Lawn Shredder that will also do cardboard

Keedowah

Does anyone have a recommendation for a lawn shredder that will also handle cardboard? TIA.

cruizer101

Garden shredders come in two main varieties.
One has a disc the spins at high speed and has a slot with a blade in it, so every rotation the blade chops a little bit off the twigs etc, I can't really see it working with cardboard as I think it would just clog it, maybe depending on how rigid the cardboard is.
The other kind have a large gearwheel with teeth that cuts against a plate, it may cut some cardboard but I think a lot of it would just go through without being cut.

Cardboard and branches/twigs are very different materials I can't really see a shredder doing both.

Alun

Ours, a Bosch model, has neither of those mechanisms. Instead it has a rotating screw like this ...

https://images.app.goo.gl/H4ZxsAqz8Zj7PxvT9

No idea what it would make of cardboard though, I've never seen any reference to using them for that purpose in any product description that I recall.

Keedowah

Thanks, thought there might be something that could handle both and save me getting and storing two different machines.

magicbastarder

do you have a lot of cardboard to get through?

fiacha

I don't think any of the consumer garden shredders are goin to cope with cardboard. They are desgned to handle thin pieces. You're going to spend more time dealing with blockages and an overheated motor than shredding.
Using a sharp stanley blade you can break down corrugated boxes quickly. For slingle ply stuff a cross-cut office shredder would be fine (or a good pair of scissors)

The Continental Op

If you are shredding to compost the cardboard why bother. I put brown cardboard in between layers of grass during the summer and it rots down in no time ( I take any plastic tape of first).

cruizer101

Alun wrote: »

Ours, a Bosch model, has neither of those mechanisms. Instead it has a rotating screw like this ...

https://images.app.goo.gl/H4ZxsAqz8Zj7PxvT9

I hadn't seen that kind before, does it use the screw thread to pull the material through a cutting plate, would stuff not get wrapped around it.

Keedowah

magicbastarder wrote: »

do you have a lot of cardboard to get through?

I would get a couple of boxes a week.

I'll continue to tear it up as I've been doing, just thought that shredding would be easier and might be better - giving some volume \ air into the mix.

Thanks everyone - case closed.

The Continental Op

If you are composting then a couple of layers of weighted down cardboard on the top can also help keep the worst of the cold winter rain out of the compost heap.

Alun

cruizer101 wrote: »

I hadn't seen that kind before, does it use the screw thread to pull the material through a cutting plate, would stuff not get wrapped around it.

The screw thread does both, i.e. it pulls the material through and chops it at the same time as the edges of the screw are quite sharp. It occasionally get's a bit tangled up if you put lots of small, wet material through, like any shredder, but it has a reverse function so that you can push it back up into the hopper and extricate it. It also has the advantage that it rotates relatively slowly and is therefore fairly quiet.

By the way, it's a pretty old machine and from Googling it appears Bosch don't make these type of shredders any more, more's the pity.