New Chipper

[Rich Waugh]

My wife agreed with me that burning all the trees I have to remove on our new property was not a viable option so she got me a chipper. Made a pretty good deal on an Ebay auction and got an Agri-Machinery WC-8 chipper from Betst Power Equipment Company in Washington state for few hundred less than most 6" chippers would generally cost. Not bad! Free shipping to my forwarder in Miami, too. With the ocean freight, the final cost landed here, duty-paid, was $1700. Not free, but a lot cheaper than paying the fire department to come put out a forest fire...

Took me most of a full day to put the thing together, align everything perfectly and torque/Loctite every nut and bolt on it, and cut the stand down 3-1/2" shorter to make the PTO shaft run perfectly level. I also made some arms to modify the top link attachment point so I could use my standard top link. As it came, it would have needed a 28" top link and mine only goes to about 22" or a hair more. I had some 3/8"x3" flat bar on hand and I bent up some add-ons to extend the attachment point the necessary 6".

I'd guess this chipper is really intended to go on a tractor with a Cat 2 TPH, since the hitch pins are about 28" apart, but my arms will reach that so I'm not modifying that.

This chipper does have the universal joint type drive shaft for the feed roller, which is nice. It also uses a cable-operated clutch on the feed system, with both a safety bar on the hopper and a separate foot pedal, either of which will de-clutch the feed roller if needed. I don't have anything to compare it to but, all in all, it seems to be a pretty solidly built piece of equipment and should handle what I need to do just fine. I doubt that I'll actually try to feed it any 8" pieces; probably more like 4-5" for 90% of the stuff I'll be chipping.

I'm hoping to get it up to the property tomorrow for a real test run. I'll report back on how it does. If it will gobble up all the stuff up to about 5" I'll be thrilled to death with it.

Sally did say that it's okay if I call it a "Fargo Special," but definitely *not* okay if I try to use it like one... ;D

Rich

[roy697]

And while you were doing the kit & mods did you take pictures so we can see it?

[Rich Waugh]

Sorry Roy, but no luck. I've been without telephone or internet for the past two weeks or more and it seems to have impaired my thinking. I can take a couple of pics of the top link attachment mod, and the cut down base to show the nicely level PTO shaft. I'll try to get that done tomorrow, I suppose.

Rich

[3RRL]

Hi Rich,
That WC-8 should be a very nice, powerful chipper.
I have the WC-6 model and it has the same hand and foot pedal controls. Although I'm sure mine will grind up 6" diameter stuff, anything 2" diameter or larger gets cut up into lengths for our wood burning stove. I think yours is the larger version of mine and they should be of similar construction.

I made a few adjustments on it from a thread that Larry posted.
He showed how to adjust the blade gap and sharpen the feed roller etc. You probably already did that though? I also made a pretty nice "skirt" to protect the pulley and belt on it, because there were always chips and debris that got in there. I read where some of the guys said those chips would throw the belt off the pulley. The "skirt" I made was of 2 piece construction so they would slide against each other as the feed roller went up and down but still cover the gap.
Photos and such are posted here:
WC-6 Photos and Mods

[Rich Waugh]

Rob,

Yep, the WC-8 is the same machine, just one size larger, as far as I can tell. Mostly a heavier flywheel and wider blades. Seems robust enough for my purposes.

Not gonna be any work done on or with it today, though. Raining about 3"/hr right this minute and soggy everywhere. A good day to be in the shop, but no way to get the chipper in here to do anything on it. Maybe I'll do some seriously overdue shop cleaning...or possibly just screw off on the 'net most of the day. :-)

I did a small amount of chipping with it yesterday, up to about 5" mango limbs and it gobbled them right up. I did discover that it is a very bad idea to run a crapload (technical term) or vines into it without having a nice hefty log to follow up with. The damn feed roller was all clotted up with vines wrapped around it. After I fed it a 4" log it chewed those off pretty well. But when I later forgot to have the big stick handy and did another batch of vines it got pretty badly fouled. I think sharpening the teeth on it may help that some, but I haven't done it yet.

