Once we get our D6C back together we have some brush clearing planned not too far down the road in the near future & I made up this sketch for a proposed new rake which we plan to build. We have the tines shown spaced at 12" apart, made from 1 1/2" Plate & extending down about 10" below the blade cutting edge. Not sure how easy it is to see my sketch. 1/2" plate gussets under the top pipe. 6" Heavy Wall pipe spacers that fit between the tines near the bottom & are welded in. We will likely use some AR weld on pads to cover the tine tips (not shown yet) to help with wear. Does it look like we have the right idea here? Note the blade profile shown on the right, using a phantom line
Looks like you're on the right track - my question is where is your top connect point connecting to? It looks like there is a bracket you have in the pic that is above the actual blade. Maybe I'm just not seeing it clear enough. All the rakes I've ever seen are pinned to the top of the blade. Check out this website - rocklandmfg.com if you click on the dozer tab once it drops down there is a rake section. I believe they have four models. Once you click on the model, the upper right side has a tab you can view the specs - might help you out.
I like the looks of they way the bars run full height of the rake rather than just part way up (USA Attachmets style). Rockland's SR rake is similar to your's but looks to be a little taller above the blade. Looks like the teeth on the Rockland might have a little more angle to them as well. I've seen some similar ones that have the face curved to kind of match the blade....supposed to get the brush roll some and clean the dirt off I guess. Maybe angle the top back to the blade. You work out all the kinks and then make me one too, or at least post pics........I've been wanting one for a couple of years.
I actually did not get to drawing the top mount that fastens to the blade yet. It will fasten the usual way, pinned at the top.
I think curving the front of the tines would be a good idea to improve the roll. I will see what I can come up with there. If it works good, I can send you the drawing & some pics.
this is what I came up with for my 500E... haven't started to make it yet though... pretty similar to yours.... and I think you do need to sweep the tines a little more. all the tines are 1 1/4" and welded to a 5x5 heavy wall square tubing and then I have 4 - 1/2" triangular plates welded to the front and back of the 5" square tubing. They are 24" at the bottom and 6" at the top, 1 front and back of a 1 1/2" beam that runs from the 5" square tubing to the top attaching point. I have the bottom of the blade right at the square tubing since that is the strongest place. I also made the tines around 13" long so you can lift the blade if need be while still keeping the tines in the ground... but that's not in chiseled in stone yet....
I'm a mechanic, not an operator so I can't say whether this is right or wrong, but I've seen lots of stick rakes (as they're called here) and repaired several and almost all the ones I've seen have "wings" imitating a semi-u or full-u dozer blade.
We have our machine shop build these in house. Ours just have two plates above the lower bar to attach it to the blade. The part the does all the work is below your blade edge. Might save some money in steel this way. Our lower bar is 6" heavy wall square tubing and that is what rest on the blade. I think your idea of adding a piece of hard steel like a tooth is great. Our just have the tips hardfaced. , The fun part is mounting the plates to the blade. Had one installed last week and looked like a chore. The welder cut the skin off the top of the back of the blade and welded the brackets as far down as he could to get a secure mount. I always thought they were just welded to the surface. Good luck and show us your progress.
Yair . . . Cmark Yeh mate, that's exactly right. I often wonder what would happen if an Aussie showed up in the US with one of our local rigs. From what I see Americans have a completely different take on "clearing" due in part to restrictive regulations that often ban on site burning. HOWEVER, I see on youtube a lot of shagging around with excavators and trackloaders with buckets that is quite inefficient compared to how we do it here. Our Australian eucalypt species are hardwoods, heavy and dense timber with taproots I would imagine just as tough and heavy as northern hemisphere species and yet we clear and stack with eighteen to twenty foot rakes on 150/200 horsepower tractors. When running a rake I make no allowances that it is a rake and lift the arse of the tractor off the ground just as I would with a blade. As I say it's different strokes for different folks. Typical drive in/clip on rake here takes about ten minutes or so to fit. The horizontal cutter bar shown above is not suitable for all applications and I prefer to run a tractor with straight teeth on about twelve inch centres and a cutter bar between the outside tines of a three hook ripper. I have raked thousands of acres, some of it very heavily timbered coastal country and just cannot see where the US style "root rakes" have any application, the cutter bar is far more effective at winkling out stumps and roots than any tined implement. If the country hasn't been pulled I like to put it on the ground with the rake working back and forth on a face and then stack it working back and forth (never reversing) at right angles to the way it's laying. In real light scrubby country I have some times dropped a decent iron bark or blue gum with a chainsaw and cut him of at (say) 30/35 feet and get behind him with rake and rattle him around and round, you can knock down country very quickly with that bit of extra width. In lighter country I just work around and around or back and forth like ploughing and poke it into heaps. Cheers.
