Wood Chipper

bigpete · Feb 2, 2005

The movie Fargo was titled after the town where the bad guys came from. The crimes and wood chipper scene took place in Minnesota, I beleive. I guess "Fargo" is a better movie title than "Minneapolis/Saint Paul." Anyway, it was a gas engine chipper rather than a PTO chipper.

Di we digress here, or what? /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif I've been sniffing around for a PTO chipper for awhile. I would love to have a Bearcat but am having a hard time justifying the $$$$ for similar uses to what was described above. I also cannot justify spending $200-$400 to rent one. Oh, well. I'll keep my eyes open.

deereman63 · Feb 2, 2005

I bought (on ebay) a small wood chipper on the grounds that I would produce so much wood chippings that we wouldnt have to buy any more. This did not turn out as expected. I dont think I have ever produced more than a barrow load, and I have spent an enormous amount of time declogging the machine . Still the prospect of a PTO one is intriguing.... /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

MrJoe · Feb 2, 2005

Some years back we had a real life wood chipper disposal here in Conn. Remember the airline pilot named Crafts who got caught? Killed the Mrs., rented a chipper, did the deed, returned the chipper. One time use. The evidence was scattered so far and so fine forensics had a hard time finding anything /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif

markie61 · Feb 2, 2005

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( forensics had a hard time finding anything )</font>

I think they ended up finding only a tooth or two....

Mark

Bowhunter · Feb 2, 2005

LOL, I watched a rerun of CSI last week where the killer fed his victim into a commerical sized chipper. I think a tooth and bone chips were the only thing they found too. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

RalphVa · Feb 2, 2005

Have we created the perfect crime machine?

I had a tiny Black & Decker shredder on my 1/3 acre in NJ. Worked great, but I did A LOT of taking it apart and clearing it.

Best leaf shredding machine is one of those cylindrical plastic ones with a grass whip driven by a little electric motor at the bottom. Pour a bushel of leaves in the top, BRRRRZZZZT and a little batch of almost powdered leaves appear below it. Have seen some of them in some of the specialty magazines. Think I bought mine in one of those Walmart-like stores in NJ. Shredder/chippers typically don't feed leaves that well.

Ralph

Wesdor · Feb 3, 2005

We have been cleaning around fence rows and have nearly 100 trees of different sizes down. Yesterday we rented a Vermeer Wood Chipper - 24 HP Kohler engine. Cost was $100. The power feed worked great - it is a "gear" that pulls the wood into the hydraulic chipper. We were told it would handle anything up to 6 inches, but that seems to be the size of the opening and we didn't put anything bigger than 3 inches into it. Anything bigger than 3 inches becomes firewood at our place.
We chipped several large piles of chips and the machine did not complain at any time. The rental shop told us they sell the chippers at about 200 hours. Indicated to us that the price would be about $2500.
I've never used one of the smaller machines, but if you have any serious work to get done, I would suggest purchasing something big enough to really do the job.

BarryinMN · Feb 3, 2005

I use mine for saplings & pine. Hardwoods decent sized are firewood. The thing about bigger chippers is no limbing prep work. Last spring I put an overwinter blow down 8" pine thru it limbs & all, one bite & it was 30' out in front of the snout in 30 seconds. The motor didn't even slow down - just a deeper rumble. This is a drum type which if it gets a bite pulls whatever it is in. No feeder rollers or any other safety features for that matter. Late 50's or 60's vintage I think. Clearly the most dangerous machine on the farm. It has a huge flywheel that takes about 5-7 mins to stop. If I turn the engine off & engaged it simply spins the engine for 5 mins. Power transfer is via 5 V belts.

Only problem with it is the weight. Dry is reasonable, it wags my JD A pretty good, but leave it out in the rain & it sinks like a boat anchor. 1/2 ton pickup just spins the tires. It takes being hooked to a 5 ton machine to behave.

Newer machines are carried under tandem axles probably to reduce wheel weight loading.

Take a look on some forestry web sites for chipper tips.