First off, thank you to all the users that make this a great forum. I've got dozens of hours invested reading my search items and thanks to what I've read I just bought a tight and dry 2000 Deere 200LC to stump about 20 acres of mine and a neighbors property. New septic will be in the works as well as a few other miscellaneous projects. As "Joe Homeowner" I'm not about to pay 20K for stump shears or even 6K for a ripper tooth attachment. I've got a line on an old D10 ripper tooth and am looking for a junk donor bucket for the pin plates. Am I fooling myself into thinking I can fab these two items together? Obviously, the shank will have to be cut a bit shorter and 3/4 or 1 inch plate gussets put in place. I have dreams of grandeur finding TWO shanks and making a plate stock blade for a custom fab stump shear. What do some of you seasoned fellows think about this?
I would think If you weld a "1 1/4 plate to the top of the shank then put pin plates on top of that and make sure every thing is gusseted up good it would work fine. I would weld hot with 7018. I think the hardest part would be to keep the pin holes strait so every thing lines up right.
Welcome to the Forums Skoop!:drinkup I like the ripper idea, thought about fab'ing one up for a while.
The nice thing is that it has a Hendrix quik coupler on it so I can probably fudge the pins just a touch, i.e. not machinist perfect. I was surprised in all my intar-web searches how few home made attachments I could find. Do I need some special super steel? My dad spent 20+ years at an industrial fab shop but never made heavy equipment stuff so he wasn't sure. If it was that easy I would think there would be a bunch of items out there.
Use your existing bucket and weld a shank pocket on the back, you can pin the ripper in the shank pocket when you want it and take it out when you don't.
I've seen that set up before for dual purpose hard ground digging. Unfortunately, this may prove a bit cumbersome for stump removal.
if you have a pin grabber coupler you don't need pin bosses just weld the pin in the ears sticking up I've done that before
I would suggest T-1 (A514) or Weldalloy 100, something like that, high strength, low alloy steel plate. You'll need to preheat it good, and of course the ripper shank will be a special steel also. When in doubt use Eutectic 680 rod, it will break the bank but not the weld! We use to spray arc T-1 with standard ER70S6 wire and it held up very well, just FYI. Since you're using a coupler, weld it all up with the pins already in it, if they seize in the bores it won't matter much.
I've cleared hundreds of acres with just a standard bucket, if you get the bucket under the stump, boom down, run your dipper stick out and curl the bucket, the heal of the bucket acts as a fulcrum point. You generate a whole lot more breakout force this way, you're actually forcing the bucket to curl and you can pop out stumps faster than you can blink.
What worries me is that between my neighbor and I, we have a couple hundred 3-4 foot doug fir stumps and hundreds more 1-3 footers harvested with a feller buncher so they are cut flush with the ground. Only having evenings and weekends to work on it I figure every minute I can go faster on each stump may be months less of stumping in the end. I've seen the way those stump splitters and rippers work on youtube and am very impressed. The machine is coming out with a brand new 2ft trench bucket till they can get me a used 3ft with teeth, so I'll see how proficient I can get with that before investing a bunch of time into the ripper. But from what I've seen so far those rippers are the bomb! And if I can get ahold of two ripper shanks I'm definitely fabbing up a stump shear!
I fabricate a lot of my own things for custom work. A ripper is on my list as well, just have not gotten around to it yet. For your 200 hoe, a D-10 ripper shank is overkill. Try for a shorter, thinner one. The "point" of a ripper is to put all of the machines power to work in a concentrated location. You need to be cautious of the tip radius. If it is too long, you can reduce the power until there is no advantage using it. I would suggest a tip radius close to the same as a standard bucket, and for a 200 hoe, a shank off of something like a D-7 would be about right. A D-10 shank is strong enough to be used by a 80 ton to 120 ton machine, and is wasted on a 20 ton machine. Another thing you want is a sharp penetration style tip, or even a tiger tooth, to apply the machines full force to the smallest possible tip area. A D-10 tooth is much thicker at the point, and will be like the difference of a sharp knife versus using the wrong side of the knife. To build it, brace it well, boxed on both sides and tapered to contact about one third of the way down the shank. Use good steel, and weld it well. You can cut ears out of heavy plate, and put the pins in so they are removable if you like. Then if you build other tools, you can use the same pins to save $$ unless you need them all at once. Good luck and share in the outcome, with pictures, if you will.
I'm with big show and others... no speciality bucket needed. Just get a nice narrow bucket and go to town
Like any thing, it all boils down to technique and the proper application of force. I never ever grab the top of a stump, so height doesn't matter to me. I gouge a side or two to break up the root system on larger trees, gouge a hole on the side away from me, burrow my bucket underneath with the floor of the bucket parallel to the ground, the dipper stick plumb/vertical, and all in one motion I push the dipper stick away from the machine, boom down and curl the bucket up so the teeth hit the bottom of the stump and pry it out of the ground. I do it a couple times then just pull it right out of the ground and onto the next one.
just cut the ripper in half weld another shank on it and there your stumper
I agree, id go with just a rock bucket. Means you can pull stumps/stack and clean up as you go. No real need for a ripper and some of the bigger ones have to be dug around to get out anyway