Basically, what happens is this:
1) Once an object has had a chunk manually removed with the “Detach Chunk” tool, select the new faces made by the chunk.

2) Once the the faces are selected, run the Chip Off Tool with the “Remove Chips at selected component”. In this example, only face components are selected and the Chip Off tool is set to “faces”.

3) What happens next about 70% of the time is Maya will: halt and go to the Autodesk error report page, completely freeze and cause Windows 7 to terminate the application or completely freeze and not offer any responsiveness whatsoever (user has to break out of the freeze by using taskmanager to kill the Maya process manually).

4) The only work around to get the desired result is a trial and error run of using the “Remove Random Chips” function on the entire “detached chunk” object; waiting until something close in terms of organic granularity is achieved.