After I got it all bound up with vines it was feeding so slowly on smaller crap that it made chips so small they jammed up the chute on which I'd stupidly left the deflector down too far. Net result was that the whole thing became totally "obstipated." (That's amedical term for having your bowel totally obstructed by crap, Sally tells me. Like you wanted to know that, huh?) Anyhow, I finally managed to break the shear pin and had to shut it down to do what I should have done in the first place. I can be such a slow learner...

When it isn't raining so bad I risk drowning I'll take a look to see how much crap got into the feed belt area and maybe work up a skirt arrangement like you did. Also sharpen the feed roller. I already had the gap set to .10" as per the book.

I did notice that my feed belt was seriously ou8t of alignment out of the box, but I corrected that immediately. The probable cause of that was that the adjuster screws and their jamb juts were incorrectly assembled at the factory so they weren't really capable of holding a true alignment. Just had to rearrange the nuts to the proper sides of the bracket and then everything set up perfectly.

On my 304 Jinma the stand was 3-1/2" too tall to have the driveshaft even close to level. The stand on mine is the newer style, open steel tube construction instead of sheet metal like yours. Made it easy to section out the necessary 3-1/2" of tube and weld it back together. Now it sits perfectly level and straight.

Jeezus! A lightning bolt just hit about fifty feet away from me! About crapped myself. Oh well, as long as you can hear the bang you're not dead yet, right? I will definitely not be going outside until that shit is done - I've been hit by lightning twice in my life and don't know how many times you can go to that particular well before you run out of luck.

Time to shut down while the 'pouter is still alive, too. More later, perhaps.

Rich

[3RRL]

Funny you should bring this subject up at this time.
Loretta and I only use the chipper about one a year. But your thread prompted us to mount it (next week) and get to some chipping. There are several piles of brush and small branches all around our property. I was going to pick them up and put them in the burn pile, but instead, we decided to chip them all up. Don't know if we will take the dump trailer to save the chips for Loretta's compost pile or not? We still have a big burn pile ready to go this Winter, but I don't want to add to it. Burning around here still scares the hell out of me.
Rob-

[Rich Waugh]

That's the way I feel, Rob. I grew up in Colorado and had to help fight forest and/or brush fires on more than one occasion and didn't much enjoy it. Scared the crap outta me, actually. Practice didn't improve that, either. :-)

I figure the expense of the chipper and the time to chip stuff is cheap insurance in the long run. Can't hurt the soil, either. After a career on the PD here, I know most all the fire personnel and would be totally embarrassed to have them have to show up at my property to put out a fire.

Rich

[Rich Waugh]

Boy! Some days I just can't catch a break at all. Saturday I was sitting on my butt at the cottage reading and I heard a funny crunching noise from over by the shop. No big deal, I figured. Yesterday, when I opened the back door to check on something, I noticed that my brand new chipper was buried under a tree!



So now I get to spend half a day with the chainsaw just so I can get the tractor to the chipper to chip up the offending tree. Oh well, at least it doesn't appear to have damaged the chipper at all. The main limb that dropped is about 16" in diameter and could have wreaked havoc if it had come down on the chipper. I guess I got as lucky as could be hoped for.

Below are a couple of pics of the mods to the chipper so far. You can see the extension arms I made for the top link attachment point. 1/4"x 2-1/2" flat bar bent as necessary and bolted over the OEM arms. Simple. You can only infer the section that I cut out of the base assembly, since I neglected to take any process photos. Dead simple, though. I just used the Porta-Band to chop out a 3-1/2" section from each upright and then welded it back together and dressed it off with a grinder. A quick spritz with the black paint and all done. Now the driveshaft is dead straight when attached to my 304 and when I lift it I have about 10" of ground clearance. Prior to the mod I only had about 6" clearance, which I didn't think was adequate for safe transport.



What will my next new toy be???

Rich

[bradblazer]

That tree had it in for the chipper! I still need to fix my chicken run that was damaged by a falling tree a few weeks ago.

Good work on the mods!

[GuglioLS]

LOL revenge for the tree Hey I like the extended top link connection. I could use a set just like it. The flywheel housing and chute look just like my Jinma 6" chipper. I think the same design / size depending on whose selling it is called a 6" or an 8" even though the blades are all the same.

On a side note, I was just wondering you got any Tortuga Rum cake factory's down there? or is that a Cayman Island sort of thing?

