"DaveDay34" wrote in message
...
I want to buy a garden shredder. Has anybody on the group got any advice
on
what to buy or what to avoid. All feedback gratefully received.

Ian


Electric shredders are usually ideal for anything the amateur gardener
wants a
shredder for. Bosch do a couple of powerful electric shredders that are
very
quiet. One has a helical screw which draws the material down and cuts it
up as
it does so. Another version that takes even larger sized material has
what at
the moment I can only describe as a cog which rotates drawing the material
down
and cuts into the material cutting it up as it does so. At this time of
night
I can't think of the correct technical engineering terms to describe what
it is
exactly.

The only disadvantage with these two systems is that they are not ideal
for
very soft vegetable matter, but are ideal for woody material taking
branches up
to about 25 or 30mm as I remember. They're available from places such as
B&Q
and Homebase.

I hope that this helps, though if you don't need to use one very often
some may
well suggest that you hire one for a day or so. I guess it's up to you to
decide on how often you think you'll use it.

Dave.

I have an Alco shredder with fast whizzing blades on a disc at the bottom of
the hopper : this too, easily clogs with soft stuff so it looks as though
all the different technologies have this drawback.
The Alco (I think the model is 1100S) is quite good for woody stuff but it
is noisy and the blades need sharpening/replacing fairly often - one stone
is enough to blunt them badly. If I was to buy a new one I would certainly
look at the Bosch ones Dave describes above.

Mike