Recommendations for wood chipper for small material

[319Quahog]

PTO is great if you can get the tractor to where you're working. Not possible for much of the year here currently.

That and it would make me want to buy another tractor. One for loader/backhoe stuff and one for grapple/chipping stuff.

Maybe one day.

 

[Iron Brew]

I've run standalone industrial units, residential small units, and tractor PTO units. I presently own a PTO unit. I don't really care as long as it has infeed. The "auto feed" ones... well, not for me. I like my rollers. If you are doing any amount, the jamming and not working of the residential self feed units is something I got over real fast.

 

[JasperFrank]

As a safety thingy, never have any loose clothing around a chipper. And by that, I mean, wear your jacket tight or have nothing that a branch can hook into as it is being sucked in. I didn't button up my cuffs one time and the chipper ripped off my entire sleeve. Good thing it was an old coat with rotted stitching.

 

[bigtiller]

I have been burning. Probably about one a week for the last couple months. I need to go stir the coals from yesterday's.

It gets old. Breathing smoke, dodging sparks, feeding more brush onto the fire etc. Trying to be responsible and keep an eye on it is boring too.

It also isn't legal here when there is no snow cover on the ground, but I have a large enough lot in mind your own business country that it doesn't matter too much.

I'm about to say eff it and buy a gas chipper from Home Depot that i can tow behind my UTV. PTO won't be an option for a few years until I get my trails firmed up and the chips will help with that.

DK2 6 in. 14 HP Gas Powered Kohler Engine Certified Commercial Chipper Shredder with Extended Axles and Trailer Tow Hitch OPC506 - The Home Depot

Do toughest yard debris clearing jobs with Detail K2 Gas Powered Kohler Engine Certified Commercial Chipper Shredder with Extended Axles and Trailer Tow Hitch.

www.homedepot.com

I had a towable 5" self powered chipper/shredder with a 14 HP gas motor. It was a little disappointing. I had to be careful about feeding it because it was under powered.

A 5" chipper PTO powered with a 20 HP diesel subcompact utility tractor (SCUT) will work you pretty hard trying to keep up with it.

 

[beowulf]

As mentioned in my posts here, I have the Wooland Mills WC68 with hydraulic feed. It works well for me and will pull in the kind of brushy stuff we want to chip up - i.e., stuff of reasonable size with lots of side branches - that avoids using the loppers to cut that stuff into more digestible sizes. But, I need some help here with definitions: Hydraulic feeders, auto feeders, self-feeders which I guess are 'gravity' feeders, and roller feeders (which I think is what you get with hydraulic feeders?). I think I have this mostly figured out but not entirely sure.

 

[ponytug]

Here's what I understand;

Hydraulic feed: powered limb feed, with a manually​

adjustable rate​

Automatic feed: powered limb feed, usually with a pressure​

sensing mechanism that will slow or stop the in feed if the rotor slows down.(Great option, but in my experience $$$)​

Roller feed: I have only seen this prefaced by "hydraulic"​

Self feed: the rotor / gravity feeds the limb (or not)​

All the best,

Peter

 

[beowulf]

Here's what I understand;

Hydraulic feed: powered limb feed, with a manually​

adjustable rate​

Automatic feed: powered limb feed, usually with a pressure​

sensing mechanism that will slow or stop the in feed if the rotor slows down.(Great option, but in my experience $$$)​

Roller feed: I have only seen this prefaced by "hydraulic"​

Self feed: the rotor / gravity feeds the limb (or not)​

All the best,

Peter

Thanks Peter. I already have my chipper, but this satisfies my curiousity - auto feed vs hydraulic roller feed.

 

[Captain Dirty]

The terminology is ambiguous or at least confusing, and it is unlikely that you, I, or anyone else will settle the issue. I suggest "gravity feed" and "mechanical, roller, or hydraulic feed". Gravity feed has no power other than gravity, the operator's manual push, or the mechanical action of the chipper blade pulling on the log to move material down the infeed chute. Mechanical, roller, or hydraulic feed has some power source, most commonly hydraulic, that turns a roller that pulls the material into the infeed chute.

