From what I've seen almost all of the HF items are from Asia. 'course that applies to a lot of the big box stores also. For you folks looking for tune up, etc. info, post in the tool shed forum, lots of friendly and knowledgable folks there. Make sure you include the engine Mfg, model number, etc. as small engines are small engines. Be aware that all gas we buy today has ethanol which is a major PITA to small engines!!!, you have to include additives to combat this!! If your engine has a gas shut off, use it and run the engine dry at every use. ALso, the carburetors on new engines do not have adjustments anymore, just precisely milled orifices that serve the same purpose. That leads to gunk being deposited and the engine doesn't run or runs poorly, particuarly in view of the ethanol in the gas. Then you get to take off the carb, disassemble, soak in carb cleaner, blow out with air, say a number of "hail mary's" and still may end up buying a new carb. :-( Use the additives, don't use old gas, if you don't have a gas shut off after the tank, add one so the carb can be run dry. Ev

Could somebody please define "cardboard" for me? Are you talking shirt board like cereal boxes and pizza boxes are made of or tasty, homey, corrigated cardboard? Two vastly different things. Both of which have no catagory for egg carton or coffee tray cardboard. When we talk cardboard are we all talking the same langage? I add all the egg carton, coffee tray cardboard I can find to my system. I want to increase the numbers to handle corrigated cardboard. Cereal boxes I am ok sending to recycling. What type of cardboard is it you all are shredding? Anybody not shredding and adding whole and letting ninety, billionty worms do the work?

If I might suggest a lawnmower for shredding autumn leaves (a rotary one, cylinder mowers don't shred so well). Garden shredder is a poor name since they are really chippers, designed to handle woody material. The bladed shredders at the lower end of the market will mash leaves to some extent but just shoving in a pile of leaves is a thankless task and they won't feed through easily. Leaves attached to thin branches shred quite well. Or you could get a leaf shredder gadget, they are a bit like a leaf blower but they suck and then shred the leaves into a collection bag. I have little experience of them. Soft material like weeds and soft green twigs also don't do so well. The better bladed designs handle the clogs better by being able to run backwards but the end result isn't always great. Once the blades start to dull, you get more puree than shredded :) The bladed designs work well on thin branches, an inch is really the best you should expect, preferably fairly long straight branches. Flexible branches may feed through intact, perhaps with the bark stripped off, and even tougher branches can sometimes leave you with lengths of stripped bark. Short ones don't feed through as cleanly, really crooked branches or ones with lots of side branches, may not feed through at all. The feed slot is necessarily narrow because these designs just don't have the power to handle too much at once. They are quite usable if you are patient and careful. If you are a ham-fisted bull at a gate, you will end up throwing the thing in the nearest river! Again, if you are the type for it, you can handle your own maintenance by sharpening the vlades or fitting new ones but it can be fiddly and the blade attachments can get pretty impacted with gunk in there so not always easy to remove. The next step up, and really about as powerful as you can get running off the mains, are the crushing types. They have a cylinder that grinds the material against a thick gearwheel, or the "silent" types have a screw that drags the material down through a tight space and crushes it. Neither type will do much to soft green material, except bruise it a little :) They crush branches quite well, but may leave very thin flexible stems intact. Not so good for leaves, no blades to cut them and crushing a leaf is a waste of your time and electricity. Not very practical to maintain yourself, plan on paying a professional every year or few depending how much you use it. The Bosch models all seem well rated but bear in mind that none of these things can be used for feeding in thick or very large branches as you might have seen tree-cutters do. None of them will handle a two inch branch and anything over an inch of hard wood requires care. If that's what you need, then rent a petrol version for the weekend.

Thomas, I suggest a vacuum style chipper shredder. Mine is a troy-bilt 8hp self propelled bagging machine that has the format of a pushmower. While it came with a long vacuum hose, I have yet to successfully use it, and instead usually bail out and use the front dustpan style scoop, and rake leave into the thing as it sees fit to suck them up. This allows me to clear stringy and viney sticks and drop them into the chopper chute. The idea of both raking and lifting gives me back spasms. I get bigger sticks also while I am there, as I motor about the yard. Sometimes I empty the full bag on the ground and come back with my cart for pickup of multiple piles, or sometime I motor the load back to my mulch pile. When it is full it will float the front wheels off the ground so it carries a good bag full, maybe 3 or 4 times the size of a mower bag at least. 3 things I have learned; 1) A small gas tank mounted above the carb and plumbed into the gas line with 1/4 turn valves allows me a sort of fuel injection so that starting is a one pull affair. 2) Mechanical shims that look like washers but come in .0001 values allow me to keep the flywheel blade a relevant distance from the shearing anvil. 3) My combo sander by porter cable that has the round sanding disc and sanding belt allows me to set the blade angle and make a good, flat resharpening of the blade. Hand sharpening can easily round the blade and make it surf instead of bite the feedstock. If I had a wish besides someone doing the work for me, it would be for a multi blade flywheel. Incidentally, if the flywheel gets stuck on, screw the nut onto the end lf the shaft to protect the thread and pop it like a nail. That was tech advice that solved that problem for me once upon a time. I have 2 acres of hardwoods where the house sits, so we get leaf drifts. Over time the trees along the driveway and in the yard have reach maturity, that area is about an acre that was a burmuda lawn, but it is retreating to sunny areas. I have a string of failed efforts to grow grass, but it has become a dense dry shade area. Currently I have common Boreal Fescue thriving, but we ar not into our 7b heat yet. I found out there is a hybrid creeping red fescue that is even more shade tolerant than its parent boreal. This has to be the lower light limit of what can be grown. We will soon see.