Here in northern Michigan we are being overrun with Russian olive bushes,I just bought a Forty acre piece that is overrun with the darn stuff.Started on it with my excavator,but the root system brings up so much dirt that it's going to be a tough burn.Im thinking I would like to build a scrub crusher.A large drum with knives welded on that cuts the scrub into 12" pieces.has anyone here ever used one of these? Olive scrub can be 10-12ft tall and the stalk can be up to 3" thick.Im thinking it would have to weigh 4-5 ton @ 10' wide to do the job any thoughts!----Would like to build,If it works well there is plenty of work for it here.
Yeah Outasite. Drum chopper might be the way to go. I have never used one but can see where they would come in handy. We would attack the olive bushes with a K/G blade on a dozer. The Rockland site gives some information & spec's on there models. www.rocklandmfg.com/index.php?page=dozer-rolling-choppers
Fecon head on your machine would work well. Or a Bush Hog, Hydroax, etc.
Yair . . . I suppose it all comes back to cost and how effective the treatment is. I find this conversation interesting. So we are talking thick scrub up to 12feet high with stalks to 3inches thick . . . how much country would (say) a twenty five ton excavator with a chipper head cover per hour, about what would be it's hourly rate and does Russian olive sucker from the stump? There was a discussion here on HEF a few years back Cheers.
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Yair . . . Outasite As soon as you start putting powered machinery such as chipperheads, Hydroaxes and so on into timber the costs can become prohibitive, particularly if the land is just to be used for grazing. Every place is different with different soils and timber but I could not imagine tackling scrub with an excavator. Over here with permits we are allowed to burn and a little forty acre patch of that sort of scrub would be knocked down by a dozer working back and forth across a face. It is then raked into piles with a stickrake working at ninety degrees to the initial knock-down. ideally you would use the rake to knock it but sometimes with limber rubbish the ten/twelve inch tines of the stick-rake are a little high and you need the blade cutting edge just skimming the ground to break off or tip the rubbish out. Once its heaped you can go straight in with some heavy disks or a cutter-bar. All this presupposes the land is reasonably flat, which I imagine would be the case if you are considering a roller. I have seen several scrub rollers/crushers and really, in our conditions even ballasted to twenty tons or more they were not a success. When chaining or knocking with the blade we have (or had, I haven't seen one for a while) various seed planters that attached to the tractor ROPS with the aim of establishing a body of grass that would help to carry a fire. The following season we can reduce the volume of material by burning in place before going in with the rake . . . depending on the seed some thing as simple as letting it vibrate out of hessian chaff bags can be quite effective. Having said all that it is well known that rollers have been used in the US on mesquite and in New Zealand for flattening mountain scrub before establishing pine plantations. If you go ahead and build a unit I wish you every success and please put up some pictures. I had a quick look to find pictures of the attachments I have mentioned. The stick rake as shown clips onto the blade and is obviously available for different sized tractors . . . so too is the cutter bar, they are extremely effective. All the best for Christmas!! Cheers.
Thanks for your insight,!
I find the cutter bar concept interesting,So simple but looks effective.Dont they tend to pull up root balls,or do they cut clean?
Yair . . . Outasite . in my experience they cut fairly clean and are often furnished with "shark fins" to bring roots to the surface On a rake tractor they are much quicker than rippers for dealing with individual large stumps. For that heavy duty application on a largish tractor I preferred the type that pivots... that is to say they are hinged to the back of the ripper tines and when lifting a stump out they are not inclined to bend. The fixed type are okay though, if made from say a piece of twelve by three inch Assab its surprising what they'll take. There is another style like this . . . As you can see it just uses the single tine and is easier to pull. It is more suited to continuous ploughing and you can see the shark fin risers that help bring severed roots to the surface. Obviously to fabricate this last style is much more expensive than the simple cutter blade between the tines. Cheers.
The gravity scrub rollers were a potentially dangerous piece of equipment to use with a single wire cable, there were a few two winch rollers on Terex dozers. http://youtu.be/pxj5zV-ckwM (single cable roller on Cat) The stick rakes on excavators are fairly common. http://www.dohertydirect.net/rakes http://wedgelock.co.nz/images/photos/11lg.jpg (rake with thumb grab) What is the accepted method for Russian Olive - spray first, crush and burn or rake into piles and burn ?
The most common method here is to rake and pile,then burn.Then pile that pile with two or three other piles and reburn again,and so on.The root base brings up so much dirt they are tough to burn!Then run over with with heavy disc and spray.
good video; but its slow going on a direct drive dozer and sliding gear winch. Seen a lot done with powershift D7F and ps winch and is a hell of a lot quicker. The custom made terexs and ACs with twin drum setups are a lot better, as you can steer them. A lot was done up northland and in my area in the 80s. Lex Norton from kaikohe had a hybrid HD16DP and have watched roller actually climb up a 2ft dia pine for about 6ft before smashing it in half and continuing downhill. Awsome to watch, nothing of it done now though, or very little. got a 4 ton roller for my D6D but only even crushed gorse with it.
Yair. . . Thought you might show up at this party D6 Merv . (big grin) Was there any chaining ever done in NZ?. With a bit of planning and some cable extensions its surprising the places you could get with a couple of Eights and a thousand feet of reach. Have a good one! Cheers.
Geez scrub; would have trouble in nz finding 1000ft of flat land to use em on Buttttttt lo and behold found some pics yesterday of 2 gear drive 250 series TD25s towing a ball and chain in rotorua district of nz. Go on facebook under road transport and contracting nz archieves lot of fascinating pics on there and not a hi viz or hard hat to be seen either, just common sense people doing it :notworthy Hope you had a good xmas yesterday; my shadow expanded a fair bit :beatsme Merry xmas to all you fellas in the US today