November 2024 - the Bigbear Power Chipper BBC72 continues to do an amazing job for us. I need to show the current conditions of the house lot, so you can understand how much volume this "bear" has chewed up. Also the State of Tennessee Forestry Department came in with their dozer a John Deere 650 and put in about 1,500 feet of fire break in under three hours. This thing can just plow through the woods, but a lot will need to be chipped up to clean up the path and mulch the wood into the forest a bit faster. Watch the Forestry Video here -- ruclips.net/video/kH3pyExz65g/видео.html
Hello. Thank you for the info. I have been looking for a chipper for a while. We have a 5 acre property, with about 3 acres of trees. I am "fire-smarting" the property. There is quite a bit of dead fall and dead standing brush and trees. To reduce the available fuel on our lot, we plan to chip into a trailer and haul the material to the landfill. Jim, from central Alberta.
We will be using ours for years. You’ll need to decide if hauling chips vs hauling logs is cheaper. We are actually going to mulch the chips. Our area allows burning but we didn’t want to do that. If you have any other questions let me know. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe
Also if you don’t think you will use it enough Home Depot and Lowes may rent slightly larger ones. That may make more economical sense. You’ll need a big pile. The Home Depot by us rents chippers that can do 10 inch logs. There may be other equipment companies that would also rent to you. Only you can make the economic decision on buy vs rent. We have over 100 acres and it’s all forest so owning made sense for us.
Now that you have had it a while, is it still holding up good? Have you had a chance to do much 6-7" with it yet? Looking to get one for light commercial work and the price looks almost too good for a 7". While i think most of my stuff would be in the 1-4" range.... im just curious if its gonna start rattling apart after a few months of feeding it the maximum on occasion. I dont really want to invest in a $20k one right off the bat if something like this could get me by for a year or two if treated well.
We have about 50 hours on it over 7-8 months. I was just using it again this week. If you are chipping right after cutting it definitely eats up 5”, 6” no problems. I can’t say I’ve done many full 7” limbs/logs. I do see a difference on type of tree and if wood has dried out. It devours all pine no matter what fresh or dried, small or large. Oak and other hardwoods are slower but it ate fresh and dried wood this week that was at least 5” in diameter. You do need to avoid getting any stones or dirt from roots in there or you will be replacing blades. I have a few small dents in my blades but not to the point I’d replace them yet. That’s actually a good idea for a video to show the blades this far and try some true 7” limbs that I measure. I have a lot more to chip. I’ll try to film and post before end of November. If you don’t need to rush it, Home Depot also rents some fairly large chippers. They seem to be expanding their rental items at least here in East Tennessee. For us, we knew we’d be using it for years so buying worked for us. Thanks for watching and commenting. Please consider subscribing if you haven’t already
@ahbuildingafarm Thanks for getting back to me, think I'll go ahead and give a shot. Think I'll be able to make more than enough bread with it before the warranty is out anyways. Just noticed on their listing of it at HD it does say "commercial" so I shouldn't have to worry about them trying to say I pushed it too hard if something does come up. Gave you a sub, and I'll come sub on my farms channel as well although I'm still trying to figure out where to go with it.
