# Wooden chipper box



## coolbrze (Sep 24, 2009)

Need to install a wooden chip box on a landscape dump. What wood do you recommend using & what should I coat/paint it with? Also, the dump bed is 4' high x 12' long, how high & how long should I make it? Any vents?


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## gr8scott72 (Sep 24, 2009)

coolbrze said:


> Need to install a wooden chip box on a landscape dump. What wood do you recommend using & what should I coat/paint it with? Also, the dump bed is 4' high x 12' long, how high & how long should I make it? Any vents?



Here's mine. I just used treated plywood with treated 2x4 frames around the plywood. Kind of heavy but it should last a long time.

I made it just tall enough to load my skid in the trailer if I needed to without taking the wood off.

















I've read that you shouldn't paint treated wood for at least a year.


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## tree MDS (Sep 24, 2009)

My box is about 5' tall and 8' long, its built off my mason dump so a 4'x8' sheet of plywood fits right into the pockets. I have no vents. but the top only comes back one sheet of plywood (4'), so things "vent" all over if you over fill the truck - still its not really a problem though, and the nice thing is I can still get two yards of topsoil on the back, also without a full roof the tractor has more room to load wood/scoop out topsoil.

Yours will be a bit tougher due to the 12' bed. you'll have to stand three sheets up if you want 5' or taller, and reinforce them from the outside with 2x4's. You want the inside smooth, so nothing catches on it when you dump.

As for material; if you use pressure treated you will have to wait for it to cure before you can paint it - but I suppose it'll last longer. Last time (recently) I went pressure treated, it sucked looking at that yellowish wood till it dried. Whats the other?? CDX or some :censored:, you can paint that right away - probably good enough.

As for paint, I use benjamin moore iron clad black, its a satin so not too glossy. This stuff is also awesome on truck frames as its metal and wood enamel, cheap too. Use whatever primer the paint guy reccomends to go with. 

The problem I had is, cuz mine is only 8' long, the new 250 was blasting that plywood up pretty good. To fix this I had a buddy that owns a sheet metal shop (HVAC) fab up a metal headboard. he even went around the 2x4's, then overlapped with the main sheet - looks cool too. 

I really must need some more treework, lol. Hope this gives you some ideas though.


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## tree MDS (Sep 24, 2009)

TreeCo said:


> I chipped into a wood box back in the eighties and you are right.....a big chipper will beat up the wood quickly!
> 
> Used sheet metal roofing attached where the chips hit the box would be a cheap alternative to going to a sheet metal shop. My plywood box lasted for several years.
> 
> ...



Yep. Thats why we had to build a new one, the additional 50 hp with the bigger chipper finished the old one off real quick, started blowing holes right through it actually... of course it was like twelve years old too.

I went with the metal right off on the new one.


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## gr8scott72 (Sep 24, 2009)

tree MDS said:


> Yep. Thats why we had to build a new one, the additional 50 hp with the bigger chipper finished the old one off real quick, started blowing holes right through it actually... of course it was like twelve years old too.
> 
> I went with the metal right off on the new one.



Don't think I'll have that problem right now with just using the 6" Vermeer. lol


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## treeoperations (Sep 25, 2009)

i have a ply wood box that i can put on and take off on my own in about 20 seconds, it just stands up when not in use, then it just get tilted on to the truck and strapped down.

my only issue was my lil 65 eats the ply woood with the chips it fires out so we have lined the inside with epoxy and fiber glass sheet, it added a piddly 10kgs of weight but least the box doesnt get holes blowin in it. my mates bandit whole tree fires chip so hard at the epoxy it gets stabbed into it but its all good


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## coolbrze (Sep 25, 2009)

One of my brothers is a carpenter/wood worker & he said that black fence paint/asphalt tar/paint would last forever. He said go 3/4" pres. treated plywood & wait for it to dry. Drying time depends on how wet the wood is but max is 1 year. I def. don't want to wait that long. On another note, since we do a lot of landscaping & I want this truck as a Jack-Of-All-Trades, I'm wondering if I can make this chip box removable via winch in our shop & leave it set in the corner when we're not chipping. I was thinking of securing the chip box w/ bolts drilled through the side so when we dump, the box doesn't fall out. Any thoughts to my ideas?


