Chipper How often do you sharpen/replace wood chipper blades?

[lagomasino]

I am thinking on getting a PTO-driven wood chipper. Not having used one before, I am wondering how much maintenance it requires. I assume that sharpening and replacing the blades is the most routine maintenance task.

I need to maintain about 20 acres of mostly hickory and oak trees that has not been maintained in the last 20 years. Need to cut some trees and there are plenty of branches already around. So it would be a mixture of fresh cuts, dry branches and partly rotted ones. Anything that can be used as firewood would not be chipped.

I am inclined towards a Wallenstein BX42, but would like to hear input from all brands users. So, for the type of trees I would be chipping, how often would you have to replace/sharpen the blades on whichever brand of wood chipper you are currently using?

Thanks
Adolfo

 

[IslandTractor]

I have a similar PTO powered shredder chipper from Bearcat. I have only about 5-7 hours of chipping on it so I have not had to sharpen blades yet. My impression is that you sharpen or reverse blades when performance degrades which would be noted by dragging down the tractor RPMs more than usual with larger size branches. I'd imagine that is something that changes gradually so it may not be easy to decide when a change is needed. I'm expecting to get at least tens of hours on a set of blades before sharpening and that is quite a lot of wood. For me it would be once every couple of seasons at most.

 

[jfox]

I have a Liberty chipper.
It needs the blades reversed about every 15 minutes of use.
I am going to buy some better blades, I guess.

 

[IslandTractor]

I have a Liberty chipper.
It needs the blades reversed about every 15 minutes of use.
I am going to buy some better blades, I guess.

Something's wrong. You need more than just new blades. Are the blades dulling or are they nicked? Is the blade alignment correct? What are you chipping?

 

[radioman]

I dont have a pto chipper, but its on the dream list. However I do have a gas powered one and I sharpen it once a year from all the dry and green brush i chip every year. I run it probably about 40 hours a year or less.

 

[wedge40]

Something's wrong. You need more than just new blades. Are the blades dulling or are they nicked? Is the blade alignment correct? What are you chipping?

I'm guessing his statement was sarcasm. But I have heard that the cheaper woodchippers have poorer quality blades. Go a good machine shop and they should be able to bang out some news that will last a few seasons.

Wedge

 

[IslandTractor]

I'm guessing his statement was sarcasm.

You are most likely correct. However, if he has to change blades more than every 20 hours or so of use that would seem like a lot to me.

 

[Scooby074]

Its hard to give a definate answer. Alot depends on what type of wood your chipping (hard or soft, new or old and dry) and how dirty it is.

The best answer is when it stops self feeding, which for me and my gas powered troy built can be from 10-15 hrs or even less if i get into some nasty stuff. A hydraulic self feeding chipper can extend this considerably as its doing the feeding and forcing the wood thru the blades.

 

[Eaglebait Ranch]

It was interesting reading about changing the blades. I have about 20 hours on my gas Bearcat and haven't noticed any problems yet.

And, last year I found out what my chipper will do to a pair of fence pliers that accidentally dropped into the shoot. Now, I understand why it is recommended not to put your arm down that shoot!

 

[brandoro]

I have a BX42 and have yet to do anything with the blades. I suspect I am still under ten hours of use though and chip mostly soft woods. I have chipped some small dry stuff but usually burn that if I can and anything bigger than about 3" diameter looks like firewood to me. Just to see if it could I did chip a 4" poplar, no problem, and a 4" birch, nearly killed the tractor, B7610 at the time.
Surprising how quickly it can turn a big pile of branches into a small pile of chips.

 

[scuvnut]

I have a Salsco PTO Chipper (Chesire, CT). Its built to last forever. I did alot of reserach on them and looked at many before I purchased. As I like to buy equipment that will stand the test of time, I settled on Salsco and have not been disappointed.

I have owned it for five years and have over 100 hours on mine - have never sharpened or reversed the blades and its still going very strong.

 

[jfox]

I guess it sounded like sarcasm, but it really does dull the blades in just a few minutes. Cutting mostly maple- green, and dry pine and oak. Self feeder can't pull it in anymore.
The blades look like grass cutting blades after a full season of cutting.
I do need to get back to it and get these cheap blades off and have a machine shop make some out of STEEL instead of bamboo.

 

[lagomasino]

Thanks for all your input. I was mostly concerned that the blades would need sharpening with just a few hours of operation, but from what I've read here so far, they are mostly durable and can withstand several hours of operation.

A follow up question: Do you have to take the blades to a machine shop to have them sharpen, or a simple electric grinder is good enough? I wonder how critical is the angle of the blade and whether they are so hard that you need a more powerful grinder with running coolant like the one they use on machine shops.

Thanks again.

 

[IslandTractor]

I haven't had to do it yet but I'll probably try to dress them myself and see how it goes. They are A8 tool steel so I don't know what to expect using a bench grinder. I doubt it is worth taking them to a machine shop though as double sided replacement blades cost only $20 and it would probably take more in gas, hassle and charges to get them professionally sharpened.

 

[RalphVa]

I have a MacKissic TPH-122. Have changed out the chipper blade about every 10-15 hours and have rotated the hammers once. These are "a piece of cake" jobs on a Mac (once I got a socket handle allen wrench for the screws on the chipper blade; those right angle allen wrenches just aren't adequate). Doing the hammers on the TroyBilt I had was a BEAR. The hammers and spacers between them are MUCH harder material than was on the Troybilt. The spacers would really get banged up on the TroyBilt and needed replacement when just rotating the hammers. They got so banged that they'd bind on the hammer shaft, making removal of them a real "bangup" job. On the Mac, one just simple hammers out the keepers and pushes the shaft out pretty much by hand. Everything is just removed, hammers rotated and put back together on the Mac.

If I had a bigger tractor, I'd go with the bigger MacKissic rather than a unit that uses just all blades. You can get them that discharge other than on the ground, too. DR supposedly gets their chippers from MacKissic.

Ralph

 

[jpm]

i have the jimna chipper for 4-5 years and have sharpen the blades once.when i use the chipper i run it all day for days. if your blades last only a
few hours somethings wrong

 

[daveinnh]

We also have a Salcso chipper (627XT w/ hydraulic feed). It probably has about 50-70 hrs. with no loss of performance. The chips look the same. Our dealer said when if the chipper begins to make dust, check the blade sharpness.

It has clogged up when feeding too much old dead wood. we've found that mixing old and green works thru the chipper ok.

 

[farmerjim]

i have a salsco 824 pto chipper w/ hydo feed its a 4in capacity chipper. i got it used at an auction and when i got it i used it for about 1 hr and it kept clogging, so we opened it up to check the blades they were pretty beat up so we reveresd them and havent touched them since that was about 1 yr ago and about 25 hrs of use. i opened it up again today just to take a look and see as well as do the maint on it. the blades were still in great shape, but since i had it apart i took the blades out and will have them sharpened. to me its probably the one implement i can't be w/out, i don't have to burn brush which requires a permit and the best thing is the chips which are like gold, theres always some use for them.