I have been helping a disabled Marine vet do some major clean up of his yard lately. I found the average Craftsman 5HP chipper shredder isn't up to the task. For example we knocked down 3 trees in one day and one small one took 30 min to grind up. These are the nasty thorny Palo Verde trees (AZ State Tree. Fing nasty weed IMO.) and iron hard mesquite trees - also thorny. The Palo Verde branches are anything but straight and are bushy making them very difficult to shove in a shredder. All we are trying to do is reduce the bulk of the "jungle" so it can be disposed of more easily. It's too green to burn. Hauling it away requires it to be shredded as it's too bulky and a PIA to handle with all the thorns. Even the branches if cut up are a bulky waste of space. BTW thorn proof gloves have their limits...
The 5HP Craftsman we have to shove the branches down the throat of the flail shredder side and the chipper is no more than a pencil sharpener that nearly stalls the engine out. one branch wasn't 100% chipping and got sucked in the chipper jamming it up badly. An hour later we managed to get it un-jammed.
This is noisy, dirty, dusty, hot, and dangerous work. It's just under 100 degrees out.
Breaking parts on the little chippers means we need a bigger tool for the job. The chipper chute I keep breaking the welds on... Course it's NLA as Crapsman went to a plastic chute for later production.
So I just picked up a Bolens MC2800 that appears to be similar to a W-W Grinder Renegade 250 Chipper. Of course it's missing the obsolete screen and pins. However with 8HP it chips wood a lot faster and into bigger chips. It sucks in the bush like branches dangerously fast, but, without the shove, shove, jam, pull, shove it in drama. Things a monster...
Without the screen it likes to tenderize them and spit the branches out some impaled a couple inches into the dirt. At this point tenderizing the branches makes them easier to to feed into the 5HP Craftsman.
So what size screen should I get or attempt to make the "rod and roller" setup? The screens appear to be on eBay (reproductions) and expensive. Of course parts are NLA for this antique.
The 5HP Craftsman we have to shove the branches down the throat of the flail shredder side and the chipper is no more than a pencil sharpener that nearly stalls the engine out. one branch wasn't 100% chipping and got sucked in the chipper jamming it up badly. An hour later we managed to get it un-jammed.
This is noisy, dirty, dusty, hot, and dangerous work. It's just under 100 degrees out.
Breaking parts on the little chippers means we need a bigger tool for the job. The chipper chute I keep breaking the welds on... Course it's NLA as Crapsman went to a plastic chute for later production.
So I just picked up a Bolens MC2800 that appears to be similar to a W-W Grinder Renegade 250 Chipper. Of course it's missing the obsolete screen and pins. However with 8HP it chips wood a lot faster and into bigger chips. It sucks in the bush like branches dangerously fast, but, without the shove, shove, jam, pull, shove it in drama. Things a monster...
Without the screen it likes to tenderize them and spit the branches out some impaled a couple inches into the dirt. At this point tenderizing the branches makes them easier to to feed into the 5HP Craftsman.So what size screen should I get or attempt to make the "rod and roller" setup? The screens appear to be on eBay (reproductions) and expensive. Of course parts are NLA for this antique.
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