Home chipper/shredder for tree pruning

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We have about 1/2 acre of land on the edge of woodland and containing a lot of our own trees. The sort of deceptive thing where you go to trim a small branch and realise it's 20' long and an inch and a half thick, or tidy up a bush and end up with enough branches to fill a car!

We burn some but don't have a great space to do so and there are a lot of evergreens which are bulky to pile up, so I have thought on and off about a home shredder/chipper having seen how useful the professional ones are when the arborists visit.

But I don't know much about what is out there, what level/budget is appropriate for me. My default is to buy the cheapest and find it's underspecced, which is a lesson I should have learned by now!

So, recommendations? Advice/reviews?
 
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I have a Bosch AXT2200 shredder which has worked fine on brambles (by the yard). From memory it cost me about £125 some 2-1/2 years back. In a month or two I'll be out there doing battle again with the b'stards. Last couple of times I've bagged them up and gone to the tip with them - they tend to start growing again if you compost them, I find (it's like having triffids)

Edit: The Bosch I have is what @wgt52 refers to as a "quiet" shredder. It is a "chopper" cutter, a bit like the cutter on a brush cutter

A minor thing to say, but if you are using 230 volt in the garden I'd seriously recommend that you run the extension cable through an RCD plug - it couls save you from a nasty
 
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Sounds like you need a decent one which wont be cheap, you maybe better off hiring, getting someone in now and again or stacking it for wildlife habitat
 
there is 3 types of domestic shredders - essentially breaks down to noisy or quiet and the quiet type are either worm screw or chomping (best description I can think of) cutting drum.
I'd not bother with the noisy type - the cutting action is a fast spinning disk. Of the quiet types I believe the screw type is more restricted on the size of cuttings it can deal with - those are/where made by Bosch. The 'chomping' type can take up to 45mm diameter cuttings. They cannot cope with lots of leaves but once the leaves are of the branches are cut into small pieces quickly.
Do check the duty cycle though - I managed to overheat mine by using it for a hour and half without stopping. I presently have a Qualcast one (through Homebase).
 
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As above.....my 2kw Atco slab cutter type chipper deals beautifully with branches up to 40mm and rejects anything bigger.
John :)
 
I occasionally borrow a disc-type from a relative. It's OK probably up to about 25-30mm. Hopeless with bamboo, just frays. It regularly needs opening up to remove all the sawdust and twigs that didn't shred, and is held shut with a knob that seems to need about 50 turns on it before it interlocks. I could have sworn it was a Trend but I can't find it anywhere online so this anecdote isn't as useful as it could have been.
To me, it doesn't make sense owning a massive chipper as I'd probably only use it 5-6 times in my life.
Is there a market for small amounts of random green timber? Perhaps you might even make some money on it without shredding it.
 
Is there a market for small amounts of random green timber?

It depends on what you mean by market. People paying for it, probably not, but people willing to take it away then yes.

On my local reuse group (TrashNothing, Freegle) there are reasonably often people asking for / offering firewood. Over a number of years, I have done a lot of clearing in my garden with most wood going to a couple of friends, but when I have had excess I have offered it on the reuse group and it has gone quickly.

Being green will probably not be an issue. Anyone who has an open fire will have a log store, so they can just keep it there.
 
There are definitely people always after logs to store but the stuff that will go through a home shredder might be too small to interest most - I try to use anything down to 1" but there's a lot more work sorting it - I could use even smaller stuff for kindling but you'd forever cutting it up.

If they're nice lengths not super leafy/bushy then someone might well come take it. But I'm after a machine for all the stuff I don't use :)
 
But I'm after a machine for all the stuff I don't use

@Why Not Indeed asked if there was a market for this and it was that question I answered.

I have used all three types of shredder; rotary blade (or impact), worm screw*, and crushing (cod or drum). Other people have told you about them, I'm not sure what else you want.

* AFAIUI only Bosch made these and they stopped a long time ago.
 
Any further recommendations for/against specific models, anyone?

My primary source of shredding material will be pruned branches - laurel, yew, holly mainly. Not so much in the way of brambles or deciduous branches, I do have quite a lot of hedge clippings but realistically I don't know they are easy to shred.
I imagine we'd use a lot of the result for mulch, or just spread it about somewhere.
 
I have a Bosch AXT2200 shredder which has worked fine on brambles (by the yard). From memory it cost me about £125 some 2-1/2 years back. In a month or two I'll be out there doing battle again with the b'stards. Last couple of times I've bagged them up and gone to the tip with them - they tend to start growing again if you compost them, I find (it's like having triffids)

Edit: The Bosch I have is what @wgt52 refers to as a "quiet" shredder. It is a "chopper" cutter, a bit like the cutter on a brush cutter

A minor thing to say, but if you are using 230 volt in the garden I'd seriously recommend that you run the extension cable through an RCD plug - it couls save you from a nasty
This discussion reached a natural end because out of the blue someone asked my wife "would you like a garden shredder" and it turns out it is the same as yours - well the previous 2000 model. We've got mains in the garden so I might look into a litte RCD, unless my extension lead has one built in (no idea).
 
I hope it works for you. I've not been using it on bits of tree, but some of the bramble I'm pulling out is very mature and woody and up to maybe 3/4in in diameter. As it happens it didn't come with an RCD plug, but I have a gardening extension cable with an RCD plug at the end which does the job.
 
I have just noticed something, the Bosch AXT2200 is not what is referred to as a quiet shredder.

The quiet ones have a (sort of) cog wheel or drum rotating relatively slowly around a horizontal axis. They cut the material against a vertical plate.

The other ones (normally called impact shredders) have a blade rotating much faster around a vertical axis. They rely on the inertia of the material and a sharp blade.

I currently have a cog wheel machine and I wear ear defenders when using it. Impact shredders are much noisier
 
Yeah the blurb actually talks about it being high RPM, I think. They say it's suited to leaves and stuff which isn't always the case, looking at it it looks more like a small lawnmower blade. So it chops rather than grinds, I suppose we might say.
I'll have to check the blade is sharp, and get my earplugs.
 

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