Chipping/Shredding Coconuts and fronds.

[kainoa]

Hi, I’m looking into advice about chippers for coconut fronds. Not just newly cut fronds but brown, wet, and very fibrous. Here on Kauai they don’t dry out good. I’m told that not just any chipper can take on the task. In fact I haven’t run into a rental shop that has a chipper that can do it, plus they will not allow you to run coconut fronds through their chippers. Any advice would be great. Trying to shred coconuts and coconut fronds. The frond base is about 8-10 inches wide by 1.5-2 inches thick and about 10 feet in length.

 

[TreeVB]

When I was working in HI we just had a larger chipper and fronds never gave it any issue. With that said, every contract climber we worked with would ask if it was okay to put fronds through and they seemed impressed it didn’t clog as most others do. My assumption is having more power to really “shoot” the debris through the discharge shoot before it has time to stick to the sides and pile up.

 

[Merle Nelson]

Bandit advises using one of their chippers that has the knives chipping 90 degrees to the feed of the fronds. For instance their 90XP chips up to 9 inch material but feeds at a 45 degree angle to better cut through the wood fibers while their 95XP does the same size material feeding at a 90 degree angle. Not as good feeding woody big limbs, better on fibrous stuff like fronds.

I think their disc chippers throw material harder than their drum chippers too if I'm not mistaken.

 

[AlanKekoa]

You'll need to have a one of the bigger chippers to not run into constant problems with clogging up the chipper, I'm born and raised from Kaua'i too. The only one I worked with that never really had much problems with the fronds was one of the larger bandit intimidators, couple other slightly smaller chippers I worked with, with other companies would clog often. some guys swear by chipping butt end first some guys swear by chipping the tips first lol. or chipping a couple dry fronds with a couple green ones. but if you're going to be doing a lot of cocos the big bandits are the best option I know of. Chipping the cocos no problem but such a shame to see the tree of life go to waste I try my best to avoid resort stye trim jobs and just do the ones that I can lower and save matured racks of cocos and then utilize the coconut water to sell and share.