wood chippers

If you were to go out today to buy a small wood
chipper with its own engine for use on your own
property and maybe some friends, neighbors and
family, what brand and size would you buy?

Thanks, Ron

Vermeer.

I recently was thinking about a chipper and did a search on

http://www.searchtempest.com/

I found several 600 (6 inch) and 900 (9 inch) series used machines at reasonable prices.

Paul

I've got a 10 horse Troy-Built. I've used it for seven years and it is reliable. It has a wide chute for leaves and twigs 3/8 inch or less and a narrow chute for wood up to 3 inch. It will handle leaves and twigs as fast as I can dump them in. The wood chute is narrow so a limb must be pretty straight to make it past the hole at the chute's bottom. A failing of the machine is that it takes a long time to chop up anything near 3 inch dia. Unless wood chips are needed for some reason, it's not a good use of time waiting for the machine to chop anything near its capacity. If you have limbs to chop up, be looking for at least a 15 horse machine or one that will run off of a PTO.

By small, I assume a home duty model, not a trailer mounted model.

DR Chippers makes some belt driven models. Haven't tried one but being belt driven is a big plus.

The direct mounted wheel on the crankshaft is not a good idea.

A relative got a DR brand pto one a few years ago. Well built, worked good, and all that. Bigger than the tiny stand alone units advertised for branches and leaves, but certainly a small one still.

But it was just a toy. We used it one afternoon, I spent far more time trimming down the branches to fit in the thing than actually using the chipper. Lot of time the chipper was just running with nothing, while I made branches small enough to fit.

End of 3-4 hours, we were beat, felt like we had run through as much fuel in the chainsaw as the tractor on just scrub branches, and had a real small pile of chips. Real small. And we were tuckered out, that was a workout! And there we were with both a chipper and a chainsaw running in the same small area, lets double up the chance for something bad to happen.....

The next day I brought my tractor and forks for the loader, and we picked up the 4/5 of the branches left and dumped them in a gulley in about 45 minutes. Not much manual labor at all as the branches were relatively stacked already.

I don't believe that chipper was really used since.

The moral of this is that you need to get a big one, with feeder rolls, that power packs the scraggly branches into the chipper itself, and get one big enough to handle that. You might hopefully never actually chip a 6 inch log, but you need that size to fit the average hardwood branchy branch into it.

Paul

I would recommend a Vermeer, new or used. I bought several for ADOT to chop the brush from the right of ways. Rugged machines.

I had a 9HP Craftsman chipper that worked well for me. I bought it used pretty cheap, cleaned up the carburetor, re-sharpened the chipper blades and it worked good.

Keeping dust and debris out of the gas tank during refueling was the biggest head source of problems for that machine. Using a funnel with a screen/coffee filter and adding a fuel line filter made for gravity flow prevented most of the problems.

For me, loaned out equipment no matter how well build, will eventually come back damaged.

I've seen them, and I'd opt for a small 3 point unit to mount on the back of a small tractor. You can handle larger limbs and not have to maintain another engine...

If I was you I would rent one for a weekend, then burn the rest.
I have cleaned up a lot of trees on my land.
A firepit ring is a great way to burn unwanted trees/branches/brush/waste oil too.

Now if you have a large area to cleanup, say more than 10 acres you may want to hire a crew, for the same price you would pay for a chipper.

A wood chipper without a set of power feed rollers is a complete waste of time. I had a Wallenstein 3 point hitch mounted one and it worked me to death because it would not feed. I spent way too much time trimming to make it efficient. I also converted to the gully method for brush. I sold the chipper last year. Ellis

Would this one do you?
How about this one

I bought an 8 hp MTD wood chipper. MISTAKE. It could handle up to 3 inches, yea right. It could only do straight branches and lucky to do 1 1/2. Blades go dull real fast, Noisy, dusty. Sold it. I would only recommend a chipper like a tree trimmer uses. Go rent one instead of buying.

Interesting replies. I've been thinking about a 3 point model. May have to relook at what I want to do.

Rick

Bigger is better,
If you work alone and have lots of time the small ones will chip away slowly. That is the way it works for me .

I bought this Vermeer 625 about 10 years ago from a College in the GA mountains that bought it to cleanup after a ice storm, every employee they had was scared to death of using it so it only had 265 hours on it when I got it. Best money I ever spent!
I love a chipper on the tractor, but I can take this anywhere with the truck and set it up. Frees the tractor up to pull trees up to where I'm working.

No matter which you get, you'll never believe how many friends you'll have, never, ever, lend it out! If it goes, you go with it. No one but me feeds it, turn your back and you'll never believe what people will think you can throw in one!
<a href="http://s33.photobucket.com/user/Joecdeere/media/DSC01112_zps1c893490.jpg.html" target="_blank"> </a>]

Look up "Morbark Inc." on net. I retired from there after 10 yrs. When they call it a "6" it doesn't mean it will chip a 6" log easily , it means it has a 6" chipper drum or feed wheel for disc chippers for "BRUSH". Cut in half what they say for solid log. I got to borrow a few and I would go with nothing less than 8"-10" feed wheel/opening automatic feed and no less than 50-75 HP. in other words,like others said, go rent one (good sized one) and have a few people ready to keep it loaded. You will be a lot happier and richer. As you will see the big ones we built (whole tree chip-harvestors) have 1000hp cat v-12,s and either a 9' disc or a 50"X48" chipper drum. Heck they are only $500,000--$ 800,000 might as well just get one.LOL

Good point.

That is very impressive. I have never seen anything like it. Puts my Ford V8 chuck, and duck chipper to shame Stan

Tornado went through county seat some years ago, the govt brought in one of those big whole tree chippers. Wow.

I really didnt get the point of wasting the energy and resources to bother doing that, wood rots away on a pile, but the machine was impressive!

Paul

My father got a used Vermeer 625 with auto-feed and it does great. This is a model that is commonly available for rental. It's a 6" capacity chipper with a 25 HP air cooled engine. Now even though it's technically a 6" chipper that just means it's opening at the feed roller is 6" X 6" and theoretically it would chip a 6" diameter log. It does 4" diameter hardwood easily. Got it freshly serviced from a Vermeer dealer where it was a trade in.

Now keep in mind he's not running a business, he got it for use on his property. If he was running a tree business I'm sure a larger one might be better but this is no toy. Anything it can't handle is big enough for firewood. It certainly chips fast enough to keep one person busy dragging limbs and quite frankly 2 people most of the time.

But it cost a heck of a lot more than a troy-bilt big box store chipper shredder.

Oh, and it doesn't shred. It isn't intended to nor does it handle pitch forks of leaves and sticks.

Rent a big one, and just get the job done. Servicing the knives is expesive and they must be set up correctly. On our Mobark the clearance from knife to the anvil is .013, factory calls for .010. Wait till you replace parts, run some steel thru it and your banker will be happy.What steel? the old RR spike that deer hunter pounded in thirty years ago.Rent and get the insurance......