Wallenstein vs Woodland Mills Wood Chipper

[alexeaton]

I own a Kubota L6060 and have a heavily wooded property and want a great wood chipper to match my tractor, with hydraulic feed. I am considering the following:
1. Wallenstein BX72R, for $11,130
2. Woodland Mills WC88, for $3,300

I can afford either chipper, but I also don't want to waste money. I own about 75 acres, largely woods, plus there's a chance I'll increase over the years. Can anyone share their experience with Wallenstein or Woodland Mills wood chippers? Would the 3x price of Wallenstein be worth it? What about the Wallenstein makes them so much more expensive.

Thanks!
Alex

 

[mikester]

Wallenstein is made in Canada, WM is china.

I can't comment on the WM quality as I don't have one. I did buy an 8" Jinma clone with mechanical feeder which is a P.O.S. quality wise and I will never buy Chinese no-name again. In general I find the rule is you get what you pay for.

The good thing about my chinese chipper is that something breaks or jambs up every 15 minutes or so and my hobby is rebuilding and repairing.

 

[Old_Paint]

I have a WC-68. It's all the chipper I need. You have a much larger tractor, so you can benefit from the 88 where I could not. To my recollection, I think I plugged the chute exactly ONCE since I've had it. It sliced off a rather large slab from something and that caught in the chute. I wasn't paying attention to the output, so that's on me. Silly me didn't stop and clean it out because I only had 'a few more branches. It took a while to dig out the compacted and burnt sawdust where the chipper recycled them through the knives enough to nearly catch it on fire. Other than that, it's been trouble free. It can be a little finicky about adjusting the stop bar for the infeed hydraulics so that it's not so sensitive that it knocks itself off, or so tight that you can't move it. I've got an LX2610, and 19 HP at the PTO seems to be plenty to run it, despite it being recommended for 40HP. I stalled the LX a couple times, but I was feeding 5" diameter elm into it at a rate a little too fast. Elm is tough and hard. The WC-68 has a single driven roller. This is sometimes problematic with stuff that has a tough stringy bark on it. The infeed wheel doesn't want to bite on larger diameter stuff in that case. But, overall, it's a LOT better than the puny little Briggs powered chipper shredder I had before. Now I feed the stuff coming out of the WC-68 into the little guy when I want to pulverize stuff to mix into my flower beds.

 

[WFM]

I have a WoHoo China made WoodMaxx chipper with hydrolic feed. And your tractor is alot bigger. I'm a poor bastard and couldn't afford to buy any brand so I bought WoodMaxx. I use it about 4 or 5 hours a year and it will certainly chew up the brush and trees. Another reason I bought it was its self contained. As my tractor doesn't have rear hydraulics

I just hook up the pto and it cranks.

 

[NCL4701]

Old Paint already gave a pretty thorough rundown of the WC-68, which is what I also have. As best I recall, the Wallenstein has two infeed rollers v one for the Woodland Mills. After about 100 hours on the WC-68 (my brother and I share it so it gets some use) the reversible knives are still sharp and haven’t turned them around yet.

Based on the price difference between the Wallenstein and Woodland Mills I would certainly hope the Wallenstein is better in some way, but I don’t really know what it would be. Having spent quite a few hours with a 110hp commercial unit working for a tree service many years ago, I knew whatever I got had to have hydraulic feed but really wasn’t expecting the Woodland Mills build quality to be as good as it is for the price. Other than the big chipper would chip a 12” log and the WC-68 doesn’t have near that capacity, from an operator standpoint, very little difference even though the big unit had double feed rollers. Chipping near max capacity it takes some practice and technique to get it to feed regardless of how many rollers there are. For the price difference, I would expect the Wallenstein to be a run it 3 shifts a day 24/7/365 for several years level of quality and it may well be.

If someone has a Wallenstein, would be interested to hear their experience.

 

[mikester]

From the Wallenstein equipment I've used I've found them much better build quality, no buttered welds using coat hangers and gobs of lead based paint to cover up pin holes and poor joints.

 

[steveh]

I don't have a chipper of any brand, but I have a Wallenstein wood splitter. So I can at least comment on quality. I paid what is probably 20% more for my splitter than I would have for a Chinesium model, and I find it was well worth it. Very good quality and in ten years of use, zero problems.

Wallenstein is more expensive to buy, and it is well-made, reliable, and tough. I would imagine the chipper would be the same. Whether it is worth the additional case, up to the buyer,

 

[bikerdib]

I had a "self feed" Wallenstein that I was talked into on another forum. Everyone said "you don't need hydro feed." Man, I never should have listened to them. It was OK if you had all perfectly matched "telephone poles" with all the branches trimmed off but that took LOTS of extra time. I checked into retrofitting with hydro feed but Wallenstein said they no longer sold the conversion unless I just bought all the individual replacement parts. That would have cost me almost as much as the original chipper. I sold the Wallenstein and bought a Woodland Mills unit. It has done everything I asked of it. Either machine seems to be well made but definately as you said, get hydro feed.

