I used to love the challenge of a stump. I was over at my friend's house with the 120, and these perfectly healthy fir stumps are kicking my arse. I yarded a small one out last night when I was dropping off the machine. It did not go quietly. Tonight I went over to get a couple and I was all of an hour and a half breaking them out of the earth. They have multi-level root systems that require a lot of root breaking. I chose the 3' because it meshes with the 4 tine thumb properly, but tomorrow I am putting on the 2' with tiger teeth for root pruning. I could not pick this one till I flipped it over and scraped it. That's 3. I have about 8 more. I think I'll save this 39" bastige for Easter Sunday. Unless i get a lucky split on that, I will have to roll it to where it is going.
I always like to leave about 5'-6' of tree sticking up from the ground. Then, it gave me a lot of leverage when working that darn stump out. Usually could dig out one or two sides, then with the leverage, just pull the stump over. However, I did have a 60HP diesel stump grinder, and a 44Hp grinder. I did most stumps more quickly and cleanly with one of the big grinders.
I had to drive over Snoqualmie Pass last week and saw they had started on the Highway 18 widening and interchange project. There is a clearing crew up the logging, clearing and grubbing the right of way. I saw they had used a rooster comb on all the fir stumps and broke them four ways. Another machine came along after and was picking the pieces out a quarter at a time.
This is where I would like an old school 7 with the A-frame stump splitter hanging off the arch. Pop those bastards down low about 1/3rd over, twice. You get the point down in the armpit when you find it.
the logger did me no favors.
How are you disposing of the stumps? If you have to load them out we need pics.
They have some cedars that they are keeping, and I will drag that big bastige back behind them first and then make a windrow in the corner of his property. The quail and little birds will love it. I can loop through there rolling it if I have to.
Load them up and haul them off!!
Oh sure, people are just begging for stumps like that. I should be able to sell them for $100 a piece on craigslist. Around here there are no good sites to get rid of things like that.
We hauled a lot of big stumps to other properties where we had brush piles. Then got a recycling company to come in with a big grinder and chop everything up. They even hauled all the piles off about 50 miles to their composting facility. Never did hear what that cost, but the owners could sell all the land I could clear by the sq. ft., not by the acre, so price was really no object.
The grinder guys kind of went broke around here not charging enough and then didn't have the money to repair those self destructing monsters. Then the construction boom sunk and so did they. Counties got environmentally friendly and banned burning. So what do you do????
Now they want to burn them, and she thought maybe by the end of summer
I went out there after work and got some more out. That big stump yielded about 3 pickup loads of roots before I could start prying it apart. 3 pieces and I could handle it. Calibrated butt dyno had this chunk at 4k, after raking about a ton of clay and rocks out of it.
The pile on the left is just that stump. All schmeared down and ready to heal. Do not take anything with wheels across there.
Looks good. Worst stump battle of my life was on a 24” Black Birch on the edge of an old logging road in steep terrain. Was widening the road so it had to come out. I should have known better, but in my simple mind the tree was growing in the loose fill of the edge of the road so it be easy to dig out, wrong! Turns out the tree was there before the road was cut so the fill was actually just piled around the trunk, and the roots started at about 8’ down. How backfilling like that around it didn’t kill it IDK. Only equipment I had on hand was a Case 480e backhoe and 450c dozer. After the better part of the day digging and pushing with both the hoe and dozer I had it out. Where once was the logging road was now a pit 12’ deep and 20’ wide...
I recently cut a half dozen 18" diameter maples at work because they were shading the tennis courts and causing algea growth. I debated on digging vs grinding and gave them a shot with our Cat 304 mini, I wasn't sure I'd be successful. I had to dig all four sides but I got them out and after shaving the soil from the roots was actually able to pick them up. Took about 30 minutes each to get them loose. I was pretty impressed with that little machine! I've got a 3 point PTO driven grinder for our 75hp New Holland tractor that works but is very slow, especially with hardwoods. I find a lot of times there are roots exposed above ground and those are hard to chase with the grinder.
OUCH! once you got started you were committed. Did you rebuild the logging road after? EDIT: I was going out to finish stumping on Sunday, but the forecast is the rainiest day of the year at about 2" of rain. I let them know that it would be a mistake to open the earth up that day.
I had about a 30-36 inch ash that I barely managed to tip over with an old 490E. I cut the stump off and couldn't roll it out of the hole so we quartered it with the saw a couple feet down, cut a slot in the top to work the teeth into and was able to pry it apart.
