This old saw probably comes from someone blaming the saw for a crooked cut. A good workman should be able to cut straight no matter how crooked the saw.
Oh, yeah!
What is often not considered is that a good workman has all the tools needed to do any job he expects to do. He won't use a flat blade screwdriver on a Philips screw or a hexagonal wrench on a square nut.
I had another lesson on having the right tools for the job at hand. We bought a humongous DR chipper with the slogan on the cover, "Professional power for the homeowner".
Sorry, but to do routine maintenance on this chipper requires tools many homeowners don't usually have. My socket wrenches do not reach the nuts holding the blade in place and my L-shaped Allen wrenches do not reach the screw heads. Well, they do reach but the angle does not permit either a good purchase or sufficient swing room.
So, I went to the hardware store to buy "non-standard" accessories for my tools. I bought three-inch extenders for my half-inch and three-eighths-inch socket wrenches. I do have a six-inch extender for the latter, but that length gives less purchase on really tight nuts. I also bought a 7/32-inch Allen insert for a socket wrench. Unfortunately, the hardware store only had this size inserts for quarter-inch wrenches. So, I had to buy an adapter also.
All homeowners who have all these tools in their toolboxes please raise their hands. I thought so. Of the twenty or so people who read this blog I don't see any hands raised.
The good news is that I have changed blades on the chipper. It did take a few grimacing pushes on the wrenches to get the nuts loose, but I did within a few minutes. The last time the blade needed changing, I had to tow the chipper back to the equipment store, a 40+ mile drive at 45 mph.
The next thing to do is to check the wear plate against the sharper blade. It looks like it will be fun doing so. The bolts holding the plate have slotted heads and are in a position that there is no way to get any purchase with a standard six-inch screwdriver.
Well, I did check the wear plate and it took me the rest of the afternoon.
First, the bolt heads are not slotted at all. They are carriage bolts with a square shaft just below the head to fit into the square holes in the wear plate.
I loosened all three bolts so that I could wiggle them, which meant that I should be able to wiggle the wear plate. No such luck. It was glued to the throat of the chipper by dried sap and so forth. I had to stick wood between the flywheel and the wear plate. I had to use a tack puller for leverage. I did this and that for a very long time.
Then when the wear plate was finally loose, it was too loose. Using the template for judging the gap, I would get one side at the right gap and the other side would be too tight. Back and forth. Tighten the nuts to make the plate slide a bit more slowly. One side would be proper; the other side would stop the blade.
On and on. Finally I had the plate so it didn't hit the blade. But the gap was a bit too big. Oh, well! It didn't look as wide as when I started.
I won't bore you with all the details of getting the chipper back together, but back together it is. I also cranked it up and chipped a small pile. For the most part, it just sucked stuff in. Definitely better than when I started.
The big question is are we better off with this high volume chipper with its high maintenance than we were with a low volume chipper that jammed frequently and sometimes didn't even start. I would say yes, but I will keep wondering every time I have to loosen all those bolts for some simple maintenance.