I like the idea of the heavy member at the bottom & the shorter tines. We do not need the added width with the U-shape, just the width of the blade or a bit narrower in our case. I will try another concept sketch & post it for feedback, when I have some time.
I finally had an opportunity to make up another sketch for a root rake with the "short tines" & also introduce some curve in order to get some more roll when scrubbing. Note the bottom of the short tines extend down about 16" below the cutting edge of the blade in this latest sketch. Anyone know if this is too much? 1½" plate is used for the tines, with 6" Hss for the uprights & 3/4" ears with holes which are pinned to the blade. Blade ears are not shown yet. I am thinking maybe the tines should come up higher on the bottom front, of the 10" HSS that rides against the cutting edge? That can be done without much problem. Coming up higher would give better bracing effect for side pressure......
Yair . . . Metalman 55 I like to make that tag extend about three inches up the front as shown in the posted picture . . . and I give it a it more meat than shown there. Why do you make your rakes so narrow? Cheers.
dozer rakes :usaScrub, have you forgotten this an American Forum ? enough said.:beatsme.:usa
dozer stick rake Winged stick rakes are designed for a purpose. to contain the pushed material to an area contained in your blade pushing direction. A straight bladed stick rake will leave furrows ,either side of the blade of spilt material as you progress forward, which means you are going back over already pushed material. Derr. How did Armstrong get to the moon and back in 1 piece ?:usa
Kept this one in my "some day" file...
looks like the 2 side pick up pins on top of blade just pick up the rake, what keeps the rake from falling off from the 2 lift lugs when reversing ?
I just did not draw the mount up mechanism yet. Working on the details of the rake first.
I think too that it needs to come up further on the front, to have more to take a hold of. Then I see the one pic posted by OM & maybe it is back to the drawing board again? Much cheaper to do it on paper, than in the shop In my case the narrower rake is fine as we do not plan to do much with it, but clearing the large tracts that I presume you do, I am sure the wider version is the ticket.
That one looks like it would be pretty simple to build. Just heavy angle and flat plate. Might have to save those pics for my "some day" file too.
One reason might be ease of transport...just leave the rake attached to move.
? Scrub, could you decode this for us please? I'm not too sure what Garrie is saying here. I'm thinking perhaps the U.S. Boys don't have the massive flat swathes to work on that you boys do. I guess you pin the rake on and work several weeks at a time before you need to take it off for a move? Over here, land clearance involves dozing factories and industrial units, not trees. We turned most of our tree cover into ships a few hundred years ago.
Yair . . . ih100 . I believe that is absolutely true in many cases. However in my travels around the internet I see many places in the US where I believe Australian style methods could be employed to advantage. The tendency is though to use standard excavators, track loaders and skid steers when a properly set up D6 with an eighteen foot rake and tree pusher would do the job for half the cost. Having said that I reckon a D6 size track loader with a decent winged rake would be the ducks nuts. If built with the correct geometry the "bucket dumped" position would present the top of the rake as formidable tree pusher. D6c10k makes a valid point about transportation but it seems pointless to me to limit productivity to make it easier to shift. Each to his own though and if folks can get work and their hourly rate with such equipment that's all they need to do. One more thing about transportation . . . one of the reasons I always ran an over the blade/rake tree pusher it was used as a crane to lift the rake onto the truck or trailer for the shift, just a single purpose made chain to the point of balance and a tag line. This may be of interest to some folks . . . note folding wing model https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNPLhEmcJGY Cheers.
Transporting a wide rake is easy if it's been thought out before manufacture. Using a dozer with rippers, lay the rake on the ground and back the dozer over the end of the rake, lower the rippers and chain the rake to the ripper bar, lift the rake and drive onto the trailer. How easy is that?
Scrub, the rake is large how do you see what you are doing with it? I have problems with an 8' bucket
Didn't realize some of the wide rakes would fold up as in the video. That would make transport easy. The smaller pin on rake looks like a nice design too. As much as the red cedar trees are taking over this part of the country, these type would probably work well. Seems like a lot of the tree clearing around here is done with compact track loaders and either a tree shear or tree puller...at least for small to med. size trees. Part of the consideration is that we have mostly rolling hills that are very prone to erosion and the less you disturb the soil the better off you are.
