Electric wood chipper
 

I needed a wood chipper to do 2 things.
Reduce the piles of brush and get ready to make wood pellets.
The gas powered ones seem like they almost unlimited power and most of the decent ones chip branches up to 3 inches.
3 inch diameter sticks are fire wood. Not going to chip that.
The electric chippers claim to do up to 1.5 inches. Which is more along the lines of what I want.
So I go the Oregon electric chipper from harbor freight. It didn't have very many disastrous or disappointed reviews for something from harbor freight that plugs in. So I got one.
It comes with extra blades in a little package. Plus the blades are double sided so they can be removed, rotated 180° and reattached and you are ready to go.
To make it more economical I will probably connect my foot operated tig welder switch to it so it only runs when I'm standing in front of it.

I destroyed my HF wood chipper. It bogs down on the thicker pieces and does take a while to chew through the wood. The problem with the HF wood chipper is that the main metal structure is made from cast aluminium, which is terrible at withstanding shocks and impacts. At a minimum, the should have used cast iron.

How did you break it?

Too many big 1.5" branches too quick. The chipper self destructed. The biggest issue, from a usability standpoint, I have with the chipper is the chute is quite narrow, making it really hard to feed in branches with lots of little small wide forking limbs. Sure you can shove the branches in, but it takes a long time to chip even a small pile of brush. You are pretty much limited to a max of three 1/2" branches at a time. If I had actually paid money for mine (long story), I would have returned it.

I noticed that too. I think they did that so stupid people can't put their hands down in there while it's running.
Anything that is much over an inch I want to burn as is it takes a lot of time to cut up the little stuff but it really gives a ton of wood.

I was going to buy a electric wood chipper a few years ago and start a compost with chips from yard waste but in the end opted to break branches by hand instead. My yard is only 135' x 35' so it develops little yard waste.

Im thinking for a larger property with more waste a gas chipper would be more productive / useful.

I have 18 or 19 acres out the farm land and a half acre in the city. I'm going to run this wood chipper for all its worth.
But I'm saving as much wood as possible down to about 1 inch diameter, stuff most people just throw away (put it in a brush pile, bonfire or wood chipper.
I know a lot of people buy the gas powered ones because they will chop branches up to 3 inches, but 3 inches is fire wood to me. I save pretty much 100% of everything down to 2 inches, and most if not all 1 inche, I probably save branches down to around 3/4 or 5/8 inches.as much as possible.

Any one ever try to burn wood chips for home heating?
I got a nice pile building up.

Never used them for heating but have used them for smoking fish and landscaping.

Yeah I need up putting moat of my pile around freshly planted trees on my land.
The dark brown native soil mixed with potting soil absorbs a lot of heat from the sun, driving off water. The elm wood chips are very light color and reflect sun very well and insulate the dirt.
I parked the wood chipper next to the next tree down the line.
Saving water is a perfectly acceptable use for the wood chips.

I wanted an electric chipper but I couldn't find one I liked, so I threw a face mount motor and VFD on where an engine once lived. Idles at 300W, makes 10+ torque for short periods, full power at half of original rated RPM. not having to deal with a gas engine is nice. It costs about $0.04/hr to idle at speed.

I am new to gardening and I found this forum so informative!

Well I almost killed my little electric wood chipper.
I took the guard off the top so I could fit more sticks in it. It's definitely dangerous, it's a good way to lose some fingers.
It's also about 10x easier to overload the little machine.
So I got the armature so hot it melted the cooling fan off the end of the motor.
I need a better cooling system. I took a 3 inch aluminum duct, hole sawed the fan cover so the aluminum duct will fit in side then spray foamed it into place, hooked it up to an old noisy bathroom fan to force air through the motor.
Now I can cool the motor with the wood chipper off.
I still may need to get a gasoline powered one.

I was looking at electric ones and the cheapest I could find was over $2,000.

Please post a picture that sounds hilarious.
do you have 220V power readily available? you could probably pick up a free gas chipper on craiglist and slap a "5hp compressor motor" on it as a direct engine replacement.

FYI mine has no fan at all.

Yes I have 240v on 20 amp breaker out side the garage for leaf charging and to run my electric pressure washer.
Then have 240v on a 60 or 70 amp breaker inside by the garage door.