Home Made Chipper

[yooperdave]

Has anybody here converted a farmer's hay/corn chopper into a wood chipper? I heard of this and thought it was a good idea.

The crop head was removed leaving the chute with the chopping blades. The newly revamped chipper had the power of the tractor pto to grind up BIG branches and logs. The chips were also blown into a chopper wagon for transport.

Most farmers around here seem to have at least 1 or 2 junked choppers laying around "for parts". The chopper into chipper conversion I was told did not take long, and did not cost very much. There are lots of potential chippers all over the place.

Should the DR people get worried?

Your feedback is appreciated.

Yooper Dave

 

[Taylortractornut]

My brothers former boss had one old forage grinders/ blowers and he removed every other cutter from it. made a hay blower for slopes. Works very well. beats the cost of a factory rig and also very easy to find replacement s here Also wioth not spredin hay manually.

 

[Steve_in_Ont]

I gotta agree with you. Perhaps you might want to slow down the feeder wheels a bit (different chain sprockets would do this on most models).

Keep us posted if you try it1

 

[stovepoker]

Please don't do it!! I tried it 30 years ago and there are still pieces of shrapnel scattered over a 1 sq mile area. Seems that cornstalks are a lot softer than wood, especially dried wood which raises **ll even with municipal chippers. The rotors & knives just arent designed to handle wood, even small wood. I can even recall a couple of choppers throwing knives while chopping corn. It IS possible to build a good wood chipper using a disk of carbon steel and a tool steel knife, but your best bet might be to find a good used unit that hasnt been abused (hard to find)

 

[yooperdave]

Stovepoker-

Thanks for the first-hand warning.

It seemed too good to be true.

Safety should not be sold out just to save a few dollars.

You seem to be 30 years ahead of my time...

Regards,

Yooper Dave