Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought my Sun Joe CJ603EChipper Shredder about 3 months ago, and I am happy with it. After 7 piles of trimmings (mostly privet and other clutter) here are some useful discoveries. 1. Good user manual, worth reading carefully for both safety and operational key points. 2. Face protection and decent work gloves are necessary. 3. VERY helpful to use a plastic cement mixing pan vs the provided bag (as in video). 4. Major success factor: allow 8 to 10 weeks for your trimmings to dry out. The blade is not designed to handle soft, green wood or rotted ‘punky’ materials. Without well-dried, brittle trimmings, cutting is stringy and incomplete, and jamming of both the blade area and ejection chute is problematic. Also, the resulting mulch is a stringy mess (as observed once on my ‘shake-down’ outing). The 1.7” maximum branch diameter is possible, but only if the wood is ready. 5. With experience, you develop a ‘feel’ for the Sunjoe and I have provided a lengthy video to demonstrate handling of a variety of trimming diameters and consistencies. Like other reviewers, I have found the exit chute to be too narrow (I reduced ease of use to 4 stars for this), and frequent clearing is necessary, but not difficult with dry materials. 6. You may find that preparing and trimming larger branches is easier with some of the stuff that I use, including my workmate (for vise action), a pruning saw for oversized diameter branches, loppers for midsized branch trimming, anything similar to my small-sized nail puller for easily removing odd-shaped pieces that occasionally get jammed in the input receptacle, and my machete for occasionally feeling like Jungle Jim. When anything gets stuck in the blade, the motor reversal scheme (see the user guide) works very well for releasing and clearing. Anything that jams for me gets tossed aside for more drying and a better result next time. I do stay within the 1.7” diameter limit. Update: Popeye finds his spinach! I took the advise of an electrician reviewer and purchased a 100' 12-gauge power cord after using a couple of higher gauge cords that were just laying around in my shop. WOW!! clearly increased power, torque, and twice the appetite for everything (including almost green wood) within the recommended 1.7" diameter range, branches and all. Highly recommended investment if you started underpowered like me and would like to engage the "overdrive" on your Sun Joe. Continue to get good service with chipping DRY trimmings. Got a100% performance bump by using my tin snips to cut the molded plastic fins out of the discharge chute interior. Once removed, no more jamming and clearing mulch out of the chute.