SidecarFlip: Your post surprised me very much. I never expected such an in depth an detailed coverage of chipper knives. I read your post 3-4 times to make sure I throughly absorbed all the information you shared.
From all your experience, approximately how many hours use do you expect from the average chipper knife set before a removal and sharpening is required.
And would it be recommended to purchase a second set of chipper knives, to use as replacement, while the first set is sent out for sharpening.
It would be advisable depending on how much chipping you intend on doing and the condition of the wood being chipped. Remember chippers chip wood, not nails, or screws or stones hidden inside the wood. Running dirty wood will severely shorten the knife lifespan. That applies to commercial units too. You should see what a knife looks like after it eats a spike. Those big diesels keep on going but the knives suffer badly.
The other less subtle way to tell if the knives are dull is how much the chipper lugs down the tractor. Dull knives, besides stringing chips, eat horsepower so it the tractor seems to be laboring, chances the knives are dull and need flipped or ground.
I rum my 8" Jinma on my M9 with 85 PTO horsepower, about 4 times the required power so I added a Weasler slip clutch to the chipper input so I would not tear it up from too much power. Usually, the belts will slip when knives get really dull.
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When your unit starts 'stringing' wood chips instead of chipping them, it's time to sharpen the knives. New knives have 2 cutting edges so you can flip them to have a new edge, however, when flipping them, look at the anvil closely. The anvil must have a clean right angle with no radius to it and no nicks or chips in it. Most anvils will have 4 edges (knives have 2). If the anvil is suspect, flip it or reverse it and set the clearance with a credit card with the knife that is running proudest of the flywheel.
I'm not a 'vendor 'on here so I don't want to get in trouble but Wood Max offers a sharpening service but I do it cheaper at 50 cents a lineal inch per knife x 2. IOW, if you have 12 inch knives, the cost per knife is 12 dollars per knife. Anvils price the same way, 50 cents per lineal inch but in the case of an anvil the cost is times 4 because they have 4 edges. I do my 'long distance knives via USPS and you are responsible for shipping both ways. I ship the sharpened knives in secure packaging with the edges protected, Priority mail.
I don't do lot, mostly commercial chipper knife work but I do, do them and lead time (turnaround) is 2 weeks depending on my workload because set up's differ fr different knives and if I'm grinding say Bandit knives, your knives require a different set up. My e-mail address is
sales@flipmeisters.com or you can PM me here. It's not a get rich thing, I happen to own a machine and welding shop so it's just a service because very few outfits sharpen chipper knives today.
