minimum size brush chipper?

[chuckwood]

I'm going to be clearing around 5 acres of woods, filled with privet bushes and Japanese honeysuckle bushes. The result will be piles of brush everywhere that I plan on turning into mulch. I'll also be taking down a lot of small trees, leaving a lot of small branches. Anything larger than maybe 1 1/2" diameter I'll be cutting up for firewood, a lot of folks are going to be getting free firewood. Part of my plan is to get my home schooled 13 year old grandson outside and away from video game terminals and doing some productive work. Is a small chipper reasonably safe for a younger teenager to operate? I've been looking at the 15 hp models that have vertical hoppers and you feed from the top down. The DR series sold at Home Depot comes to mind. I've looked at the smaller, say 8 hp chippers and I don't think they could handle this task in a reasonable amount of time. Is this a safe plan? I have no experience with chippers but a lot with chainsaws. Any recommendations or ideas? Here's a pic of the woods and one of my first piles to be chipped, mostly small stuff.

 

[blades]

Your are going to need to rent a commercial chipper 10-12" perferable with controlled auto feed. The one that HD rents( think it is a 6") might even be a bit on the small side for the size of the job. Not something a 13 year old should be operating. I have a 20 hp 5" unit I would not even consider attacking 5 acres of brush with it. Way to much time spent feeding it.

 

[old_soul]

5 acres of that? definitely get a 12 inch machine. i know, you are not chipping that big of wood BUT you need the wider infeed table and big self feed rollers to shove those brush piles in.............

After a couple acres of cutting small firewood you might even decide to throw some big stuff through it too lol

13 is definitely not too young to learn to work. supervised of course. Good luck!

 

[chuckwood]

5 acres of that? definitely get a 12 inch machine. i know, you are not chipping that big of wood BUT you need the wider infeed table and big self feed rollers to shove those brush piles in.............

After a couple acres of cutting small firewood you might even decide to throw some big stuff through it too lol

13 is definitely not too young to learn to work. supervised of course. Good luck!

Well, I was sorta expecting I'd be told to rent a big chipper. I was hoping to be able to chip as I go with a small chipper, but not practical here. I'm assuming the hazards of the big chippers is getting yourself snagged by a branch going into the machine? Still too risky for a supervised 13 year old? The newer machines have safety bars on them and if you hit the bar it stops the infeed, right? Do people do stupid things with them, like when small brush isn't feeding and you get in close in the hopper trying to shove it in?

 

[blades]

YES to both questions, Most people panic before perhaps remembering operating instructions. Log, leg arm- machine doesn't know the difference.

 

[gdavis24]

Chippers get real small real quick. Feeding angular branches like apple, hickory, oak is more a problem of hopper size than branch diameter.
With vines and brushy stuff learn to use a forked push stick along the sides of the feed chute, and alternate brush with solid tree poles to clear out the hopper.
five acres at a weekend pace is a couple of years. for that you could buy a site machine for the duration and sell it at end. Minimum spend $2K on an old Asplundh whisper chipper chuck and duck, or $5K on a Bandit 6 in hydraulic feed.
The chuck and ducks are loud, exciting and will whip your head and backside if you stand in the way. The hydraulic feeds are slower and safer for beginners. They are ALL dangerous for the incautious, reckless and stupid. Just like your chainsaw.

 

[chuckwood]

Chippers get real small real quick. Feeding angular branches like apple, hickory, oak is more a problem of hopper size than branch diameter.
With vines and brushy stuff learn to use a forked push stick along the sides of the feed chute, and alternate brush with solid tree poles to clear out the hopper.
five acres at a weekend pace is a couple of years. for that you could buy a site machine for the duration and sell it at end. Minimum spend $2K on an old Asplundh whisper chipper chuck and duck, or $5K on a Bandit 6 in hydraulic feed.
The chuck and ducks are loud, exciting and will whip your head and backside if you stand in the way. The hydraulic feeds are slower and safer for beginners. They are ALL dangerous for the incautious, reckless and stupid. Just like your chainsaw.

