Cost of convenience. Another option is to rent someone elses problems and return it at the end of the day.
Chipper/shredders opinions...
- Thread starter AL A
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Which is actually a great idea if the use is intermittent. If you need one year-round, though, maybe not so much. Just gotta weigh the costs and perceived needs. Anything self powered is another engine to maintain. Makes perfect sense to use a single power plant for as many different purposes as possible. That was my justification for getting a tractor. Now I just gotta get rid of some of the equipment I don't use much any more.
Not very well, no. The blade speed isn't very fast on chippers, for a reason. They typically have extremely heavy flywheels intended to make the knives simulate axe strikes on larger branches. Higher speed and more air-flow is needed for leaf mulching.
Most hardwood leaves are going to blow straight through a chipper, or plug it up because there isn't enough air flow. Most of the chips are actually mechanically thrown from the chipper. There's barely a gentle breeze coming out of the WC-68 from Woodland Mills.
The MacKissic machine I bought last fall does a good job shredding up hardwood and other leaves for composting. I don't have a lawn or own a lawnmower, so this machine fills in nicely. It kicks up a lot of dust, but it reduces the size of the leaf pile probably by 10X for the compost pile.
Not as great of the leaves are wet, it will still shred them but not as well and clogs occasionally. It's OK for occasional branch chipping but not ideal. Anything much larger than an inch or two I cut up and burn in the woodstove or firepit. I don't have much stuff like that so it's not a big limitation for me.
I think this is one of those no free lunch deals. A shredder makes a marginal chipper and a chipper makes a marginal leaf shredder. In my case, my property is small. If I were on land with a lot more stuff to deal with a larger tool would probably be in order.
Not as great of the leaves are wet, it will still shred them but not as well and clogs occasionally. It's OK for occasional branch chipping but not ideal. Anything much larger than an inch or two I cut up and burn in the woodstove or firepit. I don't have much stuff like that so it's not a big limitation for me.
I think this is one of those no free lunch deals. A shredder makes a marginal chipper and a chipper makes a marginal leaf shredder. In my case, my property is small. If I were on land with a lot more stuff to deal with a larger tool would probably be in order.