We have recently bought a new wood chipper and mulcher for the farm. It’s the Forrest Master 14 hp FM14DD. It’s quite large for our tasks, however, I believe in the theory of slightly over-sizing equipment, and that way you should never be left wanting. This is our initial assessment and a Forrest Master chipper review.
I have posted an article on the unboxing and assembly of this, in a previous blog page here, if you’re interested in that.
Set up in it’s chipping form, which would be the main use for this chipper, and the way it is sold as standard, it looks like the image below.
Let’s start with chipping various hard woods
For our initial test we have collected a bunch of sticks and branches to put through the chipper. The branches we had here were old and dry, which is quite hard on a chipper. It was also all hard wood varieties.
As an overview of running all of these through, I have to say, the 14 hp handled it all with ease, as it should have really.
The biggest branch I put through this was about 90mm diameter. Once again, it was dry and hard. the chipper slowed a little, but didn’t struggle at all with this size. The maximum size limited by the manufacturer is 100mm.
Normally we wouldn’t chip something of this size, we would be using it in the wood burner to heat the house. However, occasionally sections this large will get chipped, so it’s nice to see it can handle it with no issue.
The chips produced are a good size. we were worried that the larger chipper may create larger chips, but these are perfect for the garden, and for spreading around trees for weed control.
Next, we wanted to try the mulching attachment. We purchased this along with the chipper with a certain amount of skepticism. We’ve never had a problem using the leaves and small twigs put through a chipper, as mulch. It has always seemed small enough for compost, although the smaller the better. If this could improve the compost, then it was worth a try.
Fitting the mulching attachment
First we unbolt the two bolts on the front, and remove the base plate. This is where my first criticism comes in.
The bottom plate is flexed slightly around the base. This I assume is to keep the plate flush against the bottom “finger” grill. Because of this, when you undo the nuts, the plate springs apart, and if you are not careful, the washers will fly off for some distance. (I’ve already lost a spring washer).
This is in itself, not a problem, once you are aware of it. The main issue is putting it back together again. It’s quite difficult to squeeze the two plates together enough, and hold them there, whilst putting on a nut. This could (and will be by me) be replaced by some sort of quick release fixing. When you end up blocking the exit chute, you can pull this plate off a couple of times in short succession.
A spanner-less fitting will be better….. Anyway, back to the change-over.
Then we can remove the top exit chute. Both the plate and chute are held at the back by just being hooked under a bolted bar.
Now the chute is replaced by a cover plate.
And the underside gets a small mulch exit chute.
The final assembly looks like below. Obviously this will be much less prone to blockages, than trying to force a large amount of green leaves upward through a long chute.
Let’s do some mulching
First up, we’ll run a load of birch branches, thick with leaves through.
The mulch produced was a little better than using the chipper attachment. All the small twigs were cut to less than 20mm. Using the chipper as normal, the twigs were not as small, however, they were close.
A week after this initial wood chipper test, we took down a birch tree, which we cut as much of the timber out as possible to go into our woodburner. The remaining foliage was a mass of fresh leaves, with little in the way of timber.
We ran this foliage through the normal chipper, which became blocked twice. This is because the long exit chute cannot exhaust the leaf matter fast enough, which then backs up and blocks. The mulching attachment does not suffer from this, with the much shortened exit chute.
Next it was time to put some soft broom hedging through.
As you can see in the next two pictures, there is a stark difference between the chipper and mulcher attachment when mulching a soft material like broom hedge. This first photo shows how small the broom is cut up with the mulcher. There is very little material that is bigger than 10-20mm.
In contrast, in the chipper configuration, the mulch pieces are quite large, some even up to about 100mm in length.
Rounding up our initial thoughts
We have plenty of use for wood chips, and this Forrest Master FM14DD wood chipper can create a huge amount of chips in no time at all. It has oodles of power and barely bogs down with close to it’s maximum sized branches.
Whilst we are not using this professionally, I can easily see this unit being more than adequate for a small – medium size landscape garden operation.
The build quality, whilst not bomb-proof, seems good, although there could be more attention to some of the electrical wiring. I could see these cables being caught, especially when being pulled in and out of a loaded landscapers van.
The longevity of this chipper I can’t comment on, much more time will be needed to see what might go wrong, if anything. Rest assured, I will update this page with any issues that may crop up.
If you wish to see the full YouTube video of the initial testing, then please click below. If you like the review, then please subscribe to follow our KindaBusy channel.
Till the next review….