McCulloch 14-Amp Electric Chipper/Shredder #MCS2001

My neighbor and I shared the already low cost of this chipper. After it arrived (no shipping cost)we started putting it together in his garage. We quickly realized that due to its weight and some awkwardness in the assembly process, it much easier to have two men working on it. The awkward part was in assembling the legs and axle to the motor housing. The instructions were also not quite specific enough as to where to insert the two metal "hard points" into the leg tubes. The hard points are two metal slugs with bolt holes drilled into them that are meant to keep the legs tubes from deforming when the motor mount bolts are tightened.

Once it was assembled, we plugged it in, flipped the switch and nothing happened. That was quite frustrating because we were then looking at an expensive return because return shipping whould have been borne by us. To avoid having to do that, we turned a couple of screws on the motor mount cover and dropped it. Upon inspection, we noticed a loose wire hanging from the cover safety switch. After a little head scratching, we decided to solder it back onto the switch post mount. We did that, closed up the motor cover and flipped the switch, and much to our relief, the motor ran.

We we surprised at the power of this chipper. It chewed through smaller branches no problem. Going was a little slower on sizes over an inch. We were chipping palo verde and mesquite wood, which are both somewhat soft woods.

The wood was also green and moist which tended to clog the machine when we were using a garbage bag to collect chips at the outlet. We did this by using the elastic band supplied with the chipper to hold the bag onto the outlet housing. The band was not quite tight enough and had we continued using it, it would have lost its elasticity in time, in our judgment. The chips backed up in the bag and then backed up into the outlet and clogged it, especially with moist wood. Clearing the clogs soon became a pain because the feed chute mounting screws have knobs that are too close to the housing and are awkward and tedious to turn.

Since clearing clogs every ten minutes was impeding the progress of our yard work, we soon figured out a better way. We took the bag off completely and spread out an old sheet under the output chute and just let the chips fall onto the sheet. We had no clogs at all after that. As a side note, we let the wood dry out for a week and then chipped it and it went through the chipper somewhat easier and cleanup wasn't as messy.

Overall, though, once we got by the initial problems, we like this powerful little chipper. As a side note, for the 14 amp motor, we're using a 3-prong 12-gauge 50-foot extension cord. Proper extension cord gauge and length was not mentioned in the user manual. It's an important safety issue and it should be in there. This info is available on the internet.

I've used this chipper/shredder three times, each time at least an hour. The good news: it does a nice job shredding leaves and chipping small branches. The bad news: it can take a long time to shred many leaves. A number of reviewers have commented about the machine jamming. I, too, found that to be a problem, particularly at first until I became familiar with the peculiarities of the product. The chute for accepting leaves is not very big and it is easy to get in too much of a hurry and jam in more leaves that the machine can handle. Once I learned to take my time, I didn't have any more jamming problems. Jams aren't particularly difficult to clean out either. A number of other reviewers have also complained of the difficulty of putting the machine together. I have the mechanical aptitude of a walnut, but I didn't find it any more difficult to assemble than any thing else. The McCulloch does seem solid and well made. I anticipate it lasting. If you have a big yard with lots of leaves, you should probably look for something with more capacity. If, on the other hand, you have a smaller yard with fewer trees, or you can take your time, then this machine could be right for you.

This machine is great for my needs and yard.
Are there features I'd like to have? Sure, but
the size of my yard does not warrant the additinal cost
for them. I would reccomend it to anyone with a small to
medium yard.

This chipper/shredder is great. It was much heavier (like a drill press or other heavy power tool) than I expected. It does takes one strong man or two people to assemble it. It wasn't as difficult to assemble as some people had said, but that may be because of our experience in putting together power tools like table saws, band saws and router tables. It cost more than I had hoped to spend, but that was because it's really a solid, well-constructed machine. We've had no problems other than occasional clogging like a lawn mower, but that's solved in the same fashion: by removing the top and scraping out the wet debris. We mainly use this to shred relatively dry leaves into tiny pieces, but small (1" or smaller diameter) garden stalks and smaller diameter twigs can be fed through with no problems. The most important thing is to avoid trying to feed wet leaves or too many leaves at a time or to put larger than 1/4'-1/2" dry branches through the shredder. In addition, the twigs need to be stripped off the branches and fed through separately. I'm glad I chose this shredder over the cheaper string shredder. It's more versatile, and we've had no difficulty in being able to shred everything we want to mulch.

The chipper arrived on time and in good condition. Once we assembled it, we gave it a good tryout. It works great on sunflower stalks and small woody branches, as well as leaves. And it has a number of very effective safety features. I'm very glad that I will be able to mulch a lot of garden and yard waste and put it to good use, rather than sending it to the landfill.