Worst Thing Through A Chipper?

Funny you say cell phone. I "lost" my cell phone one afternoon. Shut all the equipment down. Started calling my phone and walking around the jobsite. Would you believe the chipper is ringing. The phone went through the feed rollers, but didnt make it to the cutters. Actually found it sitting on the cutter bar when I opened up the feed rollers. I was amazed

Worst thing was one of my guys left a 24" crow bar in the chipper after adjusting the cutter bar. Fired the chipper up and heard a big bang. Crow bar went straight through the top of the shoot never to be found again.
 
On my 1962 Asplundh Whisper Chipper a knife came out of the pocket. The blade broke and most of the pieces spit out the chute. The chipper did come to an immediate stop...going from 'whisper' mode to total silence was defeaning! A chunk of the knife jammed the drum and rolled the edge of the pocket back like a Tootsie Roll! The drum head came out, a very good weldor built up the material and a buddy brought it into his machine shop to turn the drum and mill out the knife pocket. Good thing no metal came out the infeed!

On my Bandit 100 the knife anvil came loose and started wholloping around inside the disc compartment. The two guys who were chipping ran for the hills! I had to belly crawl through the snow and street melt to get to the ignition. All the time I figured something was going to come out. In the end...the anvil flew out the chute into the chips. Whew...another lucky day.

When the plastic rakes wore down and didn't rake the yards anymore they became 'street rakes'. they worked way better than brooms. Then, when the teeth were flat I cut off the tines and left the solid flat web part. this last bit of rake became the brush/debris pusher. If we had more than one pusher the rake would get chipped. The honor of chipping the worn rake would rotate through the crew. There is a real delight in being able to purposely chip a 'tool' even though we'd gotten the oink out of the pig by then and the rake was totally used up :)
 
The worst thing I have seen and heard go into a chipper was the disc lock that you use for changing the blades when the chipper was running at full RPMs. Our "mechanic" left the disc lock in the locking hole when he was done changing the blades. On the drive to the job in the morning it must have worked its way out a few inches because the crew managed to chip a bunch of brush in the morning. Then one of the ground crew who was walking by the chipper saw the pin sticking partway out. He thought it looked out of place so he pushed it in. The ensuing sound was so terrible that I just about jumped out of my skin as the fins on the disk hit that 3/4" rod 3 times every time the disc spun at how ever many rpms it was going. The chipper was somehow fine after that though we didn't work anymore that day. The "mechanic" had to spend the day torching out the pin that was bent at a 90 degree angle from the fins hitting it.

The guy who pushed the pin in ended up with a broken hand from the impact.
 
I have tossed a road cone through a whisper chipper and it came out whole just like swiss cheese. Also an ipod.

The worst I have heard of I didn't witness but a crew tried throwing a deer through a self feed and it jammed, they had dig it out with a shovel and pitchfork. I don't know what its extent of truth is, but I have worked around the guys and I would believe it.
 
We had an old broken wooden ladder on my truck which was RED TAGED so no one could use. I got sick of it always being in the way so I shoved it into my chipper. My brother in-law had a brand new stack of 15 road cones his forman packed into the chipper closed the feed table and off they went got to the next job, fired up the chipper and filled the chip box in orange chips.
 
We were joking around after a pizza delivery lunch. We were done with the cardboard box. Figured an easy way to get rid of biodegradable trash was to chip it.

My V8,9" chuck and duck got indigestion from the cardboard. It actually jammed the chute. What should have been a chipped paper product disposal actually took 10 minutes to open up and clear, then we went back brush as usual.

Whoodaguessed?
 
I lost my wedding ring to the chipper once. We were cleaning up after a pruning job in the winter and it must have slipped off. Looked all over the yard, the pizza place where we got lunch, but found nothing. At the second job, I pruned while Jeff dug through the chips. Talk about a needle in a haystack. The ring wasn't wearable, but a jeweler was able to fix it up for me. Its got character. Needless to say I don't wear my ring to work anymore.
 
played a joke on a new groundie--put a phone book into the feedwheels on a woodchuck w/c17 then set the reverse bar in neutral, when the groundie shoved his brush through he grab the reverse bar and pushed his brush through--it was a confetti shower, scared the heck out of him...
 
Back in 97-98' a tree crew in Massachusetts rallied in a mall parking lot to chip a whole bunch of Poke'man stuff for a radio station. I once saw/heard a fall arrest harness go in with some brush. The thick webbing wrapped up on the main disc bearing. Buckles left big scars on the inside of the housing abd disc.
 
Yea I forgot about the winch chain on my 1800 that went past the feed wheels and hit the drum taking half of a blade off and sucking the chain in tight ,I immediately removed the chain and hook and made the hook an aluminum biner and had directly set to a bowline on the rope , I figured if that went in the biner would be eaten and the rope would be cut no damage to the machine...I could never figure out why they use chains it should be a eye and a aluminum hook ...
 
I've been wanting to roll up on a yard sale, buy a $10 coffee table, and send it through the chipper then and there. I figure it'd be worth the ten bucks for the look on their face as I waved "thank you" while jumping in the cab and driving off.
 
Hahaha. That would be pricless! hook the winch to it across the yard and winch it up...thanks. I'll be back for the blender
 
Fishing rod, 6 foot choker chain, and a metal rake. Not at the same time, but over the years. The choker chain was horrifying, it was like a grenade went off. Chunks of metal everywhere.
And once we were demoing a potential chipper, and were chipping brush, and I opened up the feed wheels while another guy threw a softball sized rock into the disc. Epic. We did not buy that chipper to say the least.
 
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Funny you say cell phone. I "lost" my cell phone one afternoon. Shut all the equipment down. Started calling my phone and walking around the jobsite. Would you believe the chipper is ringing. The phone went through the feed rollers, but didnt make it to the cutters. Actually found it sitting on the cutter bar when I opened up the feed rollers. I was amazed

Worst thing was one of my guys left a 24" crow bar in the chipper after adjusting the cutter bar. Fired the chipper up and heard a big bang. Crow bar went straight through the top of the shoot never to be found again.

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HOLY SH!T lucky no one got hurt with that one. geez a passing car woulda been fatal. was everyone ok?
 
my prescription glasses, gloves, a boot, grain shovel, broom, the tail of a climbing rope while the climber was still in the tree, and a piece of maple that had a 3/4 inch steel rod embeded in it.

That last one went into my 1964 M&M chuck and duck, stopped the drum in a split second, bent the hell out of the bed knife mount, but more impressively, made the whole chipper jump off the ground a foot or so.
 
Years ago when I worked for a clearing company my bosses brother was using the grapple of the chipper to feed the trees that the skidder was dropping off. In one of the piles that he was feeding into the chipper was a medal post and sure enough in went half way through the chipper before we could stop the feed wheels. The crazy part of it all was prior to the fence post going through I was walking past the discharge shoot and got spayed with some chips. Thank got that post went though after I walked by.
 
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Chipped a saddle complete with biners, lanyard, fig 8, & mincro-cender.. near $500 replacement value

BUT that wasn't the worst...
chipped a myers snow plow bracket that bolts to the frame rail of a dodge 2500..
tha turned into a war.. [/quote

Ok, I gotta ask on this one...how? and who's fault?
 
Years ago, i were on a big development site contract chipping for someone else. He had another crew there too. While moving around from one area to another they were leaving all there quipment on the feed tray. They cranked it up and chipped 2 Huskys! Got the chipper repaired, bought some new saws and came back. I couldn't believe they were still putting them on the feed tray doing the same thing....
 
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