little PTO chippers might be an annoyance. Many years ago I worked on a tree crew for 3 months. The owner liked the best stuff. I had no idea what that was. His stump grinder had a wide drum. The branch chipper would slap the heck out of you. Not bad if feeding maple. Painful if feeding oak with their stiff and hard branches. Feed rate was "Where did that branch go?"

I have a WM68. Feed rate is nowhere near that fast as those couple hundred horsepower rental units. But I can tow my tractor to the trail, chip away, go back home. No rental means I can go anytime. I do have to slow down the feed when feeding in the 6 inch stuff. The speed control on my WM68 seems to have a dead zone from half way to all the way. Some day I need to take out a tachometer and measure the infeed roller RPMs. I have a JD870 with 25 PTO HP. Anyhow, it is kind of neat to chip away at a 6 branch. I have no fireplace so rarely do I save that stuff for anyone else.

 

[rumwrks]

Did a decent yard cleanup in the apple orchard yesterday with the WC-88 which was the biggest project I've done with it so far. I cut everything above about 3" or so into smoker wood (love apple smoked bacon and sausage!), so mostly smaller stuff but the trees had been poorly treated for 8 or so years and there was a LOT of it (much heavier pruning than I'm usually happy with but at least they look mostly like trees and not giant shrubs now).

A few things to note (I think this all carries over to the woodmaxx mostly):

The here limit was really how fast we could haul things to the chipper, although we were mostly chipping not too large of branches I was also feeding in 4 or 5 or more at a time. Feeding in large bundles wasn't a problem for the most part. The orchard wood tends to be a bit gnarly so the 8" wide infeed is definitely nice even for smaller stuff, saves a ton of time not having to trim to make it fit. I think you'd get 90% of the benefit in that regard with an 8x6 with most wood. It's still a lot of work, but I also mulched most of the apple trees for basically "free" (amortized cost of chipper, tractor, and runtime cost of diesel .. aside.. lol).

This size lugs my 55hp (44hp claimed PTO) 5520H TYM a bit when it's spinning up the flywheel - this is a 24" x 1" flywheel so assuming it's about the same as the woodmaxx that's a 200lb flywheel.. which is about the same as the 8800. I believe the woodmaxx steals a little less HP for the hydraulic pump so maybe you get a bit of that back there... but I think most of the HP is going to the flywheel. You'd definitely want to keep the RPM's up a bit to avoid stalling anyway. It's fine when it's running though, the heavy flywheel definitely helps carry it around.

 

[ZiggyD]

Keep in mind the Woodland Mills is Canadian. Consequently, there will be a substantial tariff on it... Woodmax, on the other hand is USA. Not sure about the tariff on it. Some Woodmax stuff is made here, some is Chinese.

FWIW Woodmax is “American designed” but it’s made in China so all applicable tariffs apply.

I have the Woodmax 8H. Don’t know about the other brand but the hydraulic feed is priceless. Don’t settle for gravity fed chipper if for the same price or less you can get hydraulic.