[Stoves] [Gasification] Chip Guillotine was Re: Wood heating in the UK - whole log gasification

[Richard Stanley]

Not to toot or own horn but we made a hand cranked thresher-masher-chopper for cutting/ thresshing and mashing chaff grass straw leaves with the Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI) in 2003-4.  It was called the TMC.  We sell the plans for it online through out own website but frankly it may be a bit of overkill for the chaff cutting stove fuel needs.

The TMC has the added task of tearing apart the residues to leave exposed fibers so that when softened/ retted /pulped abit, they deform plastically in a soupy water slurry and bind up the other materials into a nice tight briquette. features not needed for the wood stove user 

A modified-- in fact, greatly simplified version of it, would serve the wood stover's  needs to chaff cutting. Beyond removing hte threshing mashing features, the blades could be fixed in place ( In the TMC the blades are sprung back off contact with the cutting anvil and retrained in a harness to minimise wear and tear. No such harness would be necessary, as  the blade cutting feature would be in use full time whenever it was used. 
 
One thing (Crispin) , re your comment about the blades,  the angle of attack needs to be the same thru the whole pass over the fixed anvil,  to minimise stress on the machine, hence the simitar-like curved blade on the TMC which is not too dissimilar to the the shown  English model of olde, in your recent com.   

Its more tricky to  get a smooth and consistent cut out of such a machine  than it seems:  Beyond the need to maintain consistent angle of attack, the blade plane rake angle and angle of blade cutting edge are of concern,   as is the issue of assuring a smooth and low friction motion through the full rotation.   
finally, unlike the machine of old, which relied upon sheer brute force and momentum, our TMC cutting blade was also mounted in a friction clutch, to give way if really hard nuts, knots, gravel, metal wire etc., were encountered as this stuff was more common to our resource than would be in pure chaff cutting.   

So all, please have at it.  Am happy to provide dimensions of the blade and blade mount and frame if it helps. 

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Richard Stanley
www.legacyfound.org