[Shop-talk] Fw: Small wood chipper recommendations?

[eric at megageek.com]

Jimmie,

My advise is to no waste you time/money on the little ones.  They are good 
for mulching leaves and that is about it.

You can brake the branches faster than they will 'chip' them.

Around here, there is always people putting those things on the curb after 
only using them once or twice.

Unless the machine has an autofeed and an MASSIVE flywheel, they aren't 
worth it.


Sent from my Commodore 64 on a 2400 Baud Modem.
Eric P
"Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational 
being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory." Ralph 
Waldo Emerson 
----- Forwarded by Eric Petrevich/Megageek on 08/08/2016 08:28 PM -----

From:   Jimmie Mayfield <mayfield+shoptalk at sackheads.org>
To:     shop-talk at autox.team.net
Date:   08/08/2016 11:35 AM
Subject:        [Shop-talk] Small wood chipper recommendations?
Sent by:        "Shop-talk" <shop-talk-bounces at autox.team.net>



Tangentially shop/garage-related in that I'll have to store it in my 
garage... :)  I'm in the market for a small wood chipper and floor space 
in my garage is fairly limited so something with the footprint of a 
pressure washer or small snowblower (or smaller) would be ideal.


I'm not opposed to an electric model if they perform well but the 
youtube videos I've seen tend to show them chewing on finger-sized twigs 
fed one at a time.  I've also read they often clog when fed green 
material and when the knives dull.

I haven't seen many compact gas-powered chippers come across Craigslist. 
  I'm not opposed to disassembling the chutes for storage though my 
first choice would be to find one that doesn't have big horizontal 
chutes to begin with.

So a few questions for the group:

1) If you have an electric wood chipper, how well does it work on 
branches up to, say, an 1-1.5 inch diameter?  I figure anything bigger 
I'll just cut manually but if the real-world limits are 1/2-inch with 
only an occasional branch larger than 1-inch, then perhaps I should 
abandon the electric idea.  Are the reports of frequent clogging true?

2) If you have a small gas chipper, how big is the engine?  I've seen a 
couple on Craigslist with smallish 3.5hp engines though most seem to be 
in the 8-11hp range.  Roughly, what's the storage footprint?

Thanks!

Jimmie
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