Portable Wood Chipper

Portable Wood Chipper WOODLOT EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous 27-3-3 After he got tired of paying a commercial garbage service to haul brush away from his place, Tad Schreiner, Prior Lake, Minn., finally decided to do something about it. He built his own portable wood chipper. The 3-wheeled rig mounts on a frame made from 2-in. channel iron and has two chutes - one on top for leaves and brush and another on front that handles branches up to 3 in. in diameter. Power is provided by an 8 hp Kohler gas engine which belt-drives a home-built chipping hammer. "I use my garden tractor to pull it around our yard. It really works slick," says Schreiner. He started with a heavy duty squirrel cage fan housing. He built a steel cylinder fitted with four steel rods. Sixteen hammers that measure 1 1/4 by 3 in. bolt to the rods. The hammers are staggered to provide chopping action across the entire width of the cylinder. The hammer rods mount between two discs made from 1/4-in. thick steel plate. He cut two slots on one of the discs 180 degrees apart, then inserted 2 by 3-in. chunks cut out of an old car leaf spring and put a 30 degree bevel on them. "It works fast. As soon as I put a 1-in. branch into the top chute it's instantly gone," says Schreiner. "I use it every year when I trim trees in our yard and place the chips around our shrubs. I also use it to grind up all the plant material in our garden at the end of the growing season. The chopped-up material goes back into the garden. I made two interchangeable screens for the exit chutes. One has larger holes than the other. The smaller the holes, the longer the material stays inside the hammermill and the smaller the material gets shredded. If I'm chipping wet, green stuff from the garden, I use the screen that has bigger holes to keep the chute from plugging up." The engine has a 4-in. dia. pulley on it and there's also a 4-in. pulley on the chopping cylinder which creates a 1:1 drive ratio. The cylinder and engine both rotate at 3,600 rpm's which is more than adequate, says Schreiner. An idler pulley is used to disengage the belt, allowing him to stop the chipper with the engine running. "One big difference between my wood chipper and some commercial ones is that the drive belts on mine are outside the fan housing. When the belts are inside the fan housing, all the chips flying around can cause the belts to get warm and stretch out or break. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Tad Schreiner, 16250 Suel Lane, Prior Lake, Minn. 55372 (ph 952 447-5421).

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