In article ,
"Peter & Jeanne" wrote:

We are looking for a good shredder which would deal with all sorts of garden
"rubbish" - i.e. tree prunings up to 2 or 3" diameter as well as softer
stuff. At the moment everything goes in the council's compost bin but I feel
we could make more use of the material if shredded.

Hubby thinks electric wouldn't be man enough so we are looking at
petrol/diesel but if we go down this route, it would need to be self-start.

Anybody got any recommendations?

No recommendations, except to say: "hubby" is absolutely right! I've had
a couple of electric shredders (current one is Bosch, so not rubbish),
and they're useless: noisy, slow, noisy-slow, and slow slow slow! I
never use mine now, and would sell it, if I had the brass-necked cheek
to palm it off on someone!

BTW: the group will be wanting details of how much, and what sort of,
garden you have, in order to assess the size of machine you need.

John

On 13/10/2014 09:41, Another John wrote:
In article ,
"Peter & Jeanne" wrote:

We are looking for a good shredder which would deal with all sorts of garden
"rubbish" - i.e. tree prunings up to 2 or 3" diameter as well as softer
stuff. At the moment everything goes in the council's compost bin but I feel
we could make more use of the material if shredded.

Hubby thinks electric wouldn't be man enough so we are looking at
petrol/diesel but if we go down this route, it would need to be self-start.

Anybody got any recommendations?

No recommendations, except to say: "hubby" is absolutely right! I've had
a couple of electric shredders (current one is Bosch, so not rubbish),
and they're useless: noisy, slow, noisy-slow, and slow slow slow! I
never use mine now, and would sell it, if I had the brass-necked cheek
to palm it off on someone!

BTW: the group will be wanting details of how much, and what sort of,
garden you have, in order to assess the size of machine you need.

John

I switched form electric to petrol, but it kept jamming, no matter what
tricks I tried. So I am now using a Bosch electric, which is certainly
much quieter and rarely jams. I have just spent the last 1 1/2 hrs.
shredding 2 large "Butterfly bushes, no problems.

In article ,
Broadback wrote:
On 13/10/2014 09:41, Another John wrote:
In article ,
"Peter & Jeanne" wrote:

We are looking for a good shredder which would deal with all sorts of garden
"rubbish" - i.e. tree prunings up to 2 or 3" diameter as well as softer
stuff. At the moment everything goes in the council's compost bin but I feel
we could make more use of the material if shredded.

Hubby thinks electric wouldn't be man enough so we are looking at
petrol/diesel but if we go down this route, it would need to be self-start.

Anybody got any recommendations?

No recommendations, except to say: "hubby" is absolutely right! I've had
a couple of electric shredders (current one is Bosch, so not rubbish),
and they're useless: noisy, slow, noisy-slow, and slow slow slow! I
never use mine now, and would sell it, if I had the brass-necked cheek
to palm it off on someone!

BTW: the group will be wanting details of how much, and what sort of,
garden you have, in order to assess the size of machine you need.

I switched form electric to petrol, but it kept jamming, no matter what
tricks I tried. So I am now using a Bosch electric, which is certainly
much quieter and rarely jams. I have just spent the last 1 1/2 hrs.
shredding 2 large "Butterfly bushes, no problems.

The blade type are much noisier than the 'cog' type. When this
has come up before, the consensus is that by far the best is/was
the Bosch 2200 quiet (electric) shredder. It doesn't handle
very leafy or fleshy material, and its limit is 1" of hard wood
or 1.5" of softer material. It's also fairly compact. I have
one, and it is excellent.

To shred larger material, or very large quantities, one needs
a proper horticultural model. The cheap machines that claim to
do the job almost invariably have a lot of problems, but the
ones that don't are both very expensive and usually very large.
But that is all second-hand information.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On 13/10/14 10:39, Nick Maclaren wrote:

To shred larger material, or very large quantities, one needs
a proper horticultural model. The cheap machines that claim to
do the job almost invariably have a lot of problems, but the
ones that don't are both very expensive and usually very large.
But that is all second-hand information.

I agree.

When a neighbour with a chainsaw helped me take 6' off a hawthorn hedge,
I hired the biggest chipper the hire shop had - it was one level down
from a tree surgeon's machine, but had powered feed.

I ran it flat out for 5 days and burnt about 6 gallons of petrol.

However now the war has been won, I might be interested in one of the
Bosch cog-crusher types for ad hoc pruning.