Here is another one that I found that looks simple to build & works well (for a narrow one!!) Back to the drawing board. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O4d5JpyKH8
The video says is a "modified" Solesbee's rake...not sure what they might have modified. This is the one I'd like to have..... http://www.solesbeesequipment.com/dozer_rakes_brush_guard.php
Yair . . . Georgia Iron . Because the rakes are high and wide you don't really need to "see" . . . normal procedure would be to overlap the swaths by about half the width of the wing. With a bucket or a standard blade you are more at risk of getting a pole or branch come through and damage the tractor or yourself . . . it can still happen of course but the risk is much reduced. Some of "our" early rakes were built with open top to bottom tines but very soon they wised up and sheeted up with plate. The aim is to present a smooth surface to the brush and trash so sticks don't get hung up. I can't imagine working with a US style rake hanging down the front of the blade, sure I suppose they swing away in reverse but its enough of a hassel getting stumps stuck between the tines of one of our rakes. I like to leave a nice stump as a "toothpick" and have even been known to cut off a green trees about eighteen inches above the ground for that purpose . . . I go spare if I see one of my operators leaving grooves with a stump stuck between the teeth. I have seen a couple of rakes equipped with a hydraulic mechanism for cleaning between the tines, vey expensive but man that would be sweet. Cheers.
That makes sense to me...what little raking I've seen done, they did have sticks hanging up occasionally. How thick of plate do they use for a rake?
That rake set up looks pretty mean. Whats the width and weight of it? How do you pin it to the blade?
Yair . . . D6c10k We mostly used 1/4". I think on the big rigs they go for 3/8". Cheers
Scrub we use v blades here and fixed take on d8k's.A wider rake for us here is not practical do to raveines and valleys and so forth if we could use them we would. Now what I would like to know more about is your cutting edge you have welded in there what purpose does it serve and how far above the ground does it need to be? Does it need to be sharp? Any how thanks for your input and knowledge.
Yair . . . jwest75801 . Those cutting edges between teeth can be a mixed blessing, the country needs to be dry as, with a bit of moisture heavy soil can clog up and not flow through the teeth. Having said that in some "whipstick" country with limber regrowth and suckers they are invaluable. I prefer them on the very bottom of the teeth . . . usually worn grader cutting edge or somesuch just with a reasonable weld on one side of every second tooth . . . quick to blow off with the oxy then if you don't need it. I have never quite understood how you blokes use "V" blades for clearing and I think some of us blokes here in Australia would find some pictures and explanation of the method very interesting. As I always say on this board there is no 'right' way or 'wrong' way when it comes to clearing and different methods have evolved in different places. I also don't quite understand the problem with using wider rakes. I cannot imagine any country I would not be able to rake with an 8K with a little twenty foot rake. Here is a of shot of the standard rake on an 8h when it was new . . . I think they were thirty two feet. Cheers
Ive done my share of clearing & Burning. Clearing for rice In the Arkansas Delta we used a V cutter blade to fell the timber. usually powered by a D8 or D7E powershift. We then burnt with a old stick shift cable dozer like a 3T D7 or a TD 14 international. we built a entire rake thewith of the dozer 10 feet wide . And that was about a big a rake load of wood as those old machines could push. the old machines wernt turbocharged and did not use much fuel. and a cable blade and stick trans meant no oil leaks and less danger of catching on fire. In the hills we root wadded the trees. that's where a hyd tilt was handy. We also used a tree pusher extension on the blade to attain leverage. I can fell and burn timber with a dirt blade. I simply don't put dirt in my piles. you carry the blade and roll the brush to shake out the dirt. a cable is faster than a hyd blade and does a better job shaking out the dirt. We cleared by the acre and made our living working at clearing. we only worked about 7 months of the year.
Here is my latest drawing & wanted to get a bit of feed back on it. Some of the contributors suggested more curve on the front & I tried to incorporate that into this design. Is it also a bit wider than the earlier versions that I sketched up. I know that our off continent friends suggested "wider is better", but in our case at least, we do not plan to do a lot of grubbing, so it will be suffice for us. We have someone who can cut directly from a .dxf file, so a few dimensions are used by them just for a reference only. BTW, the steering clutch issue on our D6C seems to be resolved & it continues to work much better, only have not used it much yet.