I think the ‘Commercial’ aspect is the safety bar that kills the motor. Most “home” chippers do not have kill switches. And I’d be careful/concerned about towing it. It says rated to 45mph but I’d put it on a trailer. Also there is a VIN so how do you get license plates? I’m still getting my “vision “ of what the channel really is. The How to Do videos are very popular on the Kubota. Overall I am documenting my journey from getting the farm/forest to getting it healthy, selling some timber, and eventually building our forever home Thanks for your support. I recorded dimensions and will try to post soon (few days)
@stpetepiper - I just posted this video link below on the measurements of the GX Commercial Bigbear Power BBC72 Chipper - ruclips.net/video/NUk67krdEd8/видео.html November 7, 2024 at 8:10pm EST It should be done processing in the next half hour. It's going through it's copyright checks etc. Hope this answers more of your questions. ruclips.net/video/NUk67krdEd8/видео.html
Oh and fuel usage. It's about a 5 gallon gas tank. I usually get too tired before I use the whole tank, but if you are feeding constantly not leaving it running when not chipping, you probably get about 2-3 hours of chipping. It ramps up as you feed it larger logs so if you are doing all 5-7" logs it may burn through 5 gallons of fuel faster. 5 gallons of work is about all I can do in a day. Maybe once temperatures are lower I could do 8-10 gallons of work ;)
I only have about 45 minutes on it so far. It got too muddy to get to the piles. And now here in East Tennessee it’s been thunderstorms everyday. Even today May 9 2024. Hopefully get to chip some more in the next week. Its supposed to be dry for 4 days before another period of storms
It most certainly is forest improvement. I’m learning a lot. We have some invasive species but not too much. And forestry is my style of farming. You don’t need to wake up early like dairy farmers. And crop harvesting is far less frequent. 😎
It is gravity feed. However the chute is at a much steeper angle than many others so in all of the videos posted I rarely need to push. I only need to push if it’s really light branches getting stuck on the strips of safety rubber hanging down to reduce blow back pieces. Or if the branch has a big Y in it that snags. The chipping knives are flush to the chute so with the steepness the logs just keep moving in via gravity. Thanks for watching and asking a question
The time lapse uncompressed time was maybe 5-8 minutes. This machine chips really fast. If you have the chute set to be inline and tilted up I’d guess about 10-12ft. If you get a little wind you could do better but we don’t get much wind in either direction. We’ve used it about 5 more time since this video and thus far it’s doing great. Did a video today of my wife feeding it. She couldn’t go faster than the chipper either. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe
November 2024 - the Bigbear Power Chipper BBC72 continues to do an amazing job for us. I need to show the current conditions of the house lot, so you can understand how much volume this "bear" has chewed up.
Also the State of Tennessee Forestry Department came in with their dozer a John Deere 650 and put in about 1,500 feet of fire break in under three hours. This thing can just plow through the woods, but a lot will need to be chipped up to clean up the path and mulch the wood into the forest a bit faster.
Watch the Forestry Video here -- ruclips.net/video/kH3pyExz65g/видео.html
Hello. Thank you for the info. I have been looking for a chipper for a while. We have a 5 acre property, with about 3 acres of trees. I am "fire-smarting" the property. There is quite a bit of dead fall and dead standing brush and trees. To reduce the available fuel on our lot, we plan to chip into a trailer and haul the material to the landfill.
Jim, from central Alberta.
We will be using ours for years. You’ll need to decide if hauling chips vs hauling logs is cheaper. We are actually going to mulch the chips. Our area allows burning but we didn’t want to do that. If you have any other questions let me know. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe
Also if you don’t think you will use it enough Home Depot and Lowes may rent slightly larger ones. That may make more economical sense. You’ll need a big pile. The Home Depot by us rents chippers that can do 10 inch logs. There may be other equipment companies that would also rent to you. Only you can make the economic decision on buy vs rent. We have over 100 acres and it’s all forest so owning made sense for us.
Now that you have had it a while, is it still holding up good? Have you had a chance to do much 6-7" with it yet?
Looking to get one for light commercial work and the price looks almost too good for a 7". While i think most of my stuff would be in the 1-4" range.... im just curious if its gonna start rattling apart after a few months of feeding it the maximum on occasion. I dont really want to invest in a $20k one right off the bat if something like this could get me by for a year or two if treated well.
