Considering a 3 pt. wood chipper

[WVH1977]

Hello all,

I have tons of loblolly pine trees that are 25 ft, 6 to 10 inch, on my property. Currently, I am building burn piles and burning when conditions are right. Then I take the leftover and spread out on the ground.

I am pretty much done with land clearing and now planting shrubs and trees. I still will be cutting lots of trees down and am wanting to have chips for the beds. I have mulching everything currently (have access to free mulch and small dump to get it), but would like to use what is on my property.

Is it worth the money for the 3 pt. wood chippers in the 8 to 10 inch range? Will moslty be putting big branches through. Also, thinking that the hydraulic feed is the way to go.

What are you folks using? Is the wood chipper worth it?

Photos of some of the areas I am starting to fine tune after the land clearing. Have at least 10 acres of pines. Will be using for quite some time into the future.

 

[GreyhawkUSA30340]

Watching this thread - also thinking about a chipper for my tractor ...

 

[GSVette]

I have an 8” hydraulic feed PTO chipper. I like having one around to chip up limbs and such leftover from site clearing and from tree thinning. It takes longer ( and is more work ) to chip up a brush pile compared to burning but I have more freedom as to when it can do it, obviously.

It isn’t clear to me how big the items you plan to chip are but I max out my chipper at right around 6”- a limb or buck at that diameter is not easy to load in the feed chute and is a heck of a load to chip. Stuff at 3-4” goes through pretty easy.

Hydraulic feed, in my opinion, is the only way to go-makes it easy to unjam the chipper when you get the inevitable jam.

Chippers are big and bulky loads-mine can be a bit challenging to move about on slopes or on really uneven ground. I generally gather my material near a relatively flat and easy to get to area and do the chipping there-I’ll move the chips with my sxs in the dump bed to the location where I want to use them.

Just my limited experience. Your mileage may vary.