Chipper tine repair

Hi guys,

I recently picked up a wood chipper/ shredder from a friend of mine. Actually he gave it to me. If I could get it running we'd share it! Well it was nothing that a carburetor kit couldn't fix.

Looking at the shredder tines I found that the leading edges are rounded off and two of the tines are broken off. Luckily they are apposing each other and it is still in balance well enough.

I searched for the manufacture to no avail. It was made by W.W.Grinder Inc. out of Wichita Kansas. What numbers I did find were disconnected.

I have a Lincoln wire feed welder. I'm wondering if I can weld on some bar stock to replace the missing tines? I 'm also thinking of welding the rounded ends and re sharpening them.

Do you think that will hold up? Should they be hardend?

Any help is greatly appreciated, Thanks,

Randy H SC Glass Tech Scam Diego, Comi-fornia

Reply to
Randy H.
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I grind/sharpen the tines in mine. I have a 8HP duerr that has both the blades and tines. Don't count on chipping anything very big.

Reply to
Wayne

I've read where some folks have put brazed carbide planer (wood planer) blades on they lawnmower blades with alleged good success.

Reply to
AHS

This sounds extremely dangerous to me.......

I recall reading someplace that carbide fragments released from compressive loading on impact fracture can easily surpass the velocity and energy levels attainable by high powered rifle projectiles.

Reply to
PrecisionMachinisT

I have experience with two chippers. In each case, the rotating blades could be turned over one time to expose a new sharpened edge. After that it was replacement time.

One chipper/shreader is an old Wards unit that is like a rotary lawn mower with two heavy sharp blades that set into a wheeled bottom frame. That frame has a pair of fingers that just clear the blades and provide the other half of the cutting property. I have sharpened the blades a number of times on both edges. I had to fabricate new fingers a couple of times as they wear out quickly. All the steel it this unit is pretty soft.

The second chipper attaches to the back of my 24hp Kubota and runs off the pto. I think the mfg. is "Bearcat", or something like that. It has cutters bolted to a flywheel, as well as a rotating cage with hammer-mill type cutters hung on shafts making up the cage. I have sharpened the flywheel cutters several times and know they are hardened steel. The hammer-mill cutters also need sharpening, but the entire cage has to be removed and I haven't had the time to try that. They seem to be pretty hard steel, also.

In both cases, the primary wear is caused by bits of gravel that gets raked up with the leaves, sticks, etc.

I think if you took the cutters out of your machine and tested them on a grinder you could quickly tell if they were hard or soft steel. Since you have some broken cutters, rather than just rounded-off, I suspect they are hardened.

Do you have the ability to hard-surface the cutters? That is what I would do.

Paul

Reply to
Paul

I have made replacement tines out of used mower blades. I have also used mower blades to cut out new knives for the chipper, and hardface them with a pass or two and grind them to a sharp edge. They seem to hold up way better than the $25.00 each price I would have to pay other wise. I assume your talking the flail fingers when you mention tines. Mine has three sets of three fingers spaced 120 deg around the wheel. The ones on mine are not reversible, and were originally cast into a tube when new. I have now made them with mower blades cut to flail size, hardfaced and ground square, after being welded to a piece of round stock which was drilled to accept the mounting bolts. These also seem to hold up better than the 40.00 eac flail set as well. Used mower blades work fine, and hardface works like a champ. Tried some carbide brazed to a section of mower blade on an initial attempt top make a replacement chiper blade, but it cracked and fragmented pretty easy. Visit my website:

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Reply to
Roy

That would work until you hit the first rock.

Stan

Reply to
Stan Schaefer

I'm puzzled, because I own a Tomahawk Chipper/Shredder from the old Gardenway firm.

It shreds just fine, and uses rather flat faced tines that look somwhat like the tines on my Rototiller to do the job. A shredder doesn't need sharp tines, just sufficient horsepower/kinetic energy to get the shredding job done. Shredding is done simply by ripping things, not cutting or chipping them.

The chipper portion is entirely different, and requires a sharp blade similar to that on a planer to function efficiently.

If your chipper/shredder has a chipping blade, you should be able to remove it and sharpen it. The shredding tines don't usually need to be sharpened because they are generally blunt by design.

Harry C.

Reply to
Harry Conover

I too have a Tomahawk chipper too and you may notice that the shredder tines or "blades" are reversable, this is because a fully rounded tine will NOT work as well as one that is squared off. The rounded edge will not shred as well as the sharp (in a relative sort of way) squared edge of the tine as it is in its orriginal condition. Same for a rototiller, the blades is too rounded will not "cut" the sod. Oh, sure in already worked ground the lack of a sharp edge on a rototillers tines is not so noticable, but a dulled tine edge will "walk" a rototiller over the sod rather than cut into it. Even rototiller benefit from a moderate amount of "sharp" on its tines.

Reply to
John213a

On 28 Jun 2004 11:16:40 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@coinet.com (Paul) vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

You don't _know_ "primary wear" on a hammermill until you accidentally drop a 1.5' length of 1/2" chain into the top feeder with a 40HP tractor driving the mill.....

......but you should have seen the chain!

Luckily the "chaff" is extracted by a blower, so the chain did not go right through the system.

It was a chaep lesson in how helpless one can be if something soes wrong with a PTO-driven system. A clutch came to mind, but that's another project.

Reply to
Old Nick

Ours is PTO driven but with a set of belts to bring the SFM up on the rotor--the belts will slip, eventually..........

Reply to
PrecisionMachinisT

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 08:56:30 -0700, "PrecisionMachinisT" vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

One belt snapped. They all slipped. When you saw what it did to that hardened chain in what, 10 seconds?, none of that would have been a damned bit of use to anyone caught up in it.

The mach8ine is an OSHA nightmare. There are moving parts all over the thing, none covered. I am seriously looking at fixing that. I would work with my huge drum chipper any day over this thing as is. At least you know where the bite is!

We had a story over here about a woman who was helping her hubby with a post hole borer. She probably made the classic error of clearing the flutes. She got caught up in the workings. She lived to regret it. The story was about how she and her partner had endured her life after that. She was a very pretty woman, and they both had to learn to do without that, hair, half and I think one arm as well.

Reply to
Old Nick

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