$150 wood chipper
After buying a chainsaw last week, my yard is now filled with huge piles of branches and cut stalks of bamboo. I knew I could pick up the phone and hire a crew with a gigantic gas-powered wood chipper to come out and make short work of the piles, but for some idiotic reason, I decided I wanted to do it myself, even though the temperature here in the San Fernando Valley has been over 100 degrees for the last several days.
I went on Amazon and looked for chippers. They're pretty expensive, as I expected they would be, but I found one model for under $200: the Cummins Industrial Tools Chipper Shredder. It was $149.99, and the shipping was about $45. For that price I was willing to take a chance.
When it arrived, I was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that I had to bolt the legs on it. It wasn't that hard to do, especially after I realized that the printed instructions were crappy and wrong and that I could simply look at the hardware and figure out what to do with it.
Within 20 minutes I was shoving branches into the wood chipper's whining gullet. I'd been nervous about how well it would be able to deal with the bamboo, because the stuff is as hard as iron, but the chipper happily sliced the bamboo into discs that were so wafer thin they would make a Benihana chef envious.
The maximum rated branch size of the machine is 1.25 inches, and that dimension is enforced by the blue plastic funnel on top of the shredder, which has a hole that limits the diameter of the stuff you can shove into it. Being both naturally curious and recklessly stupid, I removed the tamper-proof screws securing the funnel to the chipper and tried sticking larger branches into it. It accepted them greedily, as the blades are designed in such a way to pull branches into the machine. It was dangerous business -- I imagined my hands getting caught in some branch twigs and then watching in horror as the machine devoured my arms in a scene reminiscent of Fargo. I put the funnel back on and intend to leave it there. All in all, I'm pleased with my purchase. There are a few branches that are too big for the chipper. These will taste the oiled blade of my new chain saw. Sme of the drier, larger branches can jam the machine, which irks me to no end. But I refuse to call out the professionals, no matter how long it takes. $149.99 on Amazon
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I would use the branches to build a kick-ass bonfire.
But then, I live in Minnesota.
I got one just like this a while back from Harbor Freight. I like it a lot! It does better on larger woody branches – it tends to clog on the more leafy derbies.
The problem I found was the blades get dull fast. I had a huge yard clean up project and found on day 2 that it just was not mulching well at all. The blades on my mulcher are revisable so I switched them and was able to finish the project.
The next time I went to use them I removed and sharpened the blades by hand. I was not able to give it as good as an edge and had to stop to re-sharpen them regularly. It was annoying but worth the effort. Sadly, one of the cheep hex bolts holding the blades on striped out (the hex part) and I was forced to drill it out. Normally an easy fix. But when I went to get a replacement bolt I found out they are an odd type and I have not been able to find any.
I just picked up a new tap set and plan on replacing them with a slightly larger, higher quality bolt. I also got a blade sharpening attachment for my Dremmel tool. Hopefully with this attachment I will be able to sharpen the mulcher blades without having to remove them. Until then the mulcher has been banished to the “To Fix” pile.