Chippers and Chipper Shredders

[Rollochrome]

I want to buy rather than rent.

I don't want to spend over $1000.

All I need to do is process oak and juniper branches into mulch for the most part. Some I will use to dress beds. Some I will use to fill in ruts.

Whats the best machine under $1000?

[Darren]

Got a tractor? I found an orphaned Woods PTO chipper/shredder once that was a good deal. A lot depends on the maximum size of the material. You can't beat the 20, 30, or 40 hp+ a tractor can put out. It helps not paying for an engine to keep the price down.

[Awnry Abe]

Even though it goes against the grain of what you want, I would recommend renting a unit at least once to get the feel of the job. At one point in my life, I was very much anti-renting when it comes to equipment, because I don't like the inconvenience and short window for work. Thinking that I would be chipping/shredding/mulching on a continual basis because the endless supply of down lumber around here, I didn't give renting a second thought. When I started my search (which sounds almost exactly like yours), several people gave this advice:

"Don't buy. Stage your brush piles for a once-a-year (or 2x) rental and do it all at once."


I thought, "meh", and proceeded to pay $$$$ for a very nice Wallenstein BXM42. I had visions of tooling all over the property with the thing, shredding a limb here and there, catching the vast pile of mulch in my mule, and creating a massive wood chip pile. All without the hassle of renting. The Wallenstein is incredible, lives up to its billing, and would be worth every penny...except I only use it about once or twice a year. It takes an incredible amount of personal and machine energy to spew out a meager pile of mulch. Instead, my current mode is to tool around and accumulate piles of brush in a few consolidated spots, and make mulch when the weather gets cool. I would be $$$$ ahead if I had listened to that advice...

[simi-steading]

Hey Darren, if you come across a commercial chipper, or another PTO drive one, please let me know.. My neighbor is looking for one...

As far as what to spend on a chipper, you want to spend as much as possible, even if it's a small one..

I used to work for rental stores,and we rented out a lot of them... . Chippers beat their selves up, and the more you can spend, the heavier the unit will be built, and the less time you'll spend repairing it.

We'd buy the heaviest ones we could find, but I still spent a lot of time replacing parts, and welding cracks on them. The better they were built, the less work they took, but they were all fairly high maintenance items..

[charged]

I would recommend against buying a chipper. It is just too much work chipping branches. Trust me on this. You have to chip a whole lot of branches just to get a tiny amount of chip mulch. Its not worth it.

[DEKE01]

I have a big trailer mounted chipper that will do 12" logs; has a hydraulic autofeed system to pull the material in. It is flat out amazing how little chips you get from a 40ft pine tree that is 12" at the base. Not enough chips to mulch a 10 ft square bed. I bought it used at auction on a slow day for what was about 25% of what I had seen them listed for on treetrader.com. It was hard to justify the expense, but I have lots of slash left over from logging, have put well over 500 hours on the chipper since I purchased, and figured I could sell it at a profit when I'm done.

If you have LOTS and LOTS of small trees and limbs, I second the motion for a tractor PTO run chipper. Way less maintenance involved.

[Appalachia]

I was interested in a PTO tub grinder and did some reading.... I read several people saying you need a big HP tractor to run a PTO tub grinder or else the load variation is hard on the tractor. If I remember right they were saying 200 HP is appropriate. I don't have any first hand knowledge so take that for what it's worth. Something to read up on maybe.

[gilberte]

I second the renting if this is your first experience with chipping, you may be surprised at just how much work is involved.

[ronbre]

I have an old craftsman chipper, it isn't huge, but it takes anything too small for firewood cordwood..which we burn wood so we cut up for firewood. I chip tops and brush and smaller trees...also will chip up leaves and yard debris

[fishhead]

This is interesting. I hadn't considered a PTO driven chipper.

My plan is to chip enough limbs and small trees to make a compost heater for the house and hot water. Jean Pain did that in France and his piles were about 80 cubic yards so that's a lot of chips.

[Rollochrome]

Originally Posted by Awnry Abe

Even though it goes against the grain of what you want, I would recommend renting a unit at least once to get the feel of the job. At one point in my life, I was very much anti-renting when it comes to equipment, because I don't like the inconvenience and short window for work. Thinking that I would be chipping/shredding/mulching on a continual basis because the endless supply of down lumber around here, I didn't give renting a second thought. When I started my search (which sounds almost exactly like yours), several people gave this advice:

"Don't buy. Stage your brush piles for a once-a-year (or 2x) rental and do it all at once."