We have about 50 hours on it over 7-8 months. I was just using it again this week. If you are chipping right after cutting it definitely eats up 5”, 6” no problems. I can’t say I’ve done many full 7” limbs/logs. I do see a difference on type of tree and if wood has dried out. It devours all pine no matter what fresh or dried, small or large. Oak and other hardwoods are slower but it ate fresh and dried wood this week that was at least 5” in diameter. You do need to avoid getting any stones or dirt from roots in there or you will be replacing blades. I have a few small dents in my blades but not to the point I’d replace them yet. That’s actually a good idea for a video to show the blades this far and try some true 7” limbs that I measure. I have a lot more to chip. I’ll try to film and post before end of November. If you don’t need to rush it, Home Depot also rents some fairly large chippers. They seem to be expanding their rental items at least here in East Tennessee. For us, we knew we’d be using it for years so buying worked for us. Thanks for watching and commenting. Please consider subscribing if you haven’t already
@ahbuildingafarm Thanks for getting back to me, think I'll go ahead and give a shot. Think I'll be able to make more than enough bread with it before the warranty is out anyways. Just noticed on their listing of it at HD it does say "commercial" so I shouldn't have to worry about them trying to say I pushed it too hard if something does come up.
Gave you a sub, and I'll come sub on my farms channel as well although I'm still trying to figure out where to go with it.
I think the ‘Commercial’ aspect is the safety bar that kills the motor. Most “home” chippers do not have kill switches. And I’d be careful/concerned about towing it. It says rated to 45mph but I’d put it on a trailer. Also there is a VIN so how do you get license plates?
I’m still getting my “vision “ of what the channel really is. The How to Do videos are very popular on the Kubota. Overall I am documenting my journey from getting the farm/forest to getting it healthy, selling some timber, and eventually building our forever home
Thanks for your support. I recorded dimensions and will try to post soon (few days)
@stpetepiper - I just posted this video link below on the measurements of the GX Commercial Bigbear Power BBC72 Chipper - ruclips.net/video/NUk67krdEd8/видео.html November 7, 2024 at 8:10pm EST It should be done processing in the next half hour. It's going through it's copyright checks etc. Hope this answers more of your questions.
ruclips.net/video/NUk67krdEd8/видео.html
Oh and fuel usage. It's about a 5 gallon gas tank. I usually get too tired before I use the whole tank, but if you are feeding constantly not leaving it running when not chipping, you probably get about 2-3 hours of chipping. It ramps up as you feed it larger logs so if you are doing all 5-7" logs it may burn through 5 gallons of fuel faster. 5 gallons of work is about all I can do in a day. Maybe once temperatures are lower I could do 8-10 gallons of work ;)
I love mine but I already had to replace the belts
How long did the belts last? The manual says to replace once a year. It does not say after 200 hours, 400 hours etc
@@ahbuildingafarmit was jammed and didnt stall out like its supposed to and smoked them at 8 hours
I also took the rubber Matt’s off because it was getting sticky on the sticks
I only have about 45 minutes on it so far. It got too muddy to get to the piles. And now here in East Tennessee it’s been thunderstorms everyday. Even today May 9 2024. Hopefully get to chip some more in the next week. Its supposed to be dry for 4 days before another period of storms
Wow…. The majority of what we will chip is probably 3-4” and only occasionally getting close to the 7” limit. Hopefully they last a year
Instead of Home Improvement, this is more like Forest Improvement
It most certainly is forest improvement. I’m learning a lot. We have some invasive species but not too much. And forestry is my style of farming. You don’t need to wake up early like dairy farmers. And crop harvesting is far less frequent. 😎
Does that chipper have a hydraulic infeed or self feed ?
It is gravity feed. However the chute is at a much steeper angle than many others so in all of the videos posted I rarely need to push. I only need to push if it’s really light branches getting stuck on the strips of safety rubber hanging down to reduce blow back pieces. Or if the branch has a big Y in it that snags. The chipping knives are flush to the chute so with the steepness the logs just keep moving in via gravity.
Thanks for watching and asking a question
How long did it take you to chip that pile?
How far does the chipper throw the shredded bits?
The time lapse uncompressed time was maybe 5-8 minutes. This machine chips really fast. If you have the chute set to be inline and tilted up I’d guess about 10-12ft. If you get a little wind you could do better but we don’t get much wind in either direction. We’ve used it about 5 more time since this video and thus far it’s doing great. Did a video today of my wife feeding it. She couldn’t go faster than the chipper either. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe