I've run my share of wood through a regular chipper/shredder and my
experience was that unless you've got at least 10 or more HP running it,
you have to wait for chipper to speed up after each pass at a good-sized
limb. I have been expounding upon an idea I have had in my head for some
time regarding a way to build a very reasonably-priced wood
shipper/shredder that might feed more evenly. I would alternately stack
about 10 sharp carbide circular saw blades with washers in between. I
would tighten down the shaft with enough torque to keep blades from
spinning, install bearings at both ends, then install drive pully at one
end. I would then install whole assembly in a 1/4" steel tapered box
section (like existing chipper/shredders) and you got the makings of a
pretty decent shredder. I say shredder instead of chipper because so
many teeth are involved. If a person used a stack of carbide blades from
Harbor Freight on sale, the overall affect would be cheaper chipper
blades that might stay sharper much longer and feed much smoother. A
person might need to feed wood into it slowly so as not to over-feed
unit and jam it. It might be even better if it had a set of syncronized
feeder rollers. Thinking more about how it would feed, I came up with 3
zones. The first zone being where the saw is coming towards the wood in
a bite/push fashion, the second zone would be the center area with a
bite/neutral while the 3rd would be the bite/pull zone. If the wood was
guided mostly to zones 1 & 2, there would be no over-feed with jamming.
Just a design thought. In another post, Bobby Yates came up with a
modification that might prevent any pieces of wood getting stuck in
between blades by adding a beveled washer on both ends to make the stack
wobble just slightly, say 1/8". We are now passing the manufacture of a
pair of wobble washers to the group. How could it be accomplished the
best? I might draw up something if it is needed for better
understanding.