Have a look at some of the current stickrakes, blade plows, seeders and dozer protection in production down here. http://www.gessner.com.au/heavyindustrial/gss-040.htm www.homan.com.au Not saying these are better than anyone else but they aren't bad and suit our application in the bush here. This stuff is not cheap!! Firetrack
There have been and still are some great machines made here if you can afford them. Unfortunately our native vegetation and land clearing laws have done nothing to help this or any other industry. They have shown the narrow mindness and stupidity of our politicans.
What kinda trees are you guys pushing down there? Around here if you loaded up one of those blades with our trees you wouldn't be able to move. For light landclearing you could definetly cover some realistate fast.
That's some heavy duty stuff! I'm assuming that ya'll are dealing with fast growing and shallow rooted brush/bush and "weed" trees, hence the need for full canopies.
So, they got tree huggers down under too? Don't let you knock down the trees? What kind? In California, they can't get rid of the eucalyptus fast enough. LOL.
Yes we do deal with a lot of regrowth timber but the older Australian native trees tend to be widowmakers in that a lot of them have hollow section that break off as soon as you go to push them. Firetrack
These rakes are designed to get the big trees rolling so you can still load up the rake and push. I'll try to get some photos for you. Firetrack
Ahh that explains the heavy duty cab guarding. I have wondered why Oz dozers clearing the bush had such cabs. On occasion I run across widow makers but they are usually dead or dying trees and you just take special care with them.
Forty years ago, an guy named Cecil Hopper specialized in clearing in and around Houston, TX. He had a number of old hand clutch CAT dozers rigged with heavy metal ROPS canopies for the very same reason. The technique in the usually sodden ground was to get the tree swaying back and forth with the pusher extension welded to the cable blade while the operator worked the hand clutch in unison, and let the treetop leverage the stump out. A good wind at your back really helped. Powershift dozers didn't work as well with the see-sawing action. They just couldn't get that rockin' thing goin' on. I suspect a few beers or whatnot in the morning helped with that. By lunch, the narcotic nicotine from Red Man or Bull-O-The_Woods chewing tobacco became so concentrated in their blood that it carried them through the rest of the day. I honestly don't know if you could interest anyone today in that operator job. But back in that day, those guys were real honest-to-God catskinners, the likes of which you don't find anymore.
Yair . . . Bluetop Man. that was exactly right, you have to get the tree rocking and watching the shadow on the ground was one way to get in time. We used to pull with three tractors hooked up with anchor chain and the same thing applied . . . you had to all get in time and rock any tree that stopped you. If you could see the other operator you'd rock back and forth in the seat when on a powershift. The stickshift was a bit easier as you could see the other blokes hand on the clutch, down here we had no problems with the power-shift they'd rock a tree just fine. It is hot and dusty work though and I have a mate with three 46A stick-shift eights who still pulls regrowth and bladeplows . . .he reckons he has to provide tissues for the operators as they are always crying about not having any A/C. Cheers.
Scrub Puller, Blade plows certainly sort out the fuel consumption on a dozer. All the manufacturers who state that their unit burns less fuel than others can most times be proved that their unit doesn't pull as well as others when hooked up to the same plow. I personally haven't done much of it - thankfully. Also can test the condition of your converter and cooling system pretty quickly. Along the Dawson river Valley a lot of scrub was pulled using anything from D6 to 9 plus Allis and International 18's, 20's and 21's. I know that Moore Bros originally had 8's and sold them and purchased a couple of new Komatsu 155. Some of the names you may know. Abbotts from Taroom had 9's, Smoothy from Theodore had plenty of 8's mainly plus a scattering of other dozers from Allis and inter(I think) - now got 8's,9's and 10's, Chalk had 18's and 20's(I think) and Reithmuller had 21's plus quite a few property's had their own set of 6' and 7's for pulling, raking and plowing. People talk of the gold old days - me I prefer the good new days with the a/c and no dust - never could find the enjoyment of having dust, pollen, bees, spiders, snakes, and all the other unknowns crawling over you. Firetrack
Yair . . . gotcha firetrack, lots of familiar names there. I never got into the Dawson country much. Our original patch was south of Roma to the Border and west to Cunnamulla--Charleville and east to around Kogan sort of area. Later we went north of Injune and pulled the first scrub ever pulled in the bottom end of the Arcadia Valley. . . there is some tough country in there, biggest brigalow I ever saw around the bottom of those escarpments. We were running early powershift Allis twenty ones and I don't think there was one part in the rotten things that didn't break . . . it's strange that I still regard them with some affection . . . but then I wasn't paying the bills. When they were going there was nothing in their class would touch them in the scrub. At least when we started pulling with three the cash flow didn't stop when one of them **** it's self . . . that was one of the troubles with a straight pulling job, trying to keep that other tractor working while you pulled a final drive or whatever. As you say those were the good old days. Cheers.