I thought, "meh", and proceeded to pay $$$$ for a very nice Wallenstein BXM42. I had visions of tooling all over the property with the thing, shredding a limb here and there, catching the vast pile of mulch in my mule, and creating a massive wood chip pile. All without the hassle of renting. The Wallenstein is incredible, lives up to its billing, and would be worth every penny...except I only use it about once or twice a year. It takes an incredible amount of personal and machine energy to spew out a meager pile of mulch. Instead, my current mode is to tool around and accumulate piles of brush in a few consolidated spots, and make mulch when the weather gets cool. I would be $$$$ ahead if I had listened to that advice...

All the posts are excellent....especially this one above. It is exactly what my mindset is.

My only concerns is renting a chipper that has been used to chip diseased wood. Oak wilt is a real danger out here and I have seen it turn a nice wooded ranch like mine into wide open pasture in a season.

Other than spraying the inside of the chipper with a bleach mixture, which I am sure the rental house would love me doing to their equipment, I don't know what else I could do to address this concern.

I DO like the above post and think I will go this route. Words of wisdom..

[fishhead]

Talk to your state forester and ask them if oak wilt can survive those conditions or for how long.

Spraying bleach shouldn't hurt the chipper.

[simi-steading]

Bleach is an oxidizer.. it will rust the metal a lot faster..

[am1too]

Originally Posted by fishhead

This is interesting. I hadn't considered a PTO driven chipper.

My plan is to chip enough limbs and small trees to make a compost heater for the house and hot water. Jean Pain did that in France and his piles were about 80 cubic yards so that's a lot of chips.

I've got access to 5,000 yards of wood chips on an annual basis. They load for free and I haul. This really poses a dilemma for me. What do I do with my brush? I've row stacked it bout 4 ft high and ran the hog over 2 inch material. The rest I put in a small gulley and it gradually shrinks into good stuff. I used to burn it. Have all the wood ashes I can use for a very long time.

[fishhead]

It sounds like you've got almost free heat and hot water.

[Big Dave]

I bought a toro last year. Used $300. Hey they do not make them any more. Where to find a blade??? I found some in Pueblo Co. Bought two. Replace it and started chippin. WOW it went great till a branch went sideways and got stuck. I now will have to tear it back down to unstick the branch. I sure would like to own a bigger one. You do with what you got.

[DryHeat]

I bought a 2 1/2" or 3" household-size BearCat unit off Craigslist last year, good condition, only $200 so that much was a good deal. Worked fine for brush up to 2" branches or so, mulch was just a useful byproduct of reducing fire hazard around the house. Then I messed up, casually put a largish branch into the upper hopper and bent a couple of the smaller rotating blades. My bad, totally. Cost $175 to replace the smaller blades and flip the larger ones to start using their still-sharp opposite edges. Still cost effective, BUT then a few months ago I casually rolled it from an upper side porch surface about 3" lower to a walkway, whump, bounce, *crumple*. The sheet metal holding the little roller axle and wheels just bent in on itself so badly it wouldn't even stand upright any longer. Another $80 for that framing and axle and I find getting the "push-on" nuts holding the old wheels on pried off is a major PITA. Meh. So, I urge careful inspection of any models that would retail up to around $1000+ new for their basic frame engineering. This one had metal only about half as thick in the part that buckled as anywhere upwards from that where it does look rock-solid. It might still be OK, but roll one *carefully*, some are subject to metal fatigue, at least.

[Echoesechos]

I don't know if Vermeer makes the style you want but they are work horses. At work we are on our second one. It is used to chip residents trees, brush etc through our residential chipping program. Our second chopper has drums that are horizontal instead of vertical. grabs the material from the sides instead of top and bottom) vertical whips the material around as it brings it in hitting the operator when it does. Ours is a large chipper but we swear by Vermeer products.

[rambler]

I too suggest using one before buying.

Brother in law bought a pretty spendy tractor one.

What a joke, spent an afternoon with it, got nowhere. Got worn out, had to chainsaw must branches up into tiny bits to feed in. Ended up with 2 wheelbarrows of chips for 2 of us chipping until we were wheezing.

Next day I brought my loader tractor over with the forks on, and scooped up and dumped the many piles of brush in the ravine. My brother in law did not complain. Took me 2 hours by myself to get rid of 10 times what we chipped in a whole afternoon, and used far less fuel.

What a joke those chippers are, way too much work, get nothing done.

I would try before you buy.

Paul

[moeh1]

I have a PTO 6" model. I only use it 2 or 3 times a year also, but it makes piles of chips every time. I don't have enough tractor for 6" limbs I would burn these anyway, but it makes putting bushy branches in much easier. I had rented a similar sized gas one for a weekend first to get a sense of what they would do. I think that rental was about $125 , might be worth your first foray to give that a try.