Chipper carnage

[frans]

A piece of re-bar that the tree had grown around.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Dayum... been there, done that. VERY LOUD!

At least it was small rebar.

 

[Mick!]

Damn! I guess the bigger the chipper the more likely something will go unnoticed.

 

[Mellow]

Ouch! Was there damage to the disc or housing? We had a Morbark drum chipper self-destruct one time. Never did determine the root cause but I suspect it was a defective knife. It destroyed the drum, bearings, and everything around the drum. Morbark covered the $6,500+ in parts but not the labor to rebuild it.

 

[treebilly]

Yeah once one blade breaks loose it’s a chain reaction that only takes seconds to destroy everything. Nasty stuff

 

[Merle Nelson]

Whoa, sorry to see that. Glad no one got hurt.

 

[pete mctree]

Nasty !

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Nasty. A guy was killed recent from an incident simular. Glad no one got hurt.

 

[stig]

Ouch!

 

[Bermy]

Yikes that's nasty, I had a bolt go through mine, luckily only mashed up the knife and anvil...replaceable.

 

[forestkeepers]

We had a metal form stake go through about 6 mo ago -- it was mixed in with a brush pile. Sounded horrendous, but after looking at the blades, it was just a small chink in one knife. Could've been far, far worse. Our Vermeer is tough as nails (and we've probably had some of those go through, too)

 

[Altissimus]

I try so F'n hard to keep metal (and rocks) out of mine ...

 

[Raj]

Yikes!

 

[squisher]

I remember doing a residential chipping program one time(where homeowners stack their trimmings at the curb in the spring and the municipality contracts in tree crews) and just catching a rod of rebar before it got sucked in, already on the tray. The guy who was working with/for me just lost it. I almost had to stop him from chucking that rebar through the homeowners window. Always wondered how it came to be in that pile. Homeowner? Neighbour? Random delinquent? Accident? I'll never know. Got lucky that day.

 

[Ryan]

I remember as a green groundman, thinking absolutely everything had to go through the chipper. Even though you were pissing in the chips you still didn't want to spoil the load with a few handfuls of twigs.

Sent from my SM-G903W using Tapatalk

 

[forestkeepers]

All our street scrapings and driveway twig material with potential rocks goes directly in the back of the chipper truck, with gusto, flung via scoop shovel. No rocks in our chipper if we can help it! We don't really care how clean the chips are, as they either get dumped at an organic materials recycler in KC, or on our own lot here in Lawrence with a sign reading, FREE MULCH. (People show up all hours of the day, some in car sedans with 5 gal. buckets or paper bags to load in their trunks!)

 

[treebilly]

Being picky can save a lot of headaches plus wear and tear. My chipper at work averages 100 hours before flipping or changing. The land clearing guys get 16-40 hours. Their best was 2 sets in less than 8 hours.
Shit happens but damn do they mess stuff up

 

[MasterBlaster]

Any potential for liability while collecting the free mulch?

 

[Mellow]

If people only knew what goes into that mulch... "WARNING: May contain ____________!" (Fill in the blank)

 

[MasterBlaster]

Ain't it just fertilizer? Even piss? Lots of nitrogen?

 

[forestkeepers]

Being picky can save a lot of headaches plus wear and tear. My chipper at work averages 100 hours before flipping or changing.

We're at least 3x that -- probably 300 hours before flipping, maybe 500 between changes.

Any potential for liability while collecting the free mulch?

This is the DIY specialty state, Kansas. People are a hardy, non-litigious lot. The Craig's List Free ad we run makes it clear that it's self-load and a mixed bag as far as what you get -- no guarantees of quality, fineness, and now definitely more twigs and leaves mixed in than fall/winter time. Sorry for the handful of rocks, but hey, it's free. Guys show up in pickups and with flatbed trailers and pitch it full o' chips. Farmers show up with their tractors with loaders and load up hay wagons. We've hardly had to pay to dump lately -- been moving out 90 cu yards of chips per week lately, with no effort on our part.

"WARNING: May contain ____________!" (Fill in the blank)

Ours definitely contains NO #2. There's plenty of gas stations, grocery stores, or accommodating customers around for that...

 

[MasterBlaster]

It sounds like chip disposal problems aren't your problem! Sweet!!!

 

[Al Smith]

Nasty ! What was funny was when one of Tom's idiots fed his older chipper about 150 foot of 3/4" bull rope .Flat out stalled a 300 cubic inch Ford engine and took hours to cut out .Was he ever pissed .

 

[flushcut]

Rope in a chipper is VERY dangerous lucky no one was killed.

 

[stig]

A couple of years back we did a major landclearing project.
Had our usual forwarder guy in to pile everything up, didn't bother turning any into firewood, simply Biomass chipped the whole lot.

Came to somewhere around 1000 tonnes of biomass, if I remember right.
We had one of the big chipping companies come in and run it through their truck mounted 700 HP chipper.
The day they were chipping I got an SMS from the guy in charge of their chipping departnent; no text, just a picture of a basketball size rock, being held by the chipper crane.

So I posted back: " Whew, good deal you caught that one in time"!

Well, they didn't.
It went into the chipper, broke all anvils and knives and did damage for almost 10 grand.

Not my problem, I didn't own or run the forwarder, so I just passed it on to him.

Imagine the noise.
Must have sounded like they'd just fed the front of the USS Nimitz into the chipper.