Looking for chipper advice...

I'm taking down a fair number of trees around the house, and trying to clear up a lot of brush around the place as well. We have several brush piles, but they are getting a lot bigger and uglier than I really like. I'm thinking that it is time to invest in a wood chipper. While it would be really nice to have one of those pro-grade, umpteen horse jobs that can eat entire trees, the budget reality is more on the order of a home-owner size unit, probably second hand.

I also am trying to make some compost, and have heard that it processes a lot faster if you run the leaves through a chipper first, so that function would also be useful, though less important.

Looking on the local Craigs list, I am seeing several, mostly around $300 or so, ranging from 5-10 horsepower, claiming to handle up to about a 3" branch - not likely to be needing to do anything that big, as I tend to make firewood out of anything more than an inch or two...

What should I look for in a small chipper / shredder?

Any particularly good types of cutters to look for / avoid?

Any brands to watch out for? A couple seem to be "Yardman" - is this an MTD clone? I know MTD is usually not real good, how are their chippers?

What size engine should I be looking for?

Any sort of models out there that can be made to run off our Craftsman lawn tractor, or maybe off my splitter engine (I wouldn't mind not having to take care of yet another gas engine device...)

Gooserider

I don't see a need for a big chipper - and at 169 for a full size unit (plus extra for delivery since we don't have a trailer hitch) that's only two days worth of rentals to have spent enough on something I could own... 90% of my brush (which I do have a lot of) is relatively small stuff - as I said, anything over an inch or two goes to the wood pile, when I drop a tree, I trim it at about the point where the branches get down to the size I could cut with a hand-pruner..

Our town doesn't have a municipal mulch pile - currently we spend significant amounts of tax dollars to send our yard waste to a neighboring town, where they turn it into mulch and chips (which they sell for a profit) - I'm on a town committee that is working to change this, but not making much progress. They do pick up yard waste, but the level of "prep" needed (cut to two foot lengths, bundled and tied, or placed in a 20g trash can) is not worth it.

I'm not all that anxious to purchase another peice of OPE, but I don't see any other really GOOD alternatives....

Gooserider

Well, I was hitting Craig's list, and hopefully made out OK... As of about noon this morning, I have a new (VERY old) chipper....

According to the instruction plate, it says it is a Kemp, model Z60H. Googling for Kemp seems to suggest that they are out of business, but there may be another outfit making parts for them (assuming one would ever need parts, the unit doesn't look like there's a lot to break on it, and what parts there are look like pretty standard industrial stuff.)

The dataplate says Kemp was around since 1890, but I don't think the unit is QUITE that old - though it might be close.... Actually it has warning signs on it to tell stupid people not to stick their hands in the machine (presumably it is OK to put other body parts in? :bug: ) which makes me think it might be early liability lawyer vintage...

Engine is a Briggs and Stratton 205cc / 5hp "Magnetronic", model 130202. The engine is connected to the business end with a centrifugal clutch and a pretty hefty belt.

I couldn't get it started when I was looking at it, however the engine turned over and appeared to have decent compression. Otherwise, it was rusty, but appeared to work.

I got it home, and found the tank was full of something that might have been gas, once upon a time, and that it had no air filter. I was able to get the engine to start and run for a few seconds on ether (IMHO a useful diagnostic tool if used with discretion...) so took the tank and carb off, and sprayed everything I could off with carb cleaner, freed up the pivots on the throttle, and did some other minor cleanup w/o getting to drastic. Put everything back together and filled it w/ gas and a good slug of Sea Foam - got it running and gave it a bunch of Sea Foam spray down the carb throat.

It's not running real good, but it is tolerable for now, I figure to get an air filter and run a couple tanks of gas through it before deciding if it needs more serious attention...

I did see a couple of the Yardman style machines for around $300, but this was enough less that I thought it was worth a try...

Look at the pictures, and tell me if you think I got a reasonable deal for $75....

More photos - the other side

Last Two - the engine and name plate

Agreed, I probably wouldn't put any serious effort into this engine, but a few bucks for an air filter and a few other minor parts doesn't seem like a bad deal. As I said, earlier, I worked on it for a couple hours this afternoon doing relatively minor cleaning, and it now runs OK if not great. I think it will do... Definitely would put something bigger on it if this engine dies, but it may be OK once I get a filter on it and run some gas through it.

Seems strange to me that chippers seem to have so much trouble with branches - our lawn tractor doesn't seem to have much problem at all when I run over things with the mower...

Gooserider

So far I haven't gotten mine running enough to tell... The engine wasn't working when I got it, but I've gotten that running, though it's hard to tell how "tired" the engine might be. However the centrifugal clutch was also fried, and the belt was pretty bad, so I've got new ones on order. To the extent that I was able to run it on the existing clutch and belt, I was rather underwhelmed, but it was hard to tell how much of that was because of the weak drive train.

However I did find a manual for a similar looking Kemp shredder over on MyTractorForum.com, (one of the few places that actually has any info on the units) and have reversed the teeth in the shredder part, and cleaned up the chipper side, and gotten some better instructions on how to set up the unit (it varies depending on what kind of material you are working with) - hopefully when I get my parts and finish putting it back together I will see much better performance.

You will find VERY little on "Kemp" brand chippers, the company went under at least 10-15 years ago. There was an outfit in PA that was supposedly took over their parts business, but that outfit went under four or five years ago as well... However this is probably not a huge problem, as it appears that aside from sheet metal and some of the major castings, everything that is likely to wear out are common industrial type parts that should be easy enough to replace with generic parts.

My local OPE guy says the Kemp shredders were good machines - and that my 5hp unit will probably out do a new 8-10 hp MTD / Yard Machines or Troy-built. He is only one of several that have described it as comparable to a MacKissic machine, which it does certainly resemble at first glance. I think it may have significant internal differences however - my hammers are fixed to the rotor, not free swinging for one thing. Another major difference is that the belt drive and chipper hopper are on opposite sides - which I think reverses the rotation direction on the inside drum - if so that would make the MacKissic a potentially better design as it would force everything to go accross the screen before it could be ejected, giving more chance to chop it up...


mpilihp - I suspect this wouldn't do what you want - I cut my trees down to the point where I'm turning everything over about an inch or two into firewood, and even so, my limited attempts at feeding this unit branches were not real positive - you have to shove them in, and they get chewed up relatively slowly, with lots of vibration... I was hoping to get rid of a bunch of brush piles from previous years, as well as the left over tree tops from this year's cutting, and a bunch of other brush, but it doesn't seem like these units are really designed to cope with that sort of load. I think they are targetted more towards dealing with leaves and an occasional branch or two, not large volumes of wood... Hate to say it, but I think you may be needing to find a commercial size "eats whole trees" style unit...

I'd also check your engine size equation - the engine on my unit is 206cc = FIVE HP, I'm not sure but I suspect a 269cc is going to be more on the order of a 6-8 hp engine.


Gooserider