Come on you're so smart you bought an electric wood chipper? Electric.
I bought an MTD, doesn't say but maybe 10 hp, sucks up and spits out anything smaller than 2". The video shows the chipper but the other side hopper snaps down and you rake leaves that suck in and shred then get blown into a mesh bag. The fine chips turn to compost fast. The bag I'd say holds 3 dense bushels and takes about 20 minutes to fill. Less then 20 if someone is filling the shredder side as well. The MTD machine is unkillable. Get the biggest HP shredder you can afford as it goes faster and will be more fun.

Here is a link that might be useful: MTD chipper video

Will it work to shred junk mail without opening it?

It would probably be suitable for chopping leaves for compost.

I sold my 24 hp Brush Bandit estate chipper because I just hated using it. Brush Bandit reputedly makes the best designed chippers on the market and mine cost me over 10 grand used. They're relatively complicated with hydraulic feed and a push bar that will stop and reverse the machine.

Chippers are the loudest most obnoxious machines in the landscapers arsenal, as well as being the highest maintenance. Sounds like Ace's machine might be pretty good for a home owner though.

I have enough property to drag brush to the edge and not see it- even the mountains of apple branches I bring home.

I have one similar to Ace's and I just don't have the time to use it -- I feel about like olpea in terms of working and working and producing a little baggie worth of chips. The limbs have to be perfectly straight to be fed in and many of my fruit tree branches do not qualify for that so they need to be cut up many times before they fit in.

I think if I was retired or otherwise had lots of time it would be OK, but I'm not and I don't. So olpea look on the bright side .. $25 for your lesson is a lot less than the $1000 I paid for my lesson.

Scott

Personally, I would go through the thing to check out the setup -- Dull/chipped blades and wrong blade gaps are the death of small models like that one....
My guess is that those blades aren't real "Tool steel" -- probably just plain carbon steel... and sharpening with a power grinder will ruin them. A file or coarse stone will usually do the trick, though....

The other thing I would look for is to make sure all the provisions to prevent over-feeding are in place... They do help prevent jams.

Small models probably rely on sharp blades for Cutting action more than just pure Inertia to power thru the effects of dull blades....

I bet they also cut way better on fresh, green wood than on brown, dry wood...

I know what you are saying about how disappointing the little, bitty pile of mulch is... A local tree guy was next door cutting trees out of neighbor's front yard. We bribed him into chipping up our stick pile in the back yard... This giant pile of "sticks" chipped down into a little teeny pile of wood -- maybe 3 wheel barrows full.... I was really wanting quite a bit more mulch...

A really good chipper is expensive both in original cost and maintenance. I have one on my tractor rated at 25 horsepower that i use for normal garden maintenance. It does OK for that, although I have rebuilt it twice with some modifications. Once a year I rent a big chipper and TRY and get one of my grandsons to feed it. For a two hundred dollar rental I can run a years worth of "slag" from my six acres of woods. Owning my own similar machine and the maintenance to keep it up would be a waste of money. Al

Thanks Scott,

At times, I too have spent more than $25 to learning a lesson.

I like Myk's idea of the paper shredder. Now if I can just talk my wife into setting it up in the kitchen...

:-)

This sounds like my shredder. It looks exactly like the one in the link, but might have had a different brand name. It does really well if you feed it one, dry, leaf at a time. Much more than that, it binds up the motor and you have to take it apart and remove all of the debris, then put it back together and feed it one leaf at a time. Well, maybe 2 leaves.

I bought it about 5 years ago. It's useless.

I discovered it's a lot easier to shred leaves by piling them on the driveway and running over them with the lawn mower.

As for shredding prunings, which is why I wanted it, it also does OK if you insert one pruning at a time. It's even faster than chopping them with a pair of pruning shears an inch at a time.

Be glad you didn't pay full price.

Here is a link that might be useful: Electric-Chipper-Shredder

Where i live u can just throw limbs/branches up by the road and the town here will chip them. They come around about once a month in the summer months. You can also drag them into the city and dump them where they chip them. I guess i pay for it in property taxes! Another option is just to burn everything.

Why don't you sell it for $25 whenever you have your own garage sale???

Ashley has a good idea but I was going to offer to let you store it in our shed next to the snow blower that my hubby bought at a garage sale almost 20 years ago that's never been used because it didn't work. He was so proud of that thing when he brought it home.

Maybe it'll chip leaves this Fall.

Eukofios,

You're post had me laughing pretty hard. I can totally identify.

Christie & Ashley, I don't think I could keep a straight face if I tried to sell this thing at a garage sale.

Michael, I think you nailed it chipping leaves and grass is probably the upper limit for this thing. Bring your scrap paper when you come to visit this summer, and we'll shred it.

I have one of the $125 electric chippers from Harbor Freight, and blade sharpness is like night and day when it comes to performance. It has blades that are reversable so you can use both sides before sharpening, which I do on a wet wheel. I've put about a dozen full-sized trees through it, chipping the brush that will fit in the throat and cutting what doesn't up into firewood. You should be able to take a 8' long green branch an inch thick and it will mostly self-feed. You can tell when the blades are dull as it won't feed well, vibrates a lot and makes a racket.

It will never replace a big Vermeer, but it starts every time, doesn't take up much room, and it great for disposing of huge piles of brush that would take forever to put out in the trash. I get nice piles of chips for mulch in return.

Olpea: I could bring some Catalpa leaves to put it through the acid test Catalpa has some pretty big petioles though, might burn up the motor.