I've never heard the phrase "chuck and duck" before, but I've often taken the time out, even many years ago, to watch big chippers in action. Anything that makes that much racket has to be doing something interesting and scary. I'm assuming it's the chuck and duck that makes the really loud, spooled up howling sound, just like a really big industrial wood planer does. Is this because the cutter head is partly exposed at the very end of the hopper? To me, it seems like if you get really snagged by something big going in to a chuck and duck, you won't have much time to react. So it will be a hydraulic feed for me. I'll have lots of vines, brush, and angular branches. I've also got some partly rotten and fallen pine trees to dispose of, some rather large diameter. I'm thinking of slicing them up lengthwise into 4 sections with a big saw and chipping them as well. The mulch from them will rot fast and I'm always looking for more garden mulch. Otherwise, I'll be spending just as much time and money hauling them off to the brush dump. I'm in city limits and they won't let me burn anything. If they won't tolerate my smoke, they'll just have to live with my noise.

 

[windthrown]

For commercial size chippers, they all make a lot of noise. Its the motors, bearings, and knives. Chuck and duck is just the term used for drum chippers. The other main type of chipper is a hydraulic roller feed disk chipper (ie., Brush Bandit and Vermeer). Smaller chippers like DR, Craftsman and Bearcat are usually drum as well, but they are smaller w/o feed rollers. I have owned several smaller chippers, like Bearcat and Craftsman. They are OK for chipping small one tree projects and for leaves on a small city lot, but that is about it. They take a long time to chip anything substantial, and once you get over an inch they become pretty slow and useless.

Which means you really need a rent or buy a tow behind commercial size chipper. For 5 acres, there is really no alternative. You can buy a used pro type chipper and use it for your project, then flip it for what you paid for it. Renting them is not cheap, on the order of $100-200 a day. However, when renting, you can just return it and they maintain it and sharpen the knives. You can pile up what you need to chip, rent the chipper and chip, then return it, and start another pile to chip. Owning one you will have to maintain it and deal with getting the knives sharpened after a few days of chipping (or sharpen them yourself like I learned to do). I have owned several commercial chippers, including a Brush Bandit 90 and 95. You would be fine with a smaller Vermeer 700 or 900 or a Bandit 65 or 75, or if you have a tractor with a PTO you can buy a PTO chipper for a lot less. I am partial to Bandit disk chippers myself, but there are a lot of good disk chippers out there.

You can bust up pithy logs and chip them, but fireplace size logs tend to flip sideways with disk chippers and they get stuck in the feed well. Disk chippers work better with long limbs and sticks. With a chipper like a Bandit 65, you can chip trees up to 6 inches, and a Bandit 75 you can go 7 inches (a 90 and 95 will go to 9 inches). I usually chipped anything under 3 inches and cut the rest for burning as firewood. I made a lot of money chipping piles like the one you have there in the photo. Which is another alternative; around here you can hire someone with a chipper for $75 an hour and do on site chipping. I did that a lot when I had my last tree service company. Those machines can chip a lot of limbs in a hour. They also drink a lot of gas...

 

[derwoodii]

Looks about 6 inch size feed brush so bandit 65 if you can rent one. The drop feed sub 20 hp mashers are are more often waste of time hire and test one for day see if i am right
Nice idea about getting the lad working thou some hesitation due to wot can go wrong. A lot here depends on you him and how you approach tasks
Start slow finish before your tired read the instructions & keep him beyond safe or your be off the good grandad list.

can you burn it? easier cheaper could be safer

 

[windthrown]

He lives in a no-burn city, hence the need for a chipper. That is more and more common here, even in remote rural areas. In summer we cannot burn at all during fire season, and in winter we cannot burn during inversion or stagnant air days. I can still burn outside here on burn days and I burn a lot, but I also chip the small stuff.

 

[CalTreeEquip]

Chuck & Duck


6" Bandit 65

 

[derwoodii]

thats a good comparison vid Cal

Me I would'nt put a 13 yold rookie near a duck n chuck nor does it show how much fuel one them altec uses per hour vs the bandit or the weight and so toe capacity difference