Yair . . . Metalman 55 I reckon your tooth and linkage profile looks excellent with good mechanical wraps onto the box-section, you won't need to go overboard with weld to keep every thing in place . . . that bottom beam could end up like a banana if you are not aware of distortion. I found used track pins welded to the bottom of the teeth the most cost effective way of stopping wear, it doesn't take much to hold them on in agricultural country just a good dob front and back, a bit more in rock of course. Real nice job, all the best with it, Cheers.
Scrub Puller our tree's must be bigger than your's a lot of our trees are 2-3 ft diameter and most of the clearing contractors log it first so they split the stump's with the stinger blades and roll them out and then come buy with the rake tractor and clean up the mess the wide blades would just stay broken
Yair . . . Gotcha clintm. Its a different application and I have never had to deal much with logged country and stumps and I understand the reason in some country for narrow heavy duty rakes. However when I Google Earth I note much of the (particularly) southern parts of the US are remarkably similar to over here and believe our style of rake could be employed to very good effect. I suppose also it is a matter of scale in my time the jobs used to be bigger when dealing with virgin country. Things over here have changed in as much as, instead of "clearing" as I knew it, these days the emphasis is on maintaining country and controlling suckers and regrowth on country that was "cleared" in the past . . . hence those stick rakes with horizontal blades between the teeth for cutting suckers. We are talking cattle grazing country and the returns are not there to deal with suckers effectively by ploughing or cutter barring and folks get by with clattering a dozer across it with a rake every few years . . . some just chain it again to keep some semblance of control. In no way am I being critical I just make comment as I see it. Cheers.
For what it's worth, I would like to second everything Scrub has said on this subject. In our part of the world, a narrow rake with such a wide tine spacing just wouldn't cut it, even for small areas. In all but the heaviest of going, increasing the width up to 16-18 ft on a D6C is a common occurrence. I've always found it interesting how we've arrived at different ways of doing the same task around the world, particularly when it comes to land clearing. Cheers, Greg
Scrub.......Yes, welding on one side can indeed cause that member to look a bit like a pretzel. If we keep the fillet size down to a minimum for the tines & even put some heat to the opp side with a rosebud as reqd, that should suffice. Re the tine spacing, we can easily add another tine or two, thus reducing the spacing. Is there a preferred spacing for them for general clearing? I had wondered about that as well.
Yair . . . Thanks for adding to the discussion Queenslander as you say it is interesting to see how folks approach similar problems in different parts of the world. Metalman 55 I think we found ten inches clear between tines was a good compromise. Things may have changed, I haven't been around the latest generation of rakes . . . Queenslander will maybe set me straight. (big grin) Cheers.
I can see where horizontal root cutting blades between the teeth would be useful some of the time. We have quite a bit of prickly ash and small cedar trees that grow in clumps and are hard to push out unless you dig 6" or more deep....and that's about all the topsoil we have. Not sure if I would want the blades there all the time though when clearing up other timber.
Here is the drawing modified to include 11 teeth (two additional teeth) with 10 5/16" space between the teeth. Perhaps this is better for general purpose grubbing? I already put the order in for the plasma cutting, but can just add 2 more teeth to the order.
Curious as to what they charge you for all that cutting......
These are best photos of our rake that I could manage at short notice. It was built by the late Barry Homan who perfected the design of the drive in stickrake about 30 years ago. Apart from pads on the tines, we haven't had to touch it with a welder. Tines are similar to your latest drawing Metalman, 12" centres so about 10" spacing, 12" clearance under the 6.5" square beam. Unless required specifically for your application, there is probably no need for the pitch on the toe of the tine, will soon wear flat in any case. Cutter bar can be a PITA, I have cut it out in the past when working in soft sandy soil. It does prevent any bending of the tines though. Cheers, Greg
Queenslander: I am sure you are proud to be the owner of that S-Rake,after all those years it just needs a coat of paint Brilliant man that.
I didn't ask, as it is a local fellow who does a lot of cutting for us. I suspect it will be around $500 for the labour portion & we supply the mat'l.
We will likely put tips on our teeth as well. Yours looks like a nice heavy one that has done a lot of work over the years. What size machine was yours mounted to?
I like the design approach but it seems those stubby teeth only meet half the challenge. They are more than ample for root grubbing but it seems to me you miss out on the dirt separation provided by rakes with the taller teeth.
We have a Fiat Allis 14C,150hp, rake is 16ft. The tractor could easily handle another 2ft at least. We always try to rake when conditions are dry, we get plenty of them, to avoid picking up too much dirt. I get 2" square HT bar stock cut to size to retip the tines. Cheers, Greg
Have our profile cut plates in now & are ready to fabricate. Note, a couple of the square plates shown in the pic are for something else.
