My plan for today was to finish feeding all the brash from my apple trees through the chipper so it was all ready for making my flower and strawberry beds. I managed about half of it before some bits broke off the end of a branch I was feeding though and got jammed in the cutting drum of the chipper. Whilst the drum would still rotate, it wouldn’t go anywhere near as fast as the engine wanted it to so I had to kill the engine quickly before the drive belts turned to smoke and flame.
After dragging it back to the workshop I had to remove the hopper and (whilst wearing gloves, because the knives can leave you with a nasty cut even without the motor turning — don’t ask me how I know; I just know, ok?) clear all the trapped lumps of wood out of the cylinder the drum rotates in. I was particularly pleased when I offered the hopper back up to the chippper body (balanced on a couple of sawhorses because of the weight) and three of the bolts slipped right through the mounting holes allowing me to get the nuts on and keep it in place whilst I hunted for the final bolt in the mud where it had fallen.
A quick check that the engine was now happy and it, err, started to rain, so I abandoned the rest until tomorrow. It’s amazing how often it rains when the Met Office says there’s a five or ten percent chance of precipitation. I guess they must be one of those groups of people for whom one in a million chances happen nine times out of ten.