Thank you for being smart and not jamming your hand down in the chipper.. I've seen to many videos and they do just that.. I like how your dropping the branch and allowing the gravity to grabb it. Thumbs 👍🏻
Yeah, I have a lifelong goal of keeping all my digits and limbs intact🙂. Usually, if something doesn't want to feed you can kind of poke it through with the next stick without sticking your hand down the chute. Also, the more you can cut down any Ys in your branches the easier they will feed. Thanks for the comment.
I have a DR power chipper that is very similar. I dump the chips back into the top hopper and get an even finer material that looks better in the flow beds and decomposes faster providing rich soil. My soil has gone from hard compacted clay to black crumply soil in seven years of continuously adding organics material from the chipper shredder.
There's probably a way to use a wheelbarrow (with a screen on top); dryer/dust collector hose; HVAC boot; and some nuts/bolts to make collecting all of the output easier.
That sounds a little bit less than easy, but it's an interesting idea. It would be nice to have an alternative to the bag which is already developing some holes after only maybe 10 hours of use...
I bought one like that several months ago. I had the same problem you do with the bends in the sticks. I can understand that. My chipper chute was only about 2 1/2 inches where the 2 pieces are welded together. Called them and they sent me anther chute but the bolt holes were too small and I had to drill them out. That new chute was only about another tenth of an inch larger. I have a spray paint can that is just over 2 1/2 inches in diameter and use it to guage the hole and it will not pass the welded part. If you et a chance measure your chute and see if it is actually 3 inches all the way or if it is less near the welded part. What I do not like about the chute is while the limbs i have are only about 2 1/2 inches I have to be real careful to cut the side limbs off the main limb or they get hung up and will not go through the chipper even tho9ugh they are less than 3 inches.
I haven't done a deep dive (just eyeballing it with a tape measure), but the *outside* diameter of the chipper feed chute appears no more than 3". I'm guessing if I removed it, I would see the same numbers as you are describing.
