Chipper Opinions on small PTO chippers? Good or waste of time?

tractchores · Aug 15, 2013

I have a wallenstein on a mid 20's PTo machine and it works great. Chippers are expensive as they have to be big and heavy to be any good, but they hold their value really well and are relatively maintenance free. I use mine a ton and only grease it periodically. With a dolly the PTO hook up takes 2 minutes or less. Cheaper machines tend to break relatively quickly and have small capacity. I'd either rent a good one or buy a good one, buying a cheap one is a waste in my opinion.

RalphVa · Aug 15, 2013

I've had a Mighty Mac chipper/shredder for almost 9 years. It's great. If the hammers have sharp leading edges, it'll pull stuff right into it. Same for a sharp chipper blade. MUCH EASIER to work on than a Tomahawk chipper/shredder that would take about the same diameter stuff. Rotating the hammers is a "piece of cake" a friend of mine said before I did mine (only once so far). Changing the chipper blade is easy, too. Had to replace the only (out of 4) shaft bearings that isn't zerk lubed. Even it was easy. Think the DR stuff is MacKissic.

Hammer spacers on the Tomahawk used to get so distorted that one could spend hours trying to hammer the shafts out through the twisted spacers. The spacers on the Mac stay tough. Just tap out some pins on the shaft end and run the shaft out by hand. No hammering, swearing, etc. or lying on the floor with a hammer in hand. Nope. piece of cake.

CalG · Aug 15, 2013

I have the chipper pictured in the OP

'Use it with the Hurlimann, 35hp.

I run at about 1800 engine rpms with the 1000 rpm pto , so call it "reduced HP"

With sharp knives, anything that fits in the chute is self feeding. at times a bit agressive.

The shredder is very useful for gardening needs and does a good job of putting out uniform chip sizes.

Since I burn wood for winter heat, anything bigger than about two inches gets stacked. "Limb wood is the best wood"

Though I have no great amount of material to be chipped at any given time, I likely process three 100 foot tall maples or hemlecks a year.

Yesterday I ran the shredder for a few hours "re shredding" the chip pile to have material on hand for next years gardening. About 6 yards, processed. With the rotted chips wet from recent rains, I had trouble with clogs. Took too much time to do too little.

If you just want to "chip it and forget it" a dedicated chipper might be a good choice, if not for the big $$. I paid $800 for this one, pretty much as new.

I quit with the brush pile burns.. What a mess! The gardens are doing better than ever!

cheers from VT

Cal

RoyJackson · Aug 15, 2013

Finnster said:
Material is assorted landscape waste/trimmings and various tree branches not worth using as firewood. Leaves. Have a lot of vine waste from clearing/cleaning, but that should go away soon.

Based upon your description of your needs, I suggest a chipper/shredder would be a better option.
Dedicated chippers do great with branches, small trunks and such. They don't do well with leafy yard debris, twigs and such. This is where the chipper/shredder excels.
My chipper/shredder, purchased used for $1000.00, is a Woods 5000. This unit requires 15 PTO HP minimum up to (recommended) 40 PTO HP maximum. It handles branches, limbs and trunks up to 5" diameter (but they need to be pretty straight). The shredder...wow! Great for those leafy tops, small pine branches and that type of stuff...all the typical rural residential or small farm yard cleanup.

As you can see, there's no blower chute and the chipper chute is gravity feed (at a 45-50 degree angle from the horizontal). A blower woould be nice...gotta admit that, But I'm not going to spend as much for the blower option as I paid for the chipper/shredder...definitely not for an implement that gets used 4-5 times a year.
But I do recommend this machine 100%.

