I've seen many videos about processing wood this way, but none about the burners for same.

[oosik]

I couldn't watch it all. I'm sure somewhere along that video an arm goes thru one of those choppers.

Can you imagine hand feeding a "standard" wood stove with that stuff.

 

[ptsg]

I made one of these branch choppers some time ago. It's great to repurpose the branches for wood stoves, wood boilers ,etc that otherwise would simply get burned or piled somewhere, taking years to decompose.

It's getting harder and harder to do any pile burns, so this type of attachments are great to get rid of piles of branches.

For those so concerned about safety, it's no more dangerous than a wood chipper really. On a wood chipper you don't stick your arm inside the funnel either, do you? Just simple common sense. Yes, one the videos it may look sketchy because people are still testing the thing out before the finish the build with all the proper safety covers.

The material that comes out of it, is great for the BBQ too. Now, knowing what I know now, I would probably have built a wood chipper, mostly because the chips will decompose faster and I don't burn much wood anymore, since we went solar water heating some time ago and recently we bought a pellet stove.

Some pictures. This thing has eaten stuff up to 3" of various types of wood.

 

[deezler]

In a lot of european nations, there's simply not sufficient mature hardwoods for everyone to collect and split. So they have to burn whatever saplings and trimmed branches they can get ahold of. Which probably works fine, but you probably have to stoke the stove every 20 minutes.

Guess I should be thankful I have more wood to cut and split than I can handle.

 

[cqaigy2]

I could use some of that wood. I usually stack the limbs in a X braced jig and run my chainsaw through them to get them smaller, so one of those choppers would work pretty well too. I have a pretty small stove and run it pretty hot so i don't get smoke coming out the chimney. Also helps im in a mild climate so the house cooling down isn't usually a problem.

 

[Oaktree]

I made one of these branch choppers some time ago. It's great to repurpose the branches for wood stoves, wood boilers ,etc that otherwise would simply get burned or piled somewhere, taking years to decompose.

My property doesn't have a lot of easily accessible hardwood, a lot is either conifers or trash trees like poplar. For many years I'd get a permit from the Forest Service to take wood from national forest land. One stipulation; it had to be dead and down...no cutting of trees.
I would just go to places that had been logged the previous winter and load up on the slash...tree tops, branches, etc. that had no commercial value and got left behind. Most of it was in the 3-7" diameter range, so it needed minimal splitting. Did the job.
Getting a little old to be huffing that stuff out of the woods now (and more and more this stuff just gets chipped), so I just buy a log length load every 2-3 years, but it got me by for quite a while.
Never built a gadget to process it, just cut it by hand with a chainsaw.

 

[CalG]

It sure would be interesting to see how that chipped up stuff is used as fuel in a domestic setting.

I could see a gasification set up, but that seems to technical considering the regional settings of the choppers.

And what a mess if it comes into the house in bags and then pulled out by the handful to charge a small kitchen or parlor stove. No, It's got to be burned another way.

Keep me posted if you come across anything.

ptsg, what did you burn those small sticks in? The big stuff would be fine for any chunk stove.

 

[CalG]

I'm more than half way through the truck load , running out of storage room.

But this wood is for the usual metal box stoves. Open the front door, stack in a load of fuel wood. Close the door and open the air until it starts to make noise. Then close down the air and enjoy hours of heat.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Uh, anyone else ever notice those mchines are typically European, Scandinavian, etc? A lot of things are done differently over there. What they process and use for heat (limbs, scrub, whaddya got?) we pile and burn. Looks like the usual result might work in a pellet stove.

I cut my own firewood, and save small rounds down to about an inch and a half. Before I retired, I could get up in the morning, toss half a dozen small rounds on the coals and open the draft. By the time I got out of the shower, the stove would be hot. By the time I finished breakfast and headed to work, it had burned down to coals, so I could close the draft and it would keep the house warm until the sun came up. 80 square feet of south windows shining on a well insulated tile and cement backer board floor would hold enough heat that the house would still be warm when I got home from work. I'm all electric, and never saw a bill over $125 for everything. Cheap heat.

 

[Jstpssng]

The old couple who lived next to us while I was growing up were from Denmark. They would go out in spring and cut second growth red maple, then while he cut the bigger pieces she would cut the limbs up with an axe, all of the way down to the diameter of your little finger. In the fall we would hook a trailer to the 8N and help them bring it to the house.

 

[Oaktree]

It sure would be interesting to see how that chipped up stuff is used as fuel in a domestic setting.

I could see a gasification set up, but that seems to technical considering the regional settings of the choppers.

Not sure who you were addressing on this, but here the chips are used to generate electricity in biomass power plants. Don't ever think I've seen anyone who uses them to heat their house with.
I do recall years ago reading an article (Mother Earth News maybe?) about someone who used wood gasification to run his truck. Like so much else in that magazine, it seemed that the whole project was primarily to thumb their nose at "the man" than to be a practical alternate fuel....the setup took up most of the truck's bed making it pretty useless as a truck.