Spruced

Blades cost about £7 a pop by 14 so about £100 in total. Not a big hit but still pain in the ass to change them all mid job. Very true they are a cheap fail safe as opposed to damaging the rotor. Best tool I ever bought was the 1" Milwaukee impact wrench. Makes short work of the M24 bolts, they're generally well welded in.

Job was going great until......

I use Snapfix software for all my insurance, tax, CVRT (commercial vehicle roadworthiness test) plus planned maintenance. It might suit the compliance stuff as well.

Torque wrenches and rated torque settings are not very accurate unless used in clean, rust free and lubricated environments and usually with new bolts. The inside of a chipper is pretty much the opposite of all these. Achieving 300nm should be easy enough with a half inch drive socket and normal sized handle. Just tighten as much as you can.

Love the set up and colour scheme, seemingly black is the new black! What weights have you got on the front of them?

Thanks, will certainly look into those. Anything to stop being shaken around like a rag doll!

Super set up. How do you find travelling on bumpy roads? Have a T213 with a Kesla 304T on a Jake mount pulling a Heizo 14-800K and she's rough enough on bad roads. Must increase the weights on front linkage and I might try bigger tyres in the future.

It's certainly possible but there are downsides: 1. You can mount the chipper on the back of a three point linkage crane but it pushes the weight out and makes the front end light, you can counter this with weights 2. You're feeding the chipper with no vision I had a CH260 with integrated crane and found the blocking to be an issue.

My sympathies are not with your customer in this instance, it's your livelihood. At least you'll get some comfort after a look over by Fuelwood at least. Fingers crossed its limited to blades and holders.

Ouch, that was a substantial lump. Awful feeling when you hear the sound of metal on metal coming from your chipper. My big worry is if something big enough got in that it could damage main rotor or bearings. I shudder to think of that repair bill.

Running a T213 with Kesla crane and a Heizo 14-800: Doing mainly site clearance so material is bulky but not heavy work like roundwood for biomass 4 hr minimum charge up to 20 miles away 8 hr minimum thereafter Approx £40 per hour travel Approx £120 per hour operating Low loader at cost plus 1 hour to load/unload I also charge for a full set of blades if steel goes into machine, am flexible on this, a nail or piece of barbed wire is within reason, a telegraph pole with steel climbing pegs not so much (managed to back that out in time)

There's a shear bar in there somewhere which effectively acts as one half of a scissors, the rotating blades being the other half. I leave a 1mm gap between blades and shear bar. Rotate the drum by hand after setting to ensure there's no bearing play and then engage pto at low revs, if you hear any noise increase the gap.

Recently got crane with electro controls, wouldn't go back either and I cannot agree more about putting the valve block into the back of a tractor window, if you're ever going to give yourself a hernia this would be the time. I did make up a frame to hold the valve block attached on an arm fastened to the bottom of the crane which folded up and down and this did help but still cumbersome. An option to consider halfway between manual and electro is the pilot hydraulic one, you have a valve block mounted on the crane and there are much smaller pipes coming into tractor and there's only half as many. I got one to replace the manual block on a Farmi chipper with crane. Haven't installed it yet but the joysticks and pilot lines are very light.

Just got delivery of a new Kesla 304T crane, electro proportional control, soooo nice to use after old manual lever controls on old crane. Done by Joe Litter of Oakleaf Forestry in Armagh and highly impressed by the quality of installation down to the smallest detail. Would definitely recommend him. Living the dream!

It all depends on the valve block attached to the timber forwarder, get the specs on the valve block (required flow rate, pressure, closed/open centre, pilot hydraulic possibly) and this will dictate the hydraulic requirements from the tractor and also connections required. Not as straightforward a topic as one might think.