By the way, the Woods 5000 is manufactured by Crary Bearcat and sold by them as well. I don't recall their model number.

pinetree10 · Aug 15, 2013

I have a Wallenstein and my father has a Bearcat exactly like Roy's Woods shown above. Both are heavy duty and expensive but well worth it. Mine is just a chipper and Dad's is a chipper/shredder. The chipper/shredder is nicer than my chipper when it comes to grinding up the small stuff. I think you get what you pay for with this stuff. For $500 I'd use it till you can't use it any more because you'll pay many times that price for a heavier, new machine. Good luck.

bigtiller · Aug 16, 2013

I have a 5" Bearcat 554. Actually, this is my second one, the first was a 14hp on a trailer. For personal use it is great, but if you think you would hire out with it, forget it, it is way too much work and time!

Compaired to the 20" Vemeer I hired last week, the 5" is a toy but it sure comes in handy.

pinetree10 · Aug 16, 2013

Agreed. Before buying the BX42 this year I would rent a trailer version Vermeer every two or three years and use it for a few hours grinding up the huge pile that had accumulated since the last rental. After 4 or 5 rentals I realized I could have put those hundreds of dollars into my own machine that I could use as I needed for the rest of my life. My chipper doesn't compare to the unit I rented because it's much smaller and doesn't have a hydraulic feed, but I don't need it to be any bigger or more complicated. It's been a simple and dependable machine and I just want to be able to pull my tractor out in the fall or spring when I see the need and chip up whatever fell or is lying around my woods. That way the job is not as huge and I don't have to look at a huge pile for years until the next rental.

Unfortunately I know nothing about the chipper from the original post but if the work demands are going to be relatively low then $500 isn't much to spend on it.

TerryR · Aug 17, 2013

Finnster,

I can't find an MTD chipper/shredder with an 9HP engine, but all I find are definitely pretty small for any real work. I had a Tomahawk stand-alone unit a bit smaller than the one you are looking at for many years and it worked fine for a modest-sized suburban lot with a few trees. When I got a larger property I got a BushHog PTO unit much like the one Roy has. It looks like it's a bit bigger than the one you are looking at. It worked fine, but I got very tired of pulling the chips out from under it every few minutes, and changing the chipper blades was a total pain (looks like that's not so on the Mighty Mac). So I replaced it with a BearCat 73454 chipper, which handles up to 5" and has a blower, and love it.

Chippers become hard to feed if the blades get dull (even a little - figure on sharpening them every 10 to 20 hours) or if the chute is too narrow for forks in the branches. With a smaller chute you have to cut off lots of limbs to get them to feed easily. For that reason a 4 or 5" capacity is great if you can afford it, even if you will never chip logs that big. The larger size is also useful for unburnable stuff like pine and logs that have gotten too rotten to be worth burning.

The shredder function is great if you have lots of small brush, or if you want to shred leaves. But I'm a bit concerned with the small throat on this shredder. Getting tangled small brush in even with a much larger throat can be a pain, and dangerous when they finally catch and are dragged in very quickly.

I found leaves hard to shred, especially if they get wet. I actually found it easier if I let them sit in a pile over the winter, then wait until after a dry spell before shredding them.

I think you would find this unit useful if you have a modest amount of material to shred each year, but I think you would be happier with a bit larger unit if you could swing it. Power feed is totally unnecessary for occasional work.

Terry

Baby Grand · Aug 17, 2013

I have an old PTO driven Patu 4". No longer made and if I had to replace it, I'd go with the BX42 for the 4x10" infeed, which would greatly reduce the need to trim branches before chipping. 3 other things to look for in a PTO chipper:
1) Heavy flywheel - more inertia reduces shock loads to your tractor's gearbox.
2) Rotatable chute - lets you put the chips where you want them - like directly into a trailer. Much less work.
3) Low infeed chute - the bottom of the Patu's chute is parallel with the ground, so if you can drag a limb up to the chute, you can chip it without having to lift the whole thing off the ground. This really helps when there are a lot of "Klingons": vines, leaves other branches, even tall grass or brush that you have to drag the limb thru. All that stuff saps your strength after a time and fatigue is the handmaiden of industrial accidents.

Being able to get the tree work done during the few hours of time that I'm not at the office and it's not dark or raining is worth a lot to me and this chipper has been a great investment - no regrets.