NCL4701
Well-known member
Equipment
L4701, T2290, WC68, grapple, BB1572, Farmi W50R, Howes 500, 16kW IMD gen, WG24
About the hopping:
1) Like Old Paint said, if there’s a taper on the end that helps.
2) If it’s square cut on the end and hopping, lift the back (the part you’re holding onto) up to the top of the chute as you push forward. That puts the square edge at a bit of an angle and if you can get a tooth to grab that square edge, the roller will climb the end of the limb as it pulls it in. Once you get it to catch, you can help it by pulling down a bit on the limb while pushing forward to lever the roller up. When the limb is down on the bottom of the chute and feeding by itself, let go before the knives hit and rattle all the bones in your arms. That process takes about 1/10th the time to do as it took to read all that and it’s kind of all in one continuous motion with some practice. After you’ve done that a while you’ll get good at it.
3) Not always, but often you can plan your feeds. Ideally, don’t start from nothing to a 4” square cut branch. Put a 2” or 3” branch in it and start the 4” on the heels of the smaller branch before the smaller one finishes feeding so it’s not all the way down when you start the 4”. If you don’t have that ideal stater branch but have a bunch of little stuff, put a wad of little stuff in the chute and use that bigger branch as a ramrod to stuff it in. That wad of little stuff will open up the roller and ease feeding of the big one when the wad of smalls is half way or better through.
4) At some point, it will jam. 90% of the time, reverse a couple inches, back forward again. No need to wait or be polite about it: bang, bang back and forth. Do that until it clears or about 6 times whichever comes first unless it’s just obvious you miscalculated and have to back it all the way out to trim an offshoot to get it in the throat. Even then, a lot of times you can back it all the way out, rotate to get a better angle on it, and re-feed without trimming.
5) If you have a relatively straight limb without offshoots so it won’t hang up on a backward feed and it’s one of those where it’s 2” on the little end and 5” on the big end, there’s nothing wrong with feeding the 2” end first.
6) If there’s a chunk stuck between the knives and the feed roller rattling around making an awful sound, just shove some more stuff in it to clear that out.
7) If it starts making weird noises or looks kind of like it’s smoking but isn’t on fire, shut down the tractor, open the clamshell, and check the discharge chute (which is probably clogged). You’ll need some sort of wrench to remove the one bolt to do that. A decent sized straight screwdriver is handy for cleaning it out; wood chips packed by a tractor can be impressively dense. Chipping sticky sappy stuff such as green evergreens can clog the chute if feed speed is excessive. Slow feed speed if clogging.
There’s a technique to feeding a hydraulic feed chipper. I have probably 75 hours on my single drum WC-68. I have several hundred hours feeding a twin roller 12” capacity commercial unit (which was owned by my then employer). One roller, two rollers; technique is pretty much the same and neither is going to go from empty to a full capacity feed without some effort, practice, and skill on the part of the operator. Nothing at all against twin roller units but I don’t see much difference in practical performance with the single roller. Of course the only two I’ve spent much time with are the WC-68 and an old 110 HP twin roller something or other (it was white and had a JD engine) from the late 80’s so possibly the big white double roller thing was a big POS but I don’t think so.
Edit: And as a general rule, feed from the left side. The rotation of the knives knocks the limb to the right if it knocks it anywhere so if you’re standing on the right side of a limb you will eventually be struck by said limb as the chipper slams it into the right side of the chute. Allowing your tractor to strike you in the leg with the equivalent of a baseball bat is not recommended.
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