Lou Gutierrez drove his SUV with a 2" ball hitch to pick up the chipper. When he arrived at UUFSD he parked with the chipper at the side of the driveway in front of the Palmer library, without unhitching it. We rotated the spout toward the Library and aimed it downward to create piles on the ground about 6' away.

The 6" size was ideal for our needs. The device has a feeder that tractors material in at up to 1 foot per second - slow enough that it doesn't seem scary. A large safety bar around the inlet funnel reverses the feeder to spit material back out about 3" per second. This panic bar can save the the operator from getting sucked in. Mostly it serves to unjam the feeder when too large a chunk gets stuck in it, which happened many times, without harming anything or anyone.

Behind the feeder is a huge flywheel with the chipper blades on it. The only mechanical problem we had was once - when we started feeding material before the chipper flywheel had gotten up to speed. Once it was jammed, the only remedy was to remove the cover from the flywheel and rock it backwards pulling out the wood and pinecones that were wedged inside. Just needed to remove 3 bolts (which would have been easier with a socket set than the crescent wrenches we had on hand). Tedious but not rocket science.

We had accumulated quite a lot of material in several piles, thanks to procrastination and the surprise of TID-079 Huge Tree Limb Down @ Restrooms. We were amazed at how small the resulting piles of mulch were from all those branches. So the chipper is a fast way to get rid of branches, but a slow way to make mulch ;-}

If the material is properly prepped, a normal years' worth could probably be chipped in the 2 hour minimum time. As it was, we rented on Saturday, after noon, thus getting use of the device until Monday at 8am for 1 day's rental.

At first we made rapid progress when we were shoving whole tree branches in, big end first, branches dangling behind. These had been recently cut by Ken Schultz with some compulsive trimming by Stu Anderson

In general the machine was impressive - if the material fits through the feeder the chipper will deal with it. We shoved solid 4" diameter logs through and it just chewed them up. But there are three factors that bog down the process:

• Kinks and forks in branch - jam the 6" feeder
• Brush and small material - feeder won't pull it in
• Dry wood - minor effect

Prep the wood by cutting out any kinks (pine trees have a lot of these) and lopping off clots of side branches going several directions at once. If you know what to look for all of these can be done before getting the chipper. We kept a bow saw and a good pair of loppers at the ready.

If you have a pile of brush, feed it in along with larger branches. The large branches will be tractored in by the feeder and carry the brush along with them. Otherwise it's almost hopeless (and dangerous) to try to stuff small material into the feeder.

Three people are needed to maximize throughput of the chipper. One person is fetching branches from the source pile, one person is feeding the material into the machine and the other is in between - doing last minute prep for odd pieces, sweeping up brush to get it in with the larger branches, etc.

Hearing protection, goggles and gloves are necessary for everyone involved. Its loud, sweaty, dirty work. Kind of fun if you're in the mood for it.