Nice looking material. Keep the pics coming and good luck.
The beginnings of a root rake fabrication.
Looks like you are off to a good start.
ATTACH]137552[/ATTACH] More work in progress pictures on the Root Rake. I am thinking that if we add something round to the bottom front of the tines, maybe 1.5" diam. & kind of hard, having it extend down below the tips about 3 inches that may work well? Any ideas what will work; weldable, yet hard enough to wear well & soft enough so that it does not break off when you hit a rock? BTW the big 8" sq. tube held pretty straight, even with most of the welding being on one side.[
Scrub Puller: I am not real familiar with clearing with dozers, so it was very interesting reading this thread. What were the biggest trees you were ripping out the most frequently? Seems a big wide blade wouldn't be too useful in a bunch of stuff say 18" or larger?
Yair . . . Movindirt I can't say I have ever wished for a narrower rake. Eighteen inch stuff with D6 and up is just another log in the stack. Root balls can be heavy but just take a bit of rolling. I seldom had to contend with large chain sawed stumps which makes a difference to the equipment used. If you can click on the link on the current "scrub pulling" thread and have the time to watch you will see a couple of tractors pulling some light open country prior to raking. In coastal areas the trees are much larger and the stem counts per acre much higher but we always used the same 30 foot rakes on D8h's. Cheers.
Now we have it fit up to the tractor & mounted in place with the top ears tacked on. A few hours of welding remain now...........
To me, it looks like the pitch of the tines has worked out just right now that it is mounted up.
That's looking pretty nice. Looking forward to hearing how it works....and maybe seeing a video.
That came out really good.... I wasn't going to curve the support arms on mine... but now that I see how yours look I think I will... great job! What rod did you use for the welding?
zbo2.....It was welded with flux cored wire, which would be the equivalent of a 7018 electrode.
Good project Metalman....I need to make up one of those for my D6c.
Here is the finished product painted & installed.
looks great.. I really like the way your mounting arms came out.....now all you need is some paint on the machine....
Looks good. Now all you need is to put it to work and rub some of the new paint off.
I've been following this thread, nice job, looks great. Building one for my jd450d is on my to do list. Did you consider putting teeth on the points to prevent wear? I hope you follow up with some pics of the rake being used.
I think we will use it as is for now & keep an eye on the wear.
Please accept my apologies for the tangent. I appreciate the views of everyone on this forum, even if they see things upside down so to speak. With regard to backwards methods of clearing in the US, there's a lot of factors that aren't visible at first glance, especially on the net. Most of the clearing in this country was done before the invention of ANY internal combustion engine, and usually after clearcutting for lumber or pulp. The maximum extent of farmed land was sometime 1900-1920. Farming in the East had already declined many decades before then and on balance was returning to woodland. In Wisconsin there are huge areas that were logged, farmed and then abandoned, and have been logged again more than once. Obviously this clearing was done the hard way. Notice the signs of prosperity, horses instead of oxen, big barn in the background, women and families, the presence of a photographer. This was taken decades after the hardest clearing work was done. Much of the best (flattest and most fertile) land was in prairie at the time of settlement because it had been intentionally burned by Native Americans. That's a whole nother story. Compared to Oz, our government swung "progressive" at the end of this era and pushed for the RE-forestation of land, abandonment of "marginal" farmland etc- at least in the Midwest. My understanding is the Australian govt doubled down on expanding agriculture following WWII to give GI's opportunity. At that time the focus here was on bigger more efficient farms, and away from labor intensive marginal farming methods. I don't travel as much as I used to, but it is very rare to see a newly cleared field more than 40 acres, there just isn't enough work to justify a 32' rake IMHO. Most of the clearing (usually pushing back field edges) is done by local contractors with a medium size dozer and excavator. Here's a link if you care to see some pics of the olden days. http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Content.aspx?dsNav=Ntk:All|cutover|3|,N:1136 Here's a proposed/disputed project that would clear 4,600 acres of industrial timberland, which is plantation pine planted in rows on flat sand in quarter sections, thinned, then cut for pulp, then replanted in furrows with the trash in rows in between. The land was very poor farmland a century ago because of the sand, but the water table is shallow so it's ideal for center pivot irrigation. This farm would produce an amount of food unimaginable to the NIMBY type that are against it. The sticking point is that the irrigation would lower the creek flows that happen to keep a handful of small dammed lakes full for their second homes. http://www.farmingfullcircle.com/project_overview.html http://www.wisconsinrapidstribune.c...27/judge-rules-favor-proposed-dairy/70572694/ I can't speak for the west and southwest, where grazing is more widespread. Around here, grazing is either a lingering remnant of the way grandpa farmed, or else it's intensive rotational grazing, supposedly following the New Zealand example.
