garden shredders

Yep.

Yes, I use ear defenders.

The do blunt but not exceptionaly quickly, at least not on our B&D model. I suspect what and how fast you feed hard materials into it has a bearing.

Ther are often reversable and I have sharpened them at home with an ordinary file and, once I had one, a grinder.

How long is a piece of string. Depends on the model, ours will eat broom handle sized stuff without much fuss.

German company:

Yes, they are noisy, and the blades do get blunt, but they can be sharpened at home.

Alan

Avoid the Black and Decker one with rotating blades, it is rubbish. I spent more time unblocking it than using it and threw it away in the end. Complete waste of money. If I ever buy another it will be one of the Bosch quiet shredders which have been much praised on this group.

Sounds it. The bladed ones also tend to clog up quite easily if you feed sticky stuff in (slightly rotted leaves for example).

Probably not. The green matter doesn't need shredding (except for thick stuff like the stalks of broccolli plants - which the cogs will handle).

Yes

Pretty quickly - particularly if there is /any/ soil involved (it's the stone that blunts them)

Yes - but with difficulty (the nicks can be substantial)

Mine will cope with stuff a bit thicker than my thumb when the blades are sharp. If I bought a new one, I would get one of the cog ones.

No idea.

They produce stuff down to a price for places like Aldi.

They are hideously noisy, jam frequently and tend not to last well.

Having had two rotating blade and one Bosch it is no competition. The Bosch is quiet, rarely jams, eats quite large branches and chops up leaves a bit - certainly sufficiently so they take up very little room. Vastly better than the high speed things.

I recently picked up an ALKO shredder second-hand. Not knowing anything much about shredders before, this one is the rotating blade type, and probably towards the more expensive and robust end of the market (so second hand is definitely a good move here, as I wouldn't pay anything like the new price).

It doesn't cut up leaves or any very fine twigs much -- they just get ejected. It is superb with branches though. Instructions say it works better if they've had time to dry out after pruning - mine were all very well dried. I haven't tried it with fresh cuttings, which are apparently more likely to jam.

No experience of this type.

Not in my experience.

The noise didn't bother me. The blades didn't noticably blunten during my long session. I sharpened them before I started. The (second-hand) machine came with completely blunt blades and it didn't work at all until I had sharpened them. That may be why it was discarded.

Search back for my previous article on uk.d-i-y which had more detail and lots of others' comments in the thread.

yeah. I simply use my ride on lawnmower, and accept the fact that the blades need replacing every year, and the deck welding up every other.

Still cheaper than buying a shredder.

I've had an Al-KO rotating thingy and I've currently got a Bosch. Much prefer the Bosch although I do find that if I get too carried away with very green stuff I can end up with a mush which blocks the shredding mech until I put something woody through.

On Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:18:50 +0100 (BST) someone who may be "Dave Liquorice" wrote this:-

I have one I bought in Lidl. The gear type and not noisy.

Not silent, but not noisy enough to block having a conversation in a normal voice.

I've got a "cogger" and it's reasonably quiet. Though you would still get abuse and other things hurled at you if you decided to do a quick bit of shredding at 3 a.m. I'm no expert, but ISTM the difference in noise level might be that my one uses an induction motor, whereas some (build to a budget) types use a brushed motor. So far as mulching leaves, I don't bother. The chips that come out of the shredder and any leaves in amongst them go straight back onto the flower beds and presumably the leaves just decay a little slower than if they'd been chopped up.

dittos all the way through, except that we've not sharpened the blades and it still gets throough most things up to about 3/8 inch, which is the limit before we dry them out to burn on the chiminea*

• or sit on the log pile anyway - the chiminea's only been lit the once this summer.

The thing I found about the bladed ones is that after a couple of seasons the blades are practically welded to the plate and require lots of swearing and effort to undo the screws.

-- Halmyre

I have the screw type bosch and it's great. The feed inlet is conical so a

I have the bigger of the two screw feed bosch ones and it will do branches a lot thicker than 3/4".

Mine can be made quieter by putting a wedge in the plastic motor cover to stop it vibrating.

I have a petrol chipper/shredder. Very expensive but one of my best buys. A job which would have taken 3 hours with my old electric B&D now takes less than an hour. It is noisy but it can cope with branches up to 2 inches or more in diameter. My borders all have a layer of chippings around 3 inches deep at this time of year. By next summer most will have disappeared!

Lawrence

I have a JCB shredder. It will cut branches the size of broom handles all day but hates fresh leaves, they choke it up. I just wait until everything I want to shred is dry. I use the results for my chicken runs.