Well , theres plenty of paper laying around if your so inclined to do it. If not , you can stick with your way . Anyway , just thought I'd mention it .
It's been so wet and humid my wood chip crop hasn't been drying out, some of it got moldy, oh well, fertilizer it is. The green wood had been sopping wet, i have been cutting it then chipping the same day or next day and I have been chipping leaves and all. Now new wood chip pile. I'm going after standing dead thats already dry and any green stuff I'm laying it out for several days or about a week till the leaves crumble.
https://www.survivalmonkey.com/threads/biochar-in-alaska-and-at-your-place-as-well.6 And the Aussie approach.... With a little creative plumbing, the biochar production could be used for heating water
This year I have not been putting anything green in the wood chipper. When I cut a green tree down I leave it horizontal till the leaves fall off then I cut it up and woodchip. I'm thinking about dismantling and rebuilding my little DR300 wood chipper.
I'm thinking my little wood chipper is just too slow, especially when 2 people are feeding it. There's a provision for 2 chipper knives. Where the second knife goes there's a steel square welded to the wheel to make up for the weight difference. The 6.5hp @ 3,600rpm and 9.5ft-lb @ 2,500rpm wood chipper at peak Hp it can wood chip about a 3/4 inch stick and not lose speed. Go up to 1.25 to 1.5 inches and it slows down to about peak torque. This is all kiln dried hard wood. To chip at full speed we get about 55 to 60 cuts per second on a 3/4 inch stick. Make it 2 blades and that's 110 to 120 cuts per second, that will take about 13hp so if I had 13hp I could feed a 3/4 inch stick into it all day and not lose speed. At peak torque I can get 30 to 40 cuts per second on 1.25 to 1.5 inch wood with 9.5ft-lb of torque. Make it 2 blades for 60 to 80 cuts per second and I'll need let's say 20ft-lb 2,000 to 2,500rpm. So if I want to cut 1.25 to 1.5 inch sticks almost twice as fast at full speed I'll need almost twice the power. Around 30 to 40ft-lb of torque at 3,500rpm. Which is like 20 to 26hp. Probably not going to run a $1,000 engine on my wood chipper. Maybe another predator 459cc, then under drive it to about 86%. That might get me some where around 3,000rpm or 100 cuts per second on 1.25 to 1.5 inch wood at full speed with 2 cutters.
My Father was very interested in buying a corn-burning furnace at one time. He said that we could grow the corn ourselves or buy it from local farmers. The only problem was that it required electricity to operate and was useless during a power outage.
Now I'm trying lighting up the little wood stove with a bed of wood chips. Seems to work good so far, I'll have to see how much unburned wood chip charcoal I have in the morning.
I don't think woodchips in the wood stove worked that great. I tried to put most of a cubic foot worth of woodchips in the wood stove and I don't think they burned up very well. Maybe I'll try more like 2 or 3 cups worth of woodchips. The Internet found close to my ideal wood chipper. A Kohler pull start 14hp, "high speed cutter head" so I guess that means 2 cutters on the head and its towable but not on the highway, for $2,600. So my ideal woodchipper is about $3,000+, highway towable with electric start. I don't need it highway towable all the time but if I'm going to build an axle for it might as well be highway towable. Yeah I could save about $100 and buy turf wheels or cheap wheelbarrow wheels and a wimpy axle, if I do it I do it all the way. The little 6.5hp DR was about $800. The predator 459cc is about $500. I made the highway towable axle for the stumpgrider for about $220 or $240. A second cutter blade was about $75.
Depends upon your set up. Wood chips can compact and not burn thoroughly if you just try to add them to a wood stove. Then you have to stir them, add more flamable stuff, etc. A better use is to get old candles from a thrift shop, melt the wax and mix in the wood chips. Add a wick and you've got your own firestarters that last and contribute heat. I do burn wood chips in my woodstove, but only a few handfuls mixed in with paper, or once the fire is going well.
I can burn 40 pounds of wood chips at a time in the coal furnace as it allows air to draw through the bottom of the fuel pile. Normally I put 40lb of wood chips in the coal furnace and burn trash to to start the woodchip fire. Then add fire wood before the woodchip fire burns down too much. Woodchips and used motor oil gives me something to do with my used oils.
Works great. However, just like pellet stoves, it requires a fair amount of attention. Of course, the size of the hopper to feed it determines that. The real issue on many of these alternative fuels is the amount of time you have to devote to keeping them filled, and also as you age, are you going to be able to swing those 40-80# bags?
I had suspected it for a while but now I confirmed that deer like to lay down on my depleted piles of woodchips. I'll just pile up the wood chips on the ground, shove them away but when I shovel the woodchip pile away I always leave behind an inch or 2 of wood chips that way I'm not scooping up a bunch of dirt.
This thing is a good candidate for a carb swap. Runs rich, all the time, it's not adjustable. The woodchipper runs at almost no load at full speed, until I jam a stick in there bigger than 1/2 inch, then it's full load.
I was going to build a compressed log attachment out of a 4" well pipe for my log splitter, still might
How much tonnage would it take to force wood chips to stick together? My 27ton compressing a 4 inch bore would apply about 4,300psi. I don't think that's enough force to make them stick together. Could be wrong. It appears big chunky wood chips take a lot more force to make them stick together than say sawdust.
Well I killed my wood chipper engine. Broke the flywheel off the crank shaft. So now it will be remade. I have the technology. But it will cost, a few hundred dollars. It will be belt driven that way I don't kill another engine.
I removed the busted engine. I'll salvage parts like muffler, air cleaner, carb, gas tank. I'm replacing the engine with a 1.25 inch 4310 steel shaft and bearing bridge with 1.25 inch flange bearing and pillow block. I think it looks a little ridiculous, it's past overkill, it's more like ultrakill.