Interesting post, Delmer Another key difference might be the tenacity of the regrowth we have here, in Qld. at least. We do have large areas of naturally treeless plains, but the vast bulk of grazing country is, or was timbered at one stage. Dealing with regrowth is a never ending battle for many producers. Livestock carrying capacity is probably much less here, on average. In my area the average holding is around 15-20000 acres, and many families have two or more holdings to make a viable operation. You can see why we like wide rakes. Cheers, Greg
Anyone want to venture a guess as to the weight of the root rake? We weighed it today when we removed it from the dozer.
2,500? guessing from the pallet of pieces.
Yair . . . Delmer I don't think anyone has really said that. What I have commented on is, that with a quick look around (say) Texas with Google Earth I see millions of acres of country remarkably similar to the Australian landscape and with similar problems of woody weed such as thorny acacia, mesquite and so on . . . country that looks like it would clean up and be kept productive for grazing with a rattle over every few years with Australian style rakes. However on HEF and other sites we see folks using skids and excavators . . . for sure they are grubbing and getting rid of the individual bush but it sure puzzles us as to how this can be cost effective. I have no doubt the narrow rakes hanging from the blade are effective for their application. Cheers
12-1400 lbs?? Very nice job. Looks the part on there anyways.
I will take a guess at about 1800.
Delmer hit it right on the head @ 2,500 lbs........ good guess there!
Hey Scrub, the main reason they use skids and excavators is they can remove all the plant roots and all. With Prickly Acacia, Mesquite, Parkansonia etc busting the vegetation off at ground level is one of the worst things. Plants with 3 stems will reshoot with 10 or more and any root disturbance causes reshooting off there as well. The University of Texas ( Dallas campus) web site has a very good video for the removal of Mesquite complete with a cost analysis. This is something I looked into pretty hard a few years ago but with the decline in rural incomes and the lack of govt funding there is very little will to tackle this woody weed problem head on
Yair . . . Tones Gotcha mate, lots of prickly acacia, mesquite and rubber-vine in my past. A 35 foot rake on Hough loader, seeding, fire, and a bit of chemical allows some return from the country. . . provided it rains that is and they can still put the $hitters into Indonesia. While fuel stays below a couple of bucks a litre and cattle prices are reasonable or better it is possible to keep on top of it on the areas of thick stuff . . . I used to clatter around grubbing individual plants with an extreme tilt on a D4 blade to keep it looking "pretty" in the paddocks around the house. All bets are off when the fuel gets up a bit and I think the woody weeds are going to win. One bloke was playing around with a radio controlled winch and a little root plough on a quarter mile of synthetic rope. . . worked real well after rain they reckoned, haven't heard any feedback for a while which hardly surprising he was some where south of Longreach and its probably been four years or so since they had any rain. The only thing surviving out there are the bushes . . . might be time to look at camels or giraffes? Cheers.
Funny you should say that Scrub. I came across a very smart cocky out Winton way who was running cattle and camels for the very reason you mentioned. At that time he was getting better prices for camels than cows. That was about 8yrs ago.
I've never touched mesquite etc. Around here, any weed tree that comes back from the roots is much more vulnerable to herbicide once it's taken off growing again, must not work as well in dry condition. I can't speak for Texas either about a wide rake. If that WI project goes through, I'll try to get pictures, but I doubt that it will include a wide rake like you're talking about, even though the conditions are ideal for it. I always thought what you guys need is an autonomous vehicle that crawls around on solar power with an array of lenses or reflectors and heats the stems of any selected vegetation to the charring point. It could also map all of it's work and decide when to come back to re-treat. "Wall-e" meets "Ferngully". Don't any of you have a nerdy grandkid to build one for you? I was wondering how you had cheaper fuel, but then I saw you're talking per LITER. It was $2.11/gallon here a week ago, and only going down in the short term. What have you been paying there?
$1.38 per Litre on the Sth Coast NSW, $1.32 at home in Qld, pump price. About 4 Litres to your Gallon
Finally got to try the root rake out today for the first time, that we built up last summer & it seems to work ok for what we need. So far so good. See the link below........ https://youtu.be/4Zr2CJbt7_Y
Looks good! The cat sounds nice.
Looks like it works great, I need to build one of those.