A humble start for me. My dad and brother removed a rare cacadia ( I hope I spelled that right) african transplant this week that had root rot. Hard wood is hardwood for gassifier purposes right? Got the first bit chop sawed up and drying the sun 
Looking forward to a chunker build aftafter the truck is assembled
Marcus, delicious looking chunks.
I see a few miles of SWEM down the road.
Bob
The crazy part is I’m smiling like a mad man just cutting the wood 
my wife walked over and asked if I was ok haha
Wait till you get your chunker built. You remember the SLOW cutting, chopping on your knees work to make fuel.
Then with a 10’ length of 1 1/2” limb wood … you feed it through to the pleasant crunch, crunch, crunch as the pieces fall into the bucket.
No risk of high energy binding, flying bits. I was using a harbor freight cutoff saw with a 14” wood blade that caught and broke the flex beam in half. Holding a exposed 5000+ rpm blade in one hand is a scary thing.
Maybe save some sticks of that “rare” wood for a small wood turning or carving project. Does it have a unique color or grain pattern? Should be great for motor fuel. You may want to mix it with another wood depending on how hot or fast it burns.
The green live bits have a neat purple colored heart but only a few pieces are good the root root rot got up into the canopy. I’ll be give it a fire test once it’s seasoned up a bit, I can tell it will be hard like oak when it’s dry very similar grain structure, but very fiberouse on the cambian layer kind of like a cottonwood
as far as I’m concerned, wood chippers are the best option
You would have to disassemble the transmission to fix that part properly (cast iron?) If that repaired part (obviously the weak point of the design) did not hold up, you will have wasted a lot of time and effort. I would look for another, strongly overbuilt donor gearbox. IMHO. 
Wood chunker works hard, and should only have to be built once.
Thanks, Tone!
His YouTube channel shows “How its Made”! 
Mike probably has the best idea. But if it were mine and i had already built a chunker out of it i believe i would clean it up really well and v out the break maybe even enough to get three full beads of weld in it and also on the inside weld it really hard. I would probably use a nickel based hard surface rod if it is cast iron. if it is cast steel i would use 7018 and burn it hot and try to burn it in well. I don’t know what the plate looks like on the other side but if i could i would weld a hard bolt to the center of the shaft and then weld that to the plate really hard and add any other bracing i could to it. I might work it might not. someone else may have a better idea but that is probably what i would try before i resorted to replacing the gear box. if it is able to be taken apart relatively easily then i would remove the shaft before i tried to fix it. If it was really hard i would probably try in place and just have a can of water to cool it off so i wouldn’t cook the seals out of it.
Yes, it’s worth a try, the gearbox is ruined in any case, I’ll try to see what material it’s made of, thanks Jakob.
Jan I am slightly confused by the photos. The upper photo looks to have a broken replaceable part that is riveted in place. I am assuming the insert in the lower photo is the back side of the same part.
If it where mind I think I would pull the insert which will probably be a press fit and really had to get out. Then either try buying an oem replacement or make a trip to the local machine shop and have a new replacement made out of something stronger but not so brittle as to crack under vibration. Because I am sure that part sees constant vibration stress. Alot of times adding stiffness is a good thing but trading to a more brittle material can be worse than a weaker material in some applications where vibration is the stress.
But when it comes to centers of rotation I am inclined to replace the part welded repairs tend to get the system out of ballance.
The large disc you see in the upper picture is the knife, you see here how it has worked.
How about using the other side of the diff? The 60 rpm flywheel doesn’t do much good anyway.
Maybe mount a couple support bearings towards the backside of the cutting plate, to prevent the twisting force on the shaft.
That was a good idea, thank you.
Oef, thats a lot of work that way
That’s why I’m watching for a scrap axle laying around intently 
