Ok, I think this will work ok, but I'm a weekend warrior. So much so, green horns may laugh me right off my backhoe, but here goes the question for the HEF brain trust: I have a Cat 446D TLB with a 4in1 loader bucket. The hydraulics up front and the machine in general is stout as a I could want it. I'd like to strap a root rake to the loader bucket and unearth some thick brush on my property. Ideally, I'd like to do this on about 10 acres give or take. Note, I'm not looking to just pile cut brush, I actually wanna take it out of the ground. Most of it is 1"-3" thick woody Southern California chaparral brush. Is this possible or is it just another one of my hair brained schemes? Im thinking this is the best way to uproot this godforsaken stuff, as opposed to digging it with the hoe. I'd like to leave the dirt itself as unscathed as possible.
Yair . . . Roddd. Down the bottom of the first page of the attached link you will see some accidental pictures of a pretty standard type of rake we use for your exact job, I made this one from scrap and effectively it cost nothing . . . teeth and cutting edge are worn out grader blade and that transparent looking skin is actually stainless steel mesh from a coal washing plant. It was just lashed up along with the extended tree root ripper to clear about twenty acres which is getting close to finished. In operation the horizontal bar cuts in and tips the suckers over and then you back off and grab them by the roots . . . the main thing when working with a wheel tractor is to keep clean ground beneath you. This style of rake is designed as much to protect the front of the tractor as it is to stack the brush. It is handy to be able to see through the rake but normally such a rake would be sheeted with 1/8'' which would be plenty strong for up (say) 100 hp tractor. If you do build something similar note how I leave the outside tooth on both sides with out the horizontal cutter so that I can drop it over a recalcitrant or stubborn whippy b*****d of a limber tree and back off with a bit of lock and twist it from the ground. The operation works best after a bit of rain of course. All the best with it. Link . . . . HeavyEquipmentForums Cheers.
Don't know. Long before my first backhoe I waged war with choke cherry, thorn apple, and some junk my father called honeysuckle. In VT it grows from stumps. My father in law understood everything in the New York Times. Otherwise he could be described as vegetative. His first wife from NYC decided to have a farm. At staggering expense they hired the unknowing to open "meadows" from forest. He divorced her in 1952. By 1967 one of his local brain trust convinced him that it'd be a good idea to pay them to cut down thousands of Choke Cherry trees. In 1987when I bought it, it was as near to jungle as VT gets. A man on foot could not walk through. A dog could not walk through. Rabbits were killed trying to hop through. I began with a derelict $350. Bush Hog behind an equally derelict International B275 farm tractor. It took the summer to clear maybe 8 acres. I had entered a gunfight armed with a knife. I never got a whole day of work without a breakdown. By summers end I had learned a lot about tractor engines, tractor transmissions, tractor tires, and Bush Hog parts suppliers. I was proud of my "meadows" Mrs B was disappointed about too few camping trips, canoe trips, and picnics. She didn't grasp the thrill of carving space from desolation. (Dad taught me not to quit). Sadly, thirty years later the stumps have rotted, leaving holes making the chore of mowing most unpleasant. Now there is a fleet of tractors to choose from, and newer bush hogs, but the thirty years ago $350. Hog is the best functioning. Often the B275 is the mower tractor. I wrack my brain thinking of how to smooth my little meadows. I have excavator friends. They are amused. Push up the topsoil, process it, and put it back. I'm looking for miracles. This fall I'm going down there with a crawler & see what I can do. The winter dream project is building a rake for the crawler. Digging out rocks, and stumps with backhoe has yielded smooth looking meadows. Driving over them with tractor is a different matter. I wonder if just a tracked machine will squash the high spots, and fill the low. Willie
Scrub Puller, I like that very much. I've gotten a lot of useful information from reading your posts (and quite a few others on here). I may have a buddy fab one up. It seems like it will do the trick. I'll continue my research and check back to this thread often, as I know there are quite a few operators on here who could tackle my job with great ease.
I'd just wait for a fire; this year you won't be waiting long.....
I'm trying to get ahead of the fire!
Funny, where I live you can't make it burn if you try. VT forests are described as made of asbestos. Even piled brush is hard to start. Three truck tires piled on top of one another. Put gas in one, diesel in next, old engine oil in top. Build your pile on top. It's pretty much always wet. Willie
As you see on the national news, Kali brush is like dry paper soaked in gasoline when it comes to burning. The dry grass spreads the fire and preheats the brush, the brush then explodes like napalm hit it, and if there's anything taller than the brush, that goes up in short order along with the nice house you built under the trees because you really need the shade when it's sunny 300+ days a year. Of course all of us build our house on the top of the hill, view is best there, so the fire races up the hill to level it. A spark off a chain dragging on a road set my hill on fire 30 years ago.... I have 4000 gallons of water in a tank next to my house, have to keep any dry grass higher than 4" at least 50' from my house. 100' on the sloping parts. Fire department personally inspects every house in the district and sends a letter if anything needs attention. Then they come back out to see if it was done. If not, they will hire someone and add the cost to your property tax bill. So they are serious. I'm in a designated wild fire area, so I get to pay an additional $118 a year to the state for 'fire protection'. They don't actually hire anybody or buy any equipment, one of the democraps noticed it's 75% or more republican registration out in the country, so they decided to stick us for another $100 million or so for nothing. My fire guys spend 90% of their calls on the freeway handling accidents and putting out the cigarette butt fires; not defending my house! Only 3 place are there conditions like this; Kali, south Australia, and the namesake Mediterranean coast of Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and some other soon to be overrun country.
Several years ago a mile from my house in a very dry spring of the year we had a case of arson deliberately starting a forest fire. Where a very old forest road was cut into the side of a very steep hill, someone had intentionally gathered dry maple leaves together to prepare a fire. It spread uphill quickly, rose 100' up the hill, then spread. 6.5 acres burned without being noticed by anyone. It self extinguished. Someone discovered it days later. Fire investigators said flame wasn't likely taller than an inch at any time. Dry maple leaves got burned where the tips turned up. The flat centers were untouched. A week later it was sort of hard to tell it had burned. Willie
Rodd Check out the Brush Brute. Google it. I had one and it did a great job. Pulled out roots and all then burned them. Would work on 3 inch trees. Had it on a 70hp 2wd farm tractor.
El Hombre, I agree on the ridiculousness of the recently added fire protection tax. It's completely unfair. They tax the people that actually keep their properties clear. Buddyo, I'll check it out, thanks for the tip.