Garden shredder; recommendations?

[Another John]

Recommendation?

Don't waste your time and money! :-)

I haven't read any of the other responses here -- mine is a gut reaction, born of (a) having lots of hedges (and border plants for that matter) and (b) cutting them for decades. [And (c) having tried at least two shredders in my time.]

You're going to either compost the cuttings/plants, or you're going to take them to the tip:

- if keen on composting, pile them up lengthways on the lawn, then use your hedgetrimmer to chop the pile into short lengths. [1]

- if taking to the tip, pile them neatly on to a tarpaulin, then wrap them up tightly and ram into your car -- also by far the easiest way to unload at the tip.

Shredders are noisy, expensive and worst of all demand hours of your time.

[1] Many people, including the TV experts, say "just run over them with the lawn mower". This advice usually comes from people with loads of time, and/or assistants whom we never see, even in the background, on programmes like Gardeners' World. This method is slower than chopping withe the hedge trimmer, and in any case you need a big, powerful, petrol driven mower.

hth John

[newshound]

Noisy, yes. Expensive, I didn't consider my ATX rapid particularly expensive when I bought it (£140 or so?) except for replacement blades. Jams are rare once you get the hang of it, and quick to clear.

A very quick way of getting a good volume reduction. I had a cone of stuff more than 6 feet high and probably 8 feet on the base. IIRC this came down in an hour or so to five feed sacks (slightly bigger than rubble sacks) which easily fitted into an Astra estate. I think this wore out both sides of the blade (£14 at the time) but saved hours compared to manual cutting and bagging.

[Tim Watts]

I'm impressed.

Took me about 4 hours to clear a 6' x 3' x 2' mound of hawthorn with mine - but it was all fine nasty stuff that had to be shoved in the throat in clumps the size of an inflated balloon (that's the real slowdown).

I've cleared something like a 6' high 10' deep 30' wide pile in a couple of days with a hired "proper" chipper where you could just literally throw it in.

[Andrew]

Or simply pile them up in a corner, allow to dry thoroughly and then burn them. It's carbon-neutral and the ash is good for the soil.

[T i m]

I think that's the key with these smaller chippers. When I fed a conifer though mine you just dropped one (or more, depending on size) branches into it and they nearly fell though! ;-)

The biggest issue was getting new green-waste bags underneath it fast enough (we hooked the bag handles over the lugs on the chipper and took them off when any more in them would split the bag when lifting).

I think I may have 'dressed' the blade with the diamond hone on my Leatherman a couple of times.

Yes, we have access to a range of chippers where the biggest would take a 4" diameter branch and everything on it with reasonable ease. Again, it's amazing how quickly you can fill a transit truck with something like that. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[John Rumm]

Its what I do with clippings from the hedges and the waste left from when I massacre a pampas grass or three each year. Usually burns pretty well after a couple of days drying.

For tree branches its a different matter - they are usually to sparsely spaced to burn well (or get many onto a resonable sized fire at once).

For those the chipper is really good - it got through probably 30 m^3 of branches last autumn faster than I could drag em to the machine.

[newshound]

Agreed, that is really where they come into their own. I forget which particular plant gave me my big pile, may have been ash, alder, or buddlia but whatever it was I had relatively straight six foot lengths tapering down from 1 inch to 1/4 inch and they self-feed and really whizz through provided the blades are sharp. You can tell when the blades are going blunt because you have to start shoving them a bit. More knarley stuff like hawthorne is not so efficient. I don't have a handy space for drying and burning hedge clippings, you get some volume reduction from the shredder but sometimes I just dig them into a big muck heap.

[dennis]

I have had a Bosh with the cutting screw for a few years now, not sharpened it yet.

It has an induction motor and it can get fouled up if you put a branch with a lot of green leaves on as they get pulled off and block the mouth. They shred much easier if they can dry for a few days first.

The branches come out cut into small lengths and partially crushed so they compost well.

[dennis]

Bosch do a similar one, a lot more expensive though.

[John Rumm]

Sounds like the one I had. No easy way to resharpen the helix alas. ISTR that the part was £80 when I replaced it the first time. They work ok when sharp, so long as you can accept the limitation that it only works well when shredding exactly the right kind of stuff - dryish, not to leafy or lush, nothing too soft.

The small opening also makes them hard to feed - you spend alot of time shopping side shoots off to get the thing in the hopper. I think they designed the hopper opening to limit the size of branch that could be fed, but in doing so just made it hard to feed. (I attacked mine with a reciprocating saw in the end to make the hopper neck wider!)

In the end I got so fed up with it, I lobbed it in a skip rather than replace the helix again etc.

About the only bit of it I miss is it was good when taking down over grown brambles - you could snip a bit off near the root, and feed in an end, it would then pull in the rest of the stalk and save you getting lacerated by it too much.

[dennis]

I didn't really have a problem with it jamming. The wife does though as she just wont stop bunching loads of stuff up and shoving it all in at once. It will quite happily take a whole branch and pull it through but it won't take three or more at the same time.

[John Rumm]

I found with a branch it would start out ok, but then choke when it got down to the leafy bits without much wood left...

[Chris Holford]

In article , Chris Holford writes

Many thanks for all the helpful comments. I finally bought a Titan TTB683SHR 2500W from Screwfix who had it in stock at the local branch and cheaper than Ebay or Amazon. It seems well made for the price. I've used it for about 3 hours so far it has worked without problems.