 

[MX6000]

I went with the Woodmax MX8800 (Made in the USA) and have been extremely happy with it.

 

[Thunder chicken]

I’ve looked at a few Wallenstien chippers in lots, and ended up buying a woodland mills WC88. I use it 5-10 hours a year.
i couldn’t justify the price difference. Is the quality better? Maybe a tad but not that much better. I doubt for homeowner use there’s a difference in longevity with either one

 

[mikester]

I have a WoHoo China made WoodMaxx chipper with hydrolic feed. And your tractor is alot bigger. I'm a poor bastard and couldn't afford to buy any brand so I bought WoodMaxx. I use it about 4 or 5 hours a year and it will certainly chew up the brush and trees. Another reason I bought it was its self contained. As my tractor doesn't have rear hydraulics View attachment 67305 I just hook up the pto and it cranks.

Similar design to my Jinma but yours looks a lot better design wise i.e. round and rotating exit chute, double hydraulic infeed.

Lately I've been running mine 4-5 hours per day. I'd get more hours in if I could except I lose a lot of time doing field disassembly to clear the chute clogs, or driving back to the barn to re-weld handles, chute deflectors, etc. Last week I discovered my flywheel was stopping but my engine wasn't bogging down. I discovered that the main pulley was installed without a key or retaining set screw and the pulley was spinning on the shaft. Cheap F's saved $0.10 and now I'm going to have to buy a new flywheel drive shaft to fix the POS. Oh well, penny wise and pound foolish. Got what I paid for.

At least I don't get bored using it. I'm just waiting for the 200 lb flywheel to explode one day and I just hope I'm not walking beside it when it does.

BTW, do yourself a big favour and buy a PTO safety clutch if your unit doesn't come with one. Cheaper than splitting and repairing your tractor PTO.

 

[UpNorthMI]

WoodMaxx MX 9900, USA made, great machine and great service and support from WoodMaxx. The double variable speed hydro infeed is awesome and allows you to run this beast at a rate to suit all sizes and types of material.

Wallenstein make good forestry equipment but are often much more expensive. It may be due to the way their equipment is sold through dealer networks compared to direct sales by competing companies.

I manage over 300 acres of woodland and my WoodMaxx MX9900 has seen many hours of hard use, many days are dawn to dusk with the chipper!
I normally run this on my L3901.

put the money you save on the chipper towards a Farmi log skidding winch and make your woodland management so much easier.

 

[WFM]

I'm always so long between use of the chipper the hydrolic feed can be IN or Reverse. I generally struggle with a some brush jamming it in there and I have feed rolls in Reverse !!!
LOL. other then Me running it no issues. I did have a customer that bought a Italy made cord wood saw that runs off the pto. What a beautifully engineered piece of equipment. Will last several lifetimes no dought.

 

[Old_Paint]

I did have a customer that bought a Italy made cord wood saw that runs off the pto. What a beautifully engineered piece of equipment. Will last several lifetimes no dought.

Brand? Model?

 

[alexeaton]

I don't have a chipper of any brand, but I have a Wallenstein wood splitter. So I can at least comment on quality. I paid what is probably 20% more for my splitter than I would have for a Chinesium model, and I find it was well worth it. Very good quality and in ten years of use, zero problems.

Wallenstein is more expensive to buy, and it is well-made, reliable, and tough. I would imagine the chipper would be the same. Whether it is worth the additional case, up to the buyer,

Is your splitter self contained or pto powered?

 

[steveh]

Is your splitter self contained or pto powered?

Mine is powered by a Honda engine. I looked hard at the PTO models and ultimately decided that I didn't need to run a big tractor engine to do my splitting, a small, efficient gasoline engine would be fine. And it is. The PTO versions are nice in that one can drive the tractor to the wood and do the work; I don't need to do that.

 

[ItBmine]

I don't know anything about other brands, but I have a Wallenstein BXM32 chipper shredder. Smaller than the ones you are talking about here but it seems to be well built. I have all hardwood maple here and at lest at this size it doesn't need any powered feed. It pulls the branches in quite good. I just drop in the chute and walk away to get the next limb.

That 72 sure isn't cheap is it.

 

[NorCalRick]

I have the Woodland Mills WC88 PTO chipper. Done a fair amount of chipping, and works very well. The only issue I have had is with the in-feed roller system. The speed is adjustable, which is cool, but I do end up tweaking it regularly. I'm on the west coast, and have almost all oak, so the wood is harder than what is shown on a lot of the demo videos. Also, an interesting problem has been short pieces of wood. The powered roller is on top and is spring loaded. On the bottom are a series of metal rollers. Seems fine, but if the piece has a squared or sharp edge, and the piece isn't long enough for me to hold it 'down' it won't feed and just bucks. Might be nice to have a way to raise the powered roller as you are starting to feed. I saw that feature on another chipper, maybe WoodMaxx? The big pro chippers have that, but $$$