The problem I see is the domestic devices all have very tight throats
for safety reasons so sticking hawthorn in would be a non starter - or
any bushy material - but long thick twigs like ash would probably work
very well.

Go along with everything Nick says, especially the limit on dimensions of
stuff you put in considering the OP's question.

We shred a lot of stuff and even though we only have a small garden, 120 x
25, we 'scrounge' our neighbours stuff to 'save him a trip to the dump' :-)

Mike

..................................................
watch this space


"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message ...

In article ,
Broadback wrote:
On 13/10/2014 09:41, Another John wrote:
In article ,
"Peter & Jeanne" wrote:

We are looking for a good shredder which would deal with all sorts of
garden
"rubbish" - i.e. tree prunings up to 2 or 3" diameter as well as softer
stuff. At the moment everything goes in the council's compost bin but I
feel
we could make more use of the material if shredded.

Hubby thinks electric wouldn't be man enough so we are looking at
petrol/diesel but if we go down this route, it would need to be
self-start.

Anybody got any recommendations?

No recommendations, except to say: "hubby" is absolutely right! I've had
a couple of electric shredders (current one is Bosch, so not rubbish),
and they're useless: noisy, slow, noisy-slow, and slow slow slow! I
never use mine now, and would sell it, if I had the brass-necked cheek
to palm it off on someone!

BTW: the group will be wanting details of how much, and what sort of,
garden you have, in order to assess the size of machine you need.

I switched form electric to petrol, but it kept jamming, no matter what
tricks I tried. So I am now using a Bosch electric, which is certainly
much quieter and rarely jams. I have just spent the last 1 1/2 hrs.
shredding 2 large "Butterfly bushes, no problems.

The blade type are much noisier than the 'cog' type. When this
has come up before, the consensus is that by far the best is/was
the Bosch 2200 quiet (electric) shredder. It doesn't handle
very leafy or fleshy material, and its limit is 1" of hard wood
or 1.5" of softer material. It's also fairly compact. I have
one, and it is excellent.

To shred larger material, or very large quantities, one needs
a proper horticultural model. The cheap machines that claim to
do the job almost invariably have a lot of problems, but the
ones that don't are both very expensive and usually very large.
But that is all second-hand information.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On 13/10/2014 13:35, Malcolm wrote:

In article , Nick Maclaren
writes
In article ,
Broadback wrote:
On 13/10/2014 09:41, Another John wrote:
In article ,
"Peter & Jeanne" wrote:

We are looking for a good shredder which would deal with all sorts
of garden
"rubbish" - i.e. tree prunings up to 2 or 3" diameter as well as
softer
stuff. At the moment everything goes in the council's compost bin
but I feel
we could make more use of the material if shredded.

Hubby thinks electric wouldn't be man enough so we are looking at
petrol/diesel but if we go down this route, it would need to be
self-start.

Anybody got any recommendations?

No recommendations, except to say: "hubby" is absolutely right! I've
had
a couple of electric shredders (current one is Bosch, so not rubbish),
and they're useless: noisy, slow, noisy-slow, and slow slow slow! I
never use mine now, and would sell it, if I had the brass-necked cheek
to palm it off on someone!

BTW: the group will be wanting details of how much, and what sort of,
garden you have, in order to assess the size of machine you need.

I switched form electric to petrol, but it kept jamming, no matter what
tricks I tried. So I am now using a Bosch electric, which is certainly
much quieter and rarely jams. I have just spent the last 1 1/2 hrs.
shredding 2 large "Butterfly bushes, no problems.

The blade type are much noisier than the 'cog' type. When this
has come up before, the consensus is that by far the best is/was
the Bosch 2200 quiet (electric) shredder. It doesn't handle
very leafy or fleshy material, and its limit is 1" of hard wood
or 1.5" of softer material. It's also fairly compact. I have
one, and it is excellent.

I have a Bosch 2200 electric shredder which I have found perfect for
dealing with all kinds of material whether pruned branches (stems up to
40mm diameter), brambles, hedge trimmings and even soft stuff like
finished-with tomato plants. Some really soft material may go through
apparently little shredded but you'll find that it will all have been
bruised and therefore rots down more quickly on the compost heap than if
just placed on as is.


Very happy with our Bosh 2200. The really thick branches would be
happily taken by anyone with a wood-burning stove.

Paul