"Mark Walters" wrote in message
m...

"Tim Mitchell" wrote in message
...
In article , Mary
We look forward to your review of the thing when you get it - I'm
thinking of getting one too.

Initially I had a cheap and cheerful rotating blade one from B&Q - can't
remember the make at the moment but it was green :-) It worked OK but was
prone to jamming if too much soft material was put in, and you had to put
in some effort to feed it. It came with a black plastic paddle to help
push stuff down the shute. When it jammed it was a case of undoing a
thumbscrew and removing the case to clear the blockage. It didn't take
too long for the thread on the plastic bit it screwed into to got worn,
making it even more fiddly to do up again. It finally bit the dust when a
piece of metal accidentally got fed into it and the blades were damaged.
They were reversible but I couldn't get one of the screws undone to do
this despite application of WD40, a blowtorch and lots of cursing.

After reading some comments on here I got a Bosch AXT2000HP from these
people on eBay - http://stores.ebay.co.uk/HOME-AND-GARDEN-MART

It's a graded machine, shows some signs of use, but works just fine. It's
screw type instead of a fast rotating blade and it's streets ahead of the
item described above. It's much quieter, handles thicker material and
pretty much feeds itself as stuff is dropped in the top. If it jams just
flip the switch to reverse the screw and the offending item pops back out
for you to try again or throw away.

The one we had and gave to a son - no he was OK but needed something to
clear the garden so we could take the hens round - was the bladed type.
Yellow. It was fine and Spouse used his new toy to shred everything in sight
at first but when he read about the worm type on DIY he got ambitious. He's
not often acquisitive, when he is I indulge him.

But we never got round to buying a new one although we did go to B&Q and
look. My re-visiting the subject is because the other night in a fit of
enthusiasm and power madness with a new pair of swivel handled secateurs
(from Aldi I think, and excellent) I cut off lots of holly branches and
they're now in the way.

Amazon has told me that the new machine is on its way. In my experience
they're very efficient, books usually come the day after I order them even
on the standard delivery.

Mary