I have been working on these machines for over thirty years, one would think he knew the ins and outs of use when he goes to own one but none the less admittedly I don't. I have a old farm, lots of older trees, not good trees but Honey Locust and sycamore, my old and tired loader is a Allis 7G, weighs in at 23,000 and digs well but there is where my dilemma starts. I don't want to dig a crater the size of a Olympic pool to roll the root ball of a locust, many times I don't have the room or terrain to so any thoughts of experience? I am aware experience in the seat is probably my only good instructor but I ask of the more experienced here what they do as to techniques.
Hi Dave All stumps, trees etc are the same problem, trackloader or dozer. You have to dig a moat around them on at least 3 sides sometimes all sides and then lift or push on one side to root them out. At least with a loader you do have the advantage of hight to push on the tree with a bucket. Digger of course is best option as you have a lot smaller hole due to the smaller bucket and you can dig deeper ! however old story if you an,t got one you gotta use what ya got other option is to look for a winch to put on the back of the 7G; so you can attach a rope high up in the tree and winch it over. A little tractor will deal with a big tree if you can do this. Admittedly can be dangerous but a lot depends on the tree and rope [strength and length] , but have delt to a few myself this way with just a D4D !!
Thanks Merv, been working hard to keep from standing the old girl on her nose, have a donor tractor coming with better rails and hopefully a stronger trans that I can work a tad harder at this. I have been having to really spread the hole sides out to get at the base enough to do any real damage to root structures.
hi DMiller, that type of thees do have some tough roots, and hard to clear with a chain saw, if the trees are big they have extra large root balls. I saw some work here where they were using a big stump grinder, and another where they were using a v shaped doser blade. sam.
You don't need to necessarily dig a trench as much as you need to break the roots. Sometimes Ill start at the front and dig out a hole, just one buckets worth and dump the bucket just ahead of it, then back up and take another bite, placing that in the previous hole, so on so forth... Here is what you can do with a 450 deere...
Thanks all, will try a little harder to dig closer in and see if that helps. Just trial and error at this point.
Yair . . . I have just built a crude root cutting "ripper" to go on the linkage of a 55hp wheel tractor . . . sticks about six foot out the back and the 600mm tine is a piece of grader cutting edge. Works well. I back it in and do the first rip a couple of feet out and work in as close as possible. the long extension allows me to rip two sides in a 'V' shape, its surprising what you can pop out in what is admittedly fairly sandy ground. Cheers.
Hi Scrub Puller, There is an old cutter sorta like what you have, it had 2 steel wheels and i think it had a rope that you could pull to lower the u shaped axel that the cutter was attached to, it was pulled by a dozer, good machine to rip out roots and rocks. sam.