My fastest and easiest method on stumps is with a stump grinder on my FTX140. 140 hp, 69 gpm @ 6,000 psi means fast stump eradication. Most fresh cut oaks & hickories @ 18" above grade and 18" dia at the cut, subsurfaced 6"-10", normally take the machine 3 minutes or less. I remember doing some stumps spanning 6' at the butt swell, low cut, taking no more than 10 minutes. Horsepower and torque are the key. Unless I have a day or more to justify that attachment and machine, I just plane them flush to grade with my regular cutterheads. At that point, if a customer needs them out of the ground, they will split and extract easier being cut low. There is usually only 6"-18" of solid wood below grade on most stumps so splitting something that thin is much easier. At that point, a dozer can usually easily split the stump into pieces if it takes a glancing blow to a side of the stump. My favorite method for low cut stump extraction is a Tiger Tooth on the corner of the excavator bucket. You can punch a "split line" into the stump with that tooth and at an end of that line, bury that tooth into the wood then pull back firmly. That will split it apart into smaller, managable pieces that pull out and shed dirt easier. Normally, for me, once extracted like that, I just grind them up with a cutterhead and get on with it. No hauling, no burning, less soil disturbance, faster performance. Either way, grinding them up on site is much faster and easier than hauling them off. And it puts the nutrients back onto the ground.
those purpose built machines are nice. I think they are going to send a bunch of those nutrients into the air by burning them.
We just sent 2 acres worth into the air..with a pit burner of course.
Pit burner?
Did you have to get state and local permits to do that burning? Just wondering, as we always found that permitting to be a nightmare in Texas. If we were to burn, we needed a state permit, a county permit, and a city permit.
This little fire will be a permit from the local Fire Department for him. Either that or it is not happening. In retrospect I wish I had taken more time to break those stumps once. Now that I have them out, I see the method would be different with that little machine. You'd leave all the roots in on one side and find an armpit between a couple of roots to wiggle into, then pop it while all those far side roots hold it for you. I have 5 more stumps to do and I will try that out. They burn so much better in at least two pieces.
It's funny how people become creatures of habit an won't accept a different better way of doing a job. I had a C140 and ordered with a stumpgrinder and boy was it hard getting work for it. I thought that combining it with a mulcher would have been a good business case but getting past the dig em out thing in most cases proved impossible. One job I was on 1200 acres of eucalypt was being cleared, stacked and burnt and the boys were having trouble with burning the stumps. I was waiting for parts for the mulcher so I put the grinder on and ground the stumps off the trees laying down prior to the being stacked. Now one understood what I was going until after the fires had gone out, then the penny dropped, the wow factor was immediate and got me 3 weeks more work .
Well we had a city FD permit. This county doesn't have a permitting process. Jefferson county permits through their health dept and it can be a process so to speak. Our metro area consisting of 5-6 counties can only burn from Oct. 1 to April 30 mandated by the state due to air quality issues.
Yeah I rented one from a local HWY contractor. It was a small unit but it worked well.
looks slick. Last fires of any quantity I had (3) honda powered fans, as I marched up a freeway right-of-way to add one side to a divided highway. I had an old Cat 225 and would burn a pile and walk up to the next, go back and re stack, repeat for 4 miles.
The trench burners work real well when the wood is dry and clean. The little unit we rented did very well considering how wet the wood was since you could squeeze an 8" pine and water would shoot out like a garden hose. Bought one of these back in the mid 2000's for a 75 acre project. IMO it's the best burner on the market however the cones in the promo pic around the hole made me laugh, if the burner was working at full production those cones would melt within 10 minutes. We melted the tail light lenses on that burner once.. Trench Burner | Fast Setup, On-Site Burning Air Burners trench burners have been used around the world to support the elimination of wood & vegetative waste. airburners.com
I dug one out a couple years ago; I didn't measure it, but over 40". I had to get it off the job site, there was no way to lift it high enough with a 315 to get it I to a dump, so I ended up getting a 30 yard box in. The stump took up nearly the whole length of the box, within a couple feet of each end, and it was sitting crooked sticking up a couple feet on one side.
I'm not sure I want to try a method the Amish use. They plunge cut a slot or cross into the center of the stump and fill it with black powder. Claim is they can split the stump into 1/4s. Tamp it with a feed bag of soil or a 1" thick rubber cow mat. I'll probably end up with"Stumpy" as a nickname if I tried it.
I took out the last stump last night. It was like an iceberg. In this picture I am holding it by the bottom roots, the roots I can't cut or break with the bucket. They are protected by the stump itself. All I could do is break all the big side roots, and then pry on the stubs of those roots with bucket heel force, and slowly extract that central root. It takes a while to wiggle it out. Butt dyno has it at ~3000 pounds after cleaning. It is an example of " there is no replacement for displacement." A 200 would have tilted that last bit out in one go. I put the 4' bucket on and started slicking stuff off.