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## gr8scott72 (Sep 25, 2009)

coolbrze said:


> One of my brothers is a carpenter/wood worker & he said that black fence paint/asphalt tar/paint would last forever. He said go 3/4" pres. treated plywood & wait for it to dry. Drying time depends on how wet the wood is but max is 1 year. I def. don't want to wait that long. On another note, since we do a lot of landscaping & I want this truck as a Jack-Of-All-Trades, I'm wondering if I can make this chip box removable via winch in our shop & leave it set in the corner when we're not chipping. I was thinking of securing the chip box w/ bolts drilled through the side so when we dump, the box doesn't fall out. Any thoughts to my ideas?



Mine is held together with 2 straps over the top. Stays when dumping plus because they are individual panels, I can remove them fairly easily. I also put a short piece of rope thru each panel and have a 6' boom extension on my skid steer grapple with a hook at the end to be able to lift the panels off.


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## treeoperations (Sep 25, 2009)

coolbrze said:


> One of my brothers is a carpenter/wood worker & he said that black fence paint/asphalt tar/paint would last forever. He said go 3/4" pres. treated plywood & wait for it to dry. Drying time depends on how wet the wood is but max is 1 year. I def. don't want to wait that long. On another note, since we do a lot of landscaping & I want this truck as a Jack-Of-All-Trades, I'm wondering if I can make this chip box removable via winch in our shop & leave it set in the corner when we're not chipping. I was thinking of securing the chip box w/ bolts drilled through the side so when we dump, the box doesn't fall out. Any thoughts to my ideas?




if it stops raining ill get some pics of mine to show how easy it is


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## Blakesmaster (Sep 25, 2009)

coolbrze said:


> One of my brothers is a carpenter/wood worker & he said that black fence paint/asphalt tar/paint would last forever. He said go 3/4" pres. treated plywood & wait for it to dry. Drying time depends on how wet the wood is but max is 1 year. I def. don't want to wait that long. On another note, since we do a lot of landscaping & I want this truck as a Jack-Of-All-Trades, I'm wondering if I can make this chip box removable via winch in our shop & leave it set in the corner when we're not chipping. I was thinking of securing the chip box w/ bolts drilled through the side so when we dump, the box doesn't fall out. Any thoughts to my ideas?



I showed these before on another thread and mine is just an easy dump but it might help. I'm assuming you have cheater boards on the side of your box. As long as you have a lip inside those boards to rest the chip box on ( you might need to fab this if you don't ) you can slide the chip box inside of the cheater boards, have it rest on the lip and run a few bolts from the chip box into the cheater boards.






You can see the pressure treated "cheater boards" on the left of the pic and the chip box starts about 6 inches in from them. I built it with 1X8's my father milled, some 2X4's for framing and some old plywood for a top. I can get it on and off in about 3-4 minutes with another guy.


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## arbor pro (Oct 1, 2009)

Here's my setup. I only built the box 8' long so I can fit my mini skid between the cab and front of the box.

Built the 2x4 frame out of green treated wood. Plywood is 3/4 cdx which I painted right away with 3 coats of white. After 2 years of use and sitting outside in all weather, it needs another coat of paint but still looks pretty good. This box sits right on the flatbed and attaches via stake pockets so it can be lifted up and off.

My previous chip box was the full length of the 12' box but was built on top of 2' sides that were built out of 2x12s with 3" channel iron stake pocket supports. To rest the 4' tall box on top of the 2' sides, I just screwed 2x4s to the inside of the 2x12 sides to create a 'rail' for the chip box to slide in and rest on. Then I just put a single through bolt in each corner to hold the box onto the sides and it worked great. If I needed just a dump truck, two of us could pull the box off in a few minutes and reinstall it in the same.

Cost me about $250 in materials and that included the barn doors (hard to see in the second photo) that swing out and hook onto each side with a chain and hook for dumping.

If you keep the wood painted and screwed together tight, it can look just as professional as a metal box. Sure, metal is better but it doesn't mean wood won't work and can't look good.

When I rebuild this box or build another one, I will line the interior with sheet metal though to keep the moisture from the chips from eventually rotting out the plywood and from beating it up. Any tin or roofing metal would work.


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