Larry

[Rich Waugh]

Larry,

I could easily bend up a set of top link extenders and send them to you, if you want. Just say the word. Nevermind, I'll just drop a pair of them in a Flat Rate box Monday if I have enough flat bar in stock, which I'm pretty sure I do.

Nope, no Tortuga Rum Cakes here. We do have the best rum distillery in the world here, though. Cruzan Rum - their Single Barrel Reserve is so incredibly smooth you want to cry. I usually take a half dozen bottles of their Navy Style Blackstrap Rum when I go to blacksmithing conferences and now I can't go anywhere without being asked if I brought it. Stuff seems to be habit forming. :-)

When I first moved to St, Croix in 1990, Cruzan Dark Rum was selling for $1.99 a fifth. After a change of ownership the price is now up to about $8.99 a fifth. Progress. The Single Barrel, unfortunately, is limited production well-aged stuff and priced accordingly. Sure is smooth and tasty stuff, the "sippin' whiskey" of rums.

My chipper is apparently bigger than the 6" Jinma, based on the fact that the dealer also sells a 6" model that has a lighter flywheel and smaller knives. There isn't a lot of difference in them though, the small one has a 165# flywheel and the 8" has a 185# flywheel. Both flywheels are 24" diameter. The WC-6 chipper weighs 815# overall and the WC-8 weighs 835#, so the flywheel seems to be the only difference.

The dealer's Ebay store lists replacement blades for the "WC Series" chippers but doesn't differentiate between the WC-6 and the WC-8 so the blades may be the same and the only factor that makes the "bigger" one an 8" model is the heavier flywheel. Maybe if I added another fifty pounds to the flywheel on mine it would then be a 12" chipper??? (grin)

Whatever they call it, I like it fine. It gobbled up the 6" manjack limbs I fed it with no issues and that shit is some really heavy, dense and hard stuff. Harder than hickory or elm by a factor of two, I'd guess. About like trying to chip that damnable desert scrub cedar I had on my property in Arizona - that shit would ruin a saw chain in one cut. This manjack cuts fine but is really dense and hard. It just doesn't have all the sand in it that the cedar did, I guess.

You want me to paint those chipper arms gold for you? ;D

Rich

[GuglioLS]

Aug 27, 2010 22:35:45 GMT -5 Rich Waugh said:

Larry,

.................SNIP............SNIP...................

I could easily bend up a set of top link extenders and send them to you, if you want. Just say the word. Nevermind, I'll just drop a pair of them in a Flat Rate box Monday if I have enough flat bar in stock, which I'm pretty sure I do.
You want me to paint those chipper arms gold for you? ;D

Rich

Oh man that would be swell. If it's not too much trouble, yes I'd really appreciate a set. No need to paint them, my chipper is green, and I'll probably just weld them on, if it's no too late don't drill any holes except for the top link.

Thanks,

Larry

[Rich Waugh]

Too late, the holes are drilled. Glad to hear you plan to weld it on, though - I had to shorten them a couple inches to make them fit in the Flat Rate box. That eliminated the last bolt hole nearest to the machine, but that will not be an issue with the welding. I'll get them in the mail tomorrow if I get a chance. Kinda busy with storm preparations right now - hurricane coming at us, it appears.

Rich

[Rich Waugh]

Well, the top link arms won't be going out in the mail today, Larry.

Hurricane Earl is knocking on my door as I write this. I'm already on stand-by power and I'll have to shut that down pretty soon, after which I'll be incommunicado until after the storm has safely passed. I hope. If the storm takes out my phone line then I'll be out until that gets fixed, unfortunately. I can generate my own power but I can't generate phone service. :-)

I did get all the lines cleared of vines and limbs in anticipation of the storm season, so I can hope for the best. There's going to be another storm coming our way later this week, too. Life in Paradise - the fun never stops.

Once the dust has settled I'll drop that package in the mail. Y'all have fun and play nice until I get back, okay?

Rich

[Rich Waugh]

Well, Hurricane Erl has passed by us, leaving us largely intact. Still no power, but I can live with that.

Tropical Storm Fiona is on the way and should be here Wednesday night or Thursday. Nice to bunch them up like that, saves on preparations. (grin)

Life in Paradise!

Rich