the Walnut Diary

Yesterday we finished up the two trees on the south field. 2 1/2 hours of uneventful chipping provides thin gruel for a blog characterized by the misadventures of a bumbler, so I resolved to do better today. This afternoon the chipper tackled the accumulated brush from three weeks of pruning around the farm. Things went very well until I decided to see what the limits of the machine really are. Then production stopped.

The above photo above looks much worse than it is. I had chipped the pear tree that the wind took down last week and was very pleased by the chipper’s success at reducing the twisted branches with their many perpendicular twigs to mulch. As I was pitching miscellaneous debris into the hopper I came upon a piece of rotten wood about four feet long and 4″ in diameter. It was very light, so I tossed it in to bung the twigs on through. When the blades touched it the thing apparently disintegrated. The dust consolidated some small twigs caught in the chute into a wooden concrete. With nowhere for the incoming chips to go, the machine soon overloaded, alerting my wife to warn me to shut down the Kubota. The chipper was well and truly plugged.

Clearing the blockage wasn’t hard, though it did require some shop tools.
Essentials include a 1/2″ steel rod to use to pry the flywheel around against resistance, followed by a piece of 2″ X 7/8″ white oak lath for further prying duties. The more challenging part was getting the accumulated crud out of the chute. In the shop I grabbed a cordless drill and a 3/4″ concrete bit about 2′ long. It freed up the blockage rather effortlessly, and the machine was ready for more work.

And hour and a half produced a half-load of wood chips which filled in a soft spot on one of the roads on the property. The chips are pretty useful for that sort of thing.

Steps as of 4:51 today: 10,536 steps. It turns out I am much more willing to walk to get a tractor than I am just to walk. A chipping session involves getting three pieces of drivable equipment into place. The Ranger contains most of the tools I need as well as the loppers for small branches and the chain saw for larger stuff. It also provides a comfortable seat for Bet, who correctly believes that I require some adult supervision when playing with this set of toys.

UPDATE, 14 April, 2017

April 12th we started off to chew up a large pile of silver maple boughs. Silver maple is a common soft maple, characterized by gently-tapered, vertical branches. Turns out those branches become too fine for the machine to chop up. I kept watching 12″ drinking straws popping up and down the chute, too stiff to bend around the curve and catching on the deflector at the top, then dropping back down to plug the machine.

Now I understand one of the videos I watched where the guy demonstrated a Wallenstein chipper/shredder. He would hang onto the branches as the coarse parts rapidly chipped away, then draw out the fine ends and toss them into this hopper on top where they would instantly get shredded.

I may try some variation on this, hanging on to the branches to recover the thin parts, then consign them to a brush pile or burn barrel, or even toss them straight onto the trailer with the chips. There aren’t a lot of of quality control inspections of the chips that go into a mud hole on a farm trail.

When the chipper does plug with the fine branches, BTW, it is quite easy to unplug because of the shape of the tapered chute. If it is just branches and not consolidated with dust, just grab something and pull the whole thing out.