Stihl GH370 Chipper/Shredder review

Overall I'm pretty disappointed with the machine, but with coaxing I've managed to get some useful work out of it.

It wasn't cheap and it's made by a good brand. It also has a nominal maximum capacity of 45mm dia branches, so I was expecting a lot from it. In fact it requires ridiculously careful preparation of the branches to get it to chip anything anywhere near that thick, and when it does it goes quite slowly.

The good points:

It's nice and sturdy, it starts easily, the automatic choke, governor and drive system work well. It's quite easy to wheel around.

Operation: It's an "impact" type chipper. There's a heavy belt driven flywheel with two blades. Material is fed into a funnel and drops down a feed shoot towards the blades. The blade strikes the material, chips off a piece and then centrifugal force (yes I know) flings it into the output chute.The feed chute is more than 500mm long and somewhere between "letter box" and "side plate" in cross section. If a branch is bent or has lots of sideshoots it won't fit into the feed chute, let alone fall under its own weight. The same goes for leafy material, vines and creepers.

Tips:

The tab on the output chute is stiff. It needs a good thump backwards to lock it into the open position.

It only works when the blades are really sharp. As soon as you start producing warm sawdust rather than chips you're completely wasting your time until you resharpen it. The blades are ground at 30 degrees on a flat stone. As far as I could tell there was no microbevel at the edge.

You can block it up by letting the output chute fill up with chips. It needs to be moved or shovelled out regularly.

There is a black rubber gaiter in the funnel. This reduces noise, stops rainwater from running down the feed chute and arrest pieces of debris that get flung off the cutting wheel. I do not recommend that you remove the rubber gaiter. However if you do you will require a 5 lobed security star bit. You should also insist that the operator then wears eye and ear protection. Without the gaiter you can see what's going on and clear blockages with a stick before they bung up the chute. You can also learn what it does and doesn't like to eat, and see when it's ready for his next meal.

I think the same person should be preparing the branches and feeding them into the machine, that way they can learn what it will accept and prepare them accordingly.

The GH370 was by far the slowest bottle neck in my project to thin out my hedge, but two people did get about 600kg of wood through it in a day and a half.

Richard "Mr Creosote" B

Dyton and the Land Girl

 How was your long weekend? It was like hell on earth - if the bars, restaurants and canteens in hell are really exquisite.

On day one I was supposedly going on a long seaside walk with some slightly fitter friends. It was actually an 8 mile route march through mud. But it was punctuated by a really good English breakfast at a beautiful seaside cafe. My brother was driving to Plymouth but his journey involved a flat tyre, a broken radiator cap, gridlock at Bridgewater and the A38 closed due to an accident. Neither of us was in particularly good humour when he arrived - heavily delayed.

We then ate really excellent food from a charcoal grill and drank superbly in a luxurious cocktail lounge.

The purpose of the weekend was to thin out my hedge. The work was physically harsh, frustrating, loud, dangerous and prickly. It was started early and with a hangover. I got really angry with brambles, ivy and plastic netting. We were too tired to leave the house in the evening but I managed to home-cook a very good meal (Kensington Fried Chicken and Hard Pressed Potatoes) and we had all the makings of French 75s to drink.

I didn't bother showering which seemed luxurious at the time, but it meant that my bed was then filled with really sharp sawdust for the rest of the weekend.

Day three was just as hard work, just as early, just as hungover, but it was even more frustrating. My woodchipper (I call him Mr Creosote) wasn't manly enough for the task, and I lost a small part which we had to remanufacture. We were completely delayed by trying to gently feed individual, carefully prepared sticks down his throat and the job didn't get finished.

Tea on day three was just Freezer Surprise – Chilli Con Carne, but it was served with an excellent bottle of red wine (a very generous gift) and followed by decadent cream cakes (another gift)

Richard "Better to Drink in Hell than to Serve in Heaven" B

PIR Sensor Modify Field of View. Infra Red Mirror

 For the past few weeks I have been over-engineering the replacements for the security lights outside the front of my house. They are now screwed into reclaimed teak pads which should have a service life of 80 years. The cable is armoured and secured to stainless steel bases. The PIR sensors are wired together so that either sensor will light both lamps. 

The most interesting bit is the infra-red mirror in front of one of the motion sensors. The sensors have a wide field of view, but it's not quite 180 degrees. What this means is that when you approach my front door the lights will come on, but when you leave the house, you're in the sensor's blind spot and you're left in darkness until after you've tripped down the stairs.

The sensors work on infra-red emitted by warm objects. Polished aluminium will reflect infra-red radiation. I just happen to have some aluminium foil tape from another project, but the shiny side of kitchen foil should work just as well. I've put a little plate covered in foil tape in front of the sensor at 45 degrees. Instead of looking out the front, some of its field of vision is now pointing directly at the front door. The most amazing things are that 1) it works perfectly. 2) I managed to get it working without a thermal camera, so I couldn't see what it could see, or whether the tape was actually reflective in the infra-red.

Richard "Let There Be Light On The Stairs" B

Goodheart's Law

 When a metric becomes a target it ceases to be a good metric.

I discovered last year that I had put on an unwanted 5kg and I have been slowly removing it, except over the Christmas period when I put some weight back on. This year my progress has been much faster and I'm currently within 400g of my target weight.

It turns out that the easiest (but probably least productive) way to lose weight is to stop going to the gym. I usually go to a rock climbing wall twice a week, but in recent weeks I've been lucky to get there once a week. These calendar issues coincided with my most rapid weight loss. I worked out last night that I'm losing muscle rather than fat.

So it sounds like I still need to feel a little bit hungry most of the time AND do all my exercises.

Richard "Thanks I Hate It" B

Cure Hiccups Every Time

 For about a decade I've been telling anyone who will listen that there are two different (but very similar) bows that you can tie shoe laces into. Only one of them is secure. I don't think I'm responsible, but the knowledge is becoming a lot more widespread and there are multiple web pages and videos about it.

I will now share my family's method of curing hiccups. It seems to be little known, but more effective than most.

The "patient" is issued with a glass of water. The "doctor" gives the commands "Sip!" and "Swallow!" repeatedly in a random order. When commanded to sip the patient sucks a little bit of water from the glass into their mouth (but does not swallow) even if there is already water in their mouth. When commanded to swallow the patient swallows even if their mouth is empty. This procedure continues until the glass is empty, or it's clear that the hiccups are cured, or you're both bored. It doesn't work if the doctor becomes predictable so its best for the doctor to repeatedly toss a coin as quickly as they can and shout "Sip!" for heads and "Swallow!" for tails.

Richard "it always works" B

Bad House Guest

 I believe that one of the things that make holidays enjoyable is that you take a break from worrying about things. You're not thinking "I really must make the cable entry for the security light watertight" while you're on an Atlantic cruise.

As such I was a terrible houseguest over the Christmas period. I stayed in my friend's lodge on a holiday park in North Devon. If you're not familiar with a lodge, it's much nicer than a static caravan, but you could move it somewhere else - if you had a large crane and two lorries.

We visited his father and I gave my friend some advice about dealing with the finances of the elderly - adding massively to his New Years To Do list. I went outside in the morning and came back inside to tell him that his gutters were blocked and that the downpipe was disconnected - adding massively to our Before Lunch To Do list.

I was also partly responsible for some pretty shocking hangovers, but they seemed to appreciate the cocktails that preceded them.

Richard "ghost of chores yet to come" B