MIE Ripper on my BH92

[JoshPA]

Got my new ripper attachment from Michigan Iron & Equipment. Could not be happier. