What’s Your SMALLER Equipment Setup?

Serf Life said:
Anyone have experience with the 6" Altec? Dc610 with 6x10 opening
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No, but I’ve played with a 75xp that was decked out with all the options. I loved the little thing, very capable pruning chipper they easily ate conifer limbs with ease.
Sharp knives and horse power would be what I’d focus on. Anything 30 hp or greater and it would be a hard machine to pass up
 
I picked up a Woodmaxx 14 HP micro (4" capacity) drum chipper that has been very useful so far. Small equipment works well in my niche. My market has a lot of straight growing limbs where this chipper is not fighting the tide.

We used it on a backyard job where new landscaping meant no large chipper/ mini in the backyard. We really didn't need it back there, as we chipped 2.5" and less, and performed erosion control work on a steep slope with the 2.5" and up, mulching with chips.



Just bought a Portable Winch skidder cone to go with my Simpson capstan for low-impact forestry management jobs. Root disease pocket work with big-ish doug-firs with a preservation management plan.
 
I still like (and more importantly HO's do as well) the smaller chips these things make with sharp knives and the anvil to chipper blade gap set correctly anyway. It's great for flower beds and small ornamental trees. And as Dad said, "It gives the goodness back into the soil"! As for branching limbs I just nip em with an electric saw and they usually fold into the chute just fine (sometimes kinda chuck and duck like the old days tho). I do find mine anyway doesn't digest long needle pines like Mugo's that well - too much of these at once and you can plug up, which doesn't seem to happen with spruce or deciduous branches. Sounds crazy but for pitchy stuff, cleaning and waxing the inside of the discharge chute does wonders too. Nutz I know, but it works.
 
Or hot rod it into a power Arbor trolley. Couldn't find info on what speed it goes, fwd and reverse?, fixed or variable speed and optically it seems to have a differential. Parking brake y/n?

Ghostice maybe you could pop down to your local store and investigate ?
 
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What kicked this hunt off for me was trying to use a pulley get the chipper outta a backyard on Monday, way, way down a steep side yard on loose gravel/ landscape rock. I like the idea of a clamp on off road-able wheel rig to bounce the front leg over the stones. Winch woulda been wonderful too. Alternately I wonder if I could get the leg onto a furniture dolly somehow - I had a dolly to get the feed cute and climbing gear down to the backyard in as few trips as possible. Once again with wee chipper though, the chips stayed in the beds in the back yard as mulch and there's no way I wanted to drag brush up to the front drive with a regular chipper setup. Cheers all.
 
I remember that thread with electric wheelbarrows etc.

In this case with "tongue weight" providing traction I see risk of 1) slope reducing tongue weight to the point of inadequate traction to retain control 2) slope having the capability to make propulsion force (primarily fore/aft, but it could swing the tongue sideways) that could be big enough to overcome whatever current traction exists - and away it goes. Those might add up to the same result but I see them as two separate calculations. Aren't stump grinders either 4wd or tracked maybe for this reason? Or they're tow-hitch-drive onto a big vehicle. In the Reg (gas?) power trolley walking backwards when towing the rig under power was raised as a safety issue.

I used to drive my small 2wd locked axle stump grinder up small hills under battery/dc motor drive. Painfully slow.
 
I picked up a 1-ton mini excavator from an auction. A bit for some small projects, a bit for mechanized firewood for personal use, a bit for experience, a bit for trailer and material moving around the yard, a bit for imagining how much a real mini-x could help with trees and expanded services.



I am getting a chipper less than 6' wide and something like 2500 pounds. 59hp Morbark. Much more manueverable with a 2600 pound mini-loader! Stoked!
 
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