Woodchipper Accident - Demo

[Marc Lewis]

Haven't used a bandit but do they actually pull in branches as fast as that? Can't say any chipper I've ever used pulls in at that kind of speed?

 

Google chuck and duck chipper

[treequip]

The little twitch at the beginning is the feed rollers nipping the rope... its once the rope wraps around the flywheel/drum that the speed winching occurs.

 

Yep but it's probably not going to be any where near as painful as that demo makes it seem.

 

Truth of the matter is that the pull would smack you into the tree which would knock you out, that or the fall would hopefully put you out before the chipper went to work on you :thumbdown:

[Mark Bolam]

That's a relief then Andy.

[treequip]

It's a sobering thought, at worst you would only have time to wonder why your rope was pulling before it all went catastrophically wrong

 

Thankfully the majority of UK Chipers are a bit weedy to eat a whole person at one siting so you wou probably get away with mutilation if the fall didn't do for you

 

It does bring the rope management point home well though, that vid has a place in any tool box talk

[GlobalNewark]

You will be pleased to know all Bandit drum chippers have a cable shear fitted as std above the drum now.

[David Humphries]

You will be pleased to know all Bandit drum chippers have a cable shear fitted as std above the drum now.

 

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[dan494]

Google chuck and duck chipper

 

 

My Dad used to have an old exenco 'chuck and duck', would whip through anything when it was sharp! The speed still puzzled me on this one though! Fair comment about the flywheel doing the pulling but I'd have though that would stall the machine once it's started to wrap around it. Managed to stall my Jensen with ivy/vine recently, had to chisel the stuff off where it had wrapped around the flywheel

[Marc Lewis]

My Dad used to have an old exenco 'chuck and duck', would whip through anything when it was sharp! The speed still puzzled me on this one though! Fair comment about the flywheel doing the pulling but I'd have though that would stall the machine once it's started to wrap around it. Managed to stall my Jensen with ivy/vine recently, had to chisel the stuff off where it had wrapped around the flywheel

 

All the chuck n duck chippers i have seen (only on you tube i might add), have all fed in at that ridiculous speed. I hear what you are saying about the flywheel and agree. I guess it depends on the size of the machine. I saw a 9" gravely get clogged up with the tail of someones rope and that stalled the machine.

[Shane]

The real scary thing about the 'flywheel-winching' scenario is that 99% of the safety stop bars would do absolutely nothing as the poor sod on the rope hurtles towards the machine.

 

Groundsmen- are you all watching?

 

I must admit I showed that video to all my guys this morning.

Got quite a reaction.

[Taupotreeman]

Confession time here. I've had a rope fed in to a chipper while still attached to me. The chipper was my old Asplundh Whisper chuck and duck. I was up a tree and my groundy was feeding brash into it. A serious of silly mistakes on my par really. Chipper too near the tree, rope not bundled up, hadn't discussed the job methodology with a new groundy. Pretty much everything I should have done I didn't.

Anyway, I had a whole heap of cypress limbs lying across the rope, the groundy didn't see it, picked up the bundle of brash, rope and all, and threw it in the chipper. I felt my line go taught as the drum took up the slack and then as soon as there was tension on the line there was a big puff of yellow fibres and the blades cut the rope. There was no rope left around the drum but heaps of little chipped bits in the back of the truck.

I'd be interested to see this experiment done again with a little bit of resistance on the rope to see what would happen.