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.

On 12/05/2022 at 11:49, John Shutler said:

my brace of valtra 

 

n174 and a t234

Love the set up and colour scheme, seemingly black is the new black!

What weights have you got on the front of them?

19 hours ago, Tom D said:

I have the Nokia’s tractor king tyres, forestry radials, the ride is like a rolls Royce compared to my other N series. Very stable using the crane. Expect to pay an extra £600 each for them though. Worth every penny…https://www.nokiantyres.com/heavy/tires/forestry/nokian-tractor-king/

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

On 25/03/2022 at 12:53, Tom D said:

Here she is working. 

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. 

Just now, John Shutler said:

i’ve got fuelwood coming out monday to give it the once over, not worth causing any more damage if there is a problem 

the guy i was chipping for was very perturbed when i told him i wasn’t chipping anymore

hell be even more pissed when he gets the repair bill 

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.

3 minutes ago, John Shutler said:

i’ve been charging £80 an hour wether it’s travelling or chipping. minimum charge of 8hrs

i also charge for blades if metal goes through the chipper but also charge if other parts are damaged at the same time, todays client will get the bill for 5 blade holders at £185 each and a set of blades 

 

this was what went through today, no idea what it is 

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.

Have a Weidemann 1350, 2.4 tonnes so tows nicely. Between the grab, forks and bucket it gets used every day, lifts a tonne when straight on level ground. It'd be the last machine I'd ever sell. Was pricey when I bought it but worth every penny. I reckon you won't see many second hand as lads just hang on to them for ever.

If there was ever to be a mantra for firewood sellers it would be a mash up of Marc Bolam's line

"Basically dry is good, not dry is bad"

and Woodwork's line:

"A heavy dry one beats a light dry one"

That's a nice set up. I think one of the main problems the Farmi has is that there is a gap between the rollers and the blades which is fine for rigid material but not so good with the whippy stuff.

Great idea keeping the bottom plates of the grab open, hadn't considered the benefit of that. I do pick up a good bit of soil to the detriment of the blades so anything to reduce that would be very helpful. Chances are high I'll end up going for the Heizohack 400 series.

Yep, the Farmi are an entry level chipper, the tractor pulls a low loader and doubles as the chipper mount but you're right, it's a lot of horsepower for a 10 inch chipper. The intention is to move up to a proper chipper in due course, just want to make sure that I get one which will cover both clean fuel wood and also the arb arisings.

In research mode at the moment and for a change might actually research first and then buy rather than the other way around.

The trimming point is very valid, there's the world of difference between prepping for a hand fed chipper and a crane fed one.

In fairness that's great feedback, it seems that the same problems arise whether hand fed or crane fed, i.e. curvy branches, nesting of input material and presentation of the material.

I'm currently using a Farmi 260 with a crane on the back of a T172 and whilst it does the fuelwood chipping perfectly which is about 50% of my chipping business even with a hydraulic infeed conveyor it just isn't designed for anything brashy for two main reasons 1. Getting the feed rollers to grab a clump is difficult 2. The very soft and springy ends of the branches wrap around the feed rollers requiring backing out the material completely. Thus I end up back on the hand fed Loma mulcher for the other 50% of the chipping jobs.

And shamefully I have to admit I'd prefer to be sitting in the tractor cab for a day especially given the fact that it seems to be getting wetter and colder each winter. And the piles of Leylandii aren't getting smaller.

The top lift is the way to go it would appear. Thanks for that.

How are the big crane fed chippers at handling brashy material especially Leylandii (bane of my life). I'm looking to upgrade due to increasing work volume and am also getting older. I've noticed that a lot of crane fed chippers struggle to take in clumps of small branches and it takes a bit of stuffing to get them going which is tough enough with a free swinging grapple and rotator.

Any Heizohack/Mus Max owners feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Keep an eye out for the motorway tolls, they add up very quickly. If not in a rush set the sat nav to avoid motorways. Crossed France last year from Roscoff into Southern Germany and think it totalled €98 each way approx.

I wonder if the Wives and Girlfriends were polled what the answer would be....