Wood Chipper

[EEngel]

Hey guys,



Anybody have the plans for a wood chipper? I downed 80 some odd trees in the yard and I want to get rid of the branches. I fiure the chips will make a nice base for the kids playground.



Thanks,



Eric

 

[drewRoberts]

I rented a 12 inch chipper a while back, even had a Cummins ISB 12 valve in it



well, I had to return it after a while cause the blade dulled. and the only thing I could get was a 9 inch sporting a Wisconsin v4 gasser.



I LOATHED that 9 inch chipper. it didnt have any balls. the 12 inch chipper had balls to spare. I even tossed an entire tree into this thing and it tached down a little, belched LOADS of black soot, but kept on truckin. the 9 inch I had to be careful or it would choke out on a 3 inch limb.



if you can get a 12 inch diesel, it might cost a little more, but it will do the job 10x faster than any gasser chipper.

 

[EEngel]

12" CHIPPER

Thanks Drew,



I don't think I will purchase a unit. I have a couple of 20" diameter shafts here at work I can take, and I figure the PTO on the tractor will be a good powersouce for now. I am just looking to see if anybody has any sort of plans to go off of. I will just scale-up whatever I find for plans.

 

[BarryG]

I have used a chipper quite a few times over the last few years dealing with pine beetle kill on our property. The 12 inch I have rented rents for about 320 a day(an 8 hour day mind you) and comes with a nice 120hp diesel and hydraulic auto feed. It will take anything you throw in it that will fit and if you can lift it onto the feed chute. The 12 inch models at least where I am at are hard to come by and sometimes very hard to get at the rental yard as they seem to rent them longterm. So many times I have to rent an 8 inch 30hp diesel. It does just fine up to about 6 inches. It even does fine on 6-8 inch stuff you just have to feather the feed a bit. And it rents for 200 a day and that is a 24 hour day. If I rent on the weekend I can pick it up friday evening bring it back monday morning for a single day charge. The 12 inch works the same except if I run it over 8 hours of run time it cost an additional day. That being said depending on the size of the trees you cut it may be cheaper and much easier to rent one than put one together. If you have limbed all the trees and have the slash stacked you can put one heck of a lot of slash through a decent chipper in a day. You could defintiely run 80 trees through a 12 inch in a day if they are already cut and limbed. It will defintely go faster than one person can feed it. I have run 60 trees ranging from 3 inch trunks up to 24 inches through an 8 inch with four people and the trees were not cut yet. That does not count cutting and stacking what wouldnt fit though.



I would not even consider renting a gas one. By the way if you do rent and pull it with your truck when you start chipping either unhook and park the truck somewhere else or cover it with a tarp. The first time I did it I made that mistake. Pine sap speckles covered the entire truck. Had to clay bar the darn thing to get it all off.

 

[rkressg]

At my old job, we had an old 12" drum roll WoodChuck tree chipper with a Ford 300" six (added oil, checked the gas). It was a great chipper, and would grind up anything. The drum roll chippers are not self feeding (the slow type), when you jammed a log into this style of chipper, it would suck the log in faster than you could see, it would just disappear (had to be careful not to get sucked in).



My advice, do not get anything smaller than a 12" chipper. Anything smaller will be more work than it is worth. Also, ensure that you have sharp blades on the cutting head and the sheer block is adjusted to the correct height or else you can cause damage to the machine and not have an efficient cut.



If you are looking for one cheep, check out the Heavy Truck Trader magazine. They usually have stuff like that in there.

-Rich