Self-feed is ambiguous as both types feed themselves. "Auto" in the sense of "self" is the same. "Auto" in the sense of "automatic" as described by ponytug is mechanical but could also be similarly misconstrued. No doubt Iron Brew knew exactly what he meant when he said "infeed", but I did not as all chippers have an infeed or upstream side until "roller" gave me a clue. I used to think "Chuck and Duck" was gravity feed until the late Roy Jackson said he considered that only for large machines that would violently shift large logs imperiling the operator.

 

[ning]

Another term I see: "chuck n' duck"

My understanding is that this is the "self-feed", you chuck the limb into it and duck out of the way because as it feeds in (pulled by the chipper knives and their action) the branch will come after you may rotate violently and hit you.

The self-feeders go at whatever rate the chipper knives dictate so they're dangerous not only because of the propensity of the branch to attack you but also they may pull in faster than you expect and snag something, as opposed to the roller feeds which are more predictable in speed.

 

[CliffordK]

Rent a forestry mulcher

I was going to ask whether the OP needs the chips.

I was looking at a forestry mulcher head a few weeks ago, but most seem to be for skid steers with a voracious appetite for hydraulic flow.

So I realized that a 3pt flail or brush hog may do some of it, but perhaps either a hammer flail, or I saw someone mention chains on the brush hog.

Anyway, no walking around feeding it.

 

[ning]

I was going to ask whether the OP needs the chips.

I was looking at a forestry mulcher head a few weeks ago, but most seem to be for skid steers with a voracious appetite for hydraulic flow.

So I realized that a 3pt flail or brush hog may do some of it, but perhaps either a hammer flail, or I saw someone mention chains on the brush hog.

I took down a bunch of brush and slim trees (~20' oaks that were growing in the brush so they're relatively straight and the branches thin) recently and they're currently just lying on the ground; I've been wondering if I can just drive over them with my brush cutter...

 

[CliffordK]

I took down a bunch of brush and slim trees (~20' oaks that were growing in the brush so they're relatively straight and the branches thin) recently and they're currently just lying on the ground; I've been wondering if I can just drive over them with my brush cutter...

I had some issues brush hogging at Mom's house a couple of years ago. She had a number of oak branches down 3 or 4" in size. I did OK for a while. It didn't destroy them, but would whittle them down a bit and keep going.

However, her brush hog was old. I don't know if the PTO bolt was supposed to sheer, but it didn't. And, eventually it loosened the gears in the gearbox, and they started spinning freely. I think a tightly connected slip disk clutch might have been a benefit, but it didn't have one.

I haven't given up on brush hogging, but I am looking for more robust options.

 

[ning]

My thought was to use loppers to remove the bigger wood from all the branch wood and then probably raise the brush cutter, back tractor to some branches, and lower it on them. The ground was wet and slippery there till recently so I haven't given it a go, but I'm guessing that it would only somewhat shred them and leave a sparse mess that wouldn't really decay for a long since so much of it would still be little sprigs of oak that aren't in contact with the ground for the most part.. I may try it if I haven't cleaned it all up the hard way (cutting to length hauling it to my burn pile) next time I have the cutter on.

 

[ponytug]

I took down a bunch of brush and slim trees (~20' oaks that were growing in the brush so they're relatively straight and the branches thin) recently and they're currently just lying on the ground; I've been wondering if I can just drive over them with my brush cutter...

FWIW: I've done that. It works, in a sense. The branches get chopped into 2' and smaller chunks. That works for my pastures. I tried double passing it when it was freshly cut, but it seemed to me as if the bigger chunks that avoided the blades the first time did a good job of evading the blades on the second pass. Now, I come back a year later and give it another pass and then it seems to be small enough to decompose well.

All the best,

Peter