That's why I advocate using a ripper for stump removal, it gives the digger a lot more breakout power. Last week I took out some stumps with a 5 ton digger that had a Powertilt quick hitch and a ripper. Not only busted through the lateral roots but could bust through the tap root. It really surprised me with its efficiency.
I would have one if I ever took out stumps in number. This pile is the biggest that this machine has ever seen and I'm done now. I'd like a ripper for hard digging too, but this machine also has a "slow change" bucket with a two bolt wedge.
I fired up the machine today to start slicking things off, trench a sleeve, fix the driveway approach. I had them call the 89 year old neighbor over and got him in the seat. He had stopped by on his quad a few times to watch me work, and I knew he wanted up in the seat. He has a 780 and a 680 Case, an IR 642 telehandler, a lumber mill, big stump grinder and all sorts of goodies. He had never operated an excavator before That bump between us and him was 1'+ higher than the rock, so I did a cut and fill slick off of that circle area. The trailer is in the way, so I will do a little bit when I go to load out. This was the area they really wanted stumped and smoothed, to park his half dozen trailers. That last stump was right there at the edge of the road and had sent some huge roots across it for speed bumps.
The area behind those tarp carports was rough, and I offered to go slick it off. " that's OK, no need to move the carport" The previous folks had dozed a bunch of junk into this berm that was in the way, so I started there and promptly found some scraps of braided chokers. That really chaps my hide, if you have ever had to get old rusty cables out of your tracks you have been there. I cut and dressed out the approach. All the rock was there in a big pimple in the middle. He has a big pressure washer and I will give the machine a much-needed bath.
That's awesome you let the neighbor get in the seat.
I know a kid when I see one. I put all the kids in the seat when I can.
Me too. I think we need to be encouraging the kids that are interested in our trades since we ain't going to be around forever and there is a lot of work that needs to be done. If we can let a kid get a little supervised seat time then go for it.
I'm old school, if I have no powder, I still have a 2" auger. Drill straight down through the heart, you can either drill a hole in at the base 90 degrees to the vertical or just poke vertically through to the dirt. Make sure you get a good draft. Drop as many charcoal briquets down the hole as you can and pour kerosene over everything. You can get flames blasting 4" above the stump. The most important part; after you do all that, take your lawn chair, a six pack and enjoy your hard work watching it burn out. A 24" stump will take a day to burn out and perhaps a half rack instead of a six pack. When the center is burned out, the rest of the stump pulls out real easy. You can accelerate the process with a shop vac on blow vs. suck. Make sure you have a length of steel pipe to get the vac away from the fire. I've done this on many fir stumps. Kinda relaxing after a hard day.
I took the run out to the only pit with 2" minus, Washington Rock up in Weyerhauser property off Kapowsin lake. @CM1995 here is a pit in the forest, in the foothills of Mt. Rainier. They had a 9 with a track frame off, some offroad Cat haulers running around. This new Hitachi 670 was going to attack the mountain. Nice looking machine. On the way out I took a pic of this 988B, it brought back some memories from when they were top line production machines.
It had seen better days and needed a trip to the dentist for starters. It is a long way out single lane roads and no radio in my rig, and I won't go back. I can pick up the phone and get a local to bring the goods from there. I laid down that box-o-rocks at Pete's and tracked it in. He can get a T-truck to bring him 30 plus tons for less than $900 for the next time. I am happy to go massage it.
Would that 988 be from the 80s? I recall a local gravel bank having one and that was about the time I was hauling.
late 70's to the early 90's. That was a long run for a model.
So I am assuming that is glacial till? Do they have to crush it or just screen? Reminds me of Costa Rica where they mine their gravel out of the river. Companies are granted a concession to dig rock washed down the mountains in the river deltas near the Pacific. In the dry season they dig it out, process and stockpile. When the rainy season comes it fills the hole back in. Heck of a business. It's a grayish black rock that ranges in size from watermelon to sand, the stones are polished smooth via the journey down the mountains. The color and texture is very similar to the rock and sand we saw in Alaska. Here in central AL all our rock is blasted and crushed limestone. South AL has sand and pea gravel. Our main stone supplier actually crushes the limestone overburden for construction aggregates. This overburden doesn't have the correct amount or purity of lime for Carmuse so instead of make waste piles they crush it. A form of recycling I guess.
It all goes through the jaw, screens, and cone crusher around here. They will run a sand wash screw if they are selling sand, otherwise it goes to the minus. They have some big jaws but you still see piles of oversize as they move along. It varies from 3~5 rock load size to proper Leaverites they work around.