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

[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.