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“A great machine if you select your shredding”

written by Slasherburner on 30/07/2012

Ryobi RSH-2455
I have been looking for a garden shredder for some time and had beed checking out the reviews here none of which were very complimentary but I got the chance of an almost new machine on eBay and went for it getting it fo £55 which was far less than even a basic impact shredder would have cost.
Most of the sdverse comments seemed to relate to it not cutting material so this was the first thing I checked and sure enough material was coming out crushed but not cut. I adjusted the cutting face per the instructions and things improved but it soon becaame clear that the blades were all slightly different in length so you can only ever get a clean cut on one blade leaving you with cut lengths of approx 25cm crused and scored which causes the outlet chute to block.NO matter how much you adjust the machine you will not cure this problem and the only solution would be to have the cutting wheel ground so all blades are the same length. On soft materials (I was feeding in lupin stems)these ended up just winding round the cutter and eventually prevented material being drawn through the blades. So far so bad.
Then came the hedge trimmings which was the main reason for purchase.I have a lot of conifer hedging with a lot of cuttings to get rid of. For the larger pieces there were no problems at all and these were mulched down as were the smaller pieces but it is a faff to feed the smaller pieces in in bulk as the slot size is limited to prevent hands getting in. This would apply to all shredders. So again not an overwhelming sucess but did the job.
Then came removal of a section of hedge approx 3m high and a christmas tree whic had grown to around 8m high and consuisted of a mixture of dead and living branchs. These were cut from the main trunk where the diameter was around 40mm or less and then fed into the machine. Performance was impresive. The dead lengths, being dry, cut and crushed into small peices whilst 40mm of living wood was turned into pulp. Watching a 4m length of 4omm branch being devoured bhy the machine was impressive. There was a lot of moaning from the plastic feed chute as the outer branchs and needles were forced through the narrow gap ut what would have been 4 or 5 car loads of wast was reduced to a builders bag full which fit in the boot.
Overall probably not the best machine to have for soft waste but if you are in the business of thinning out hedges and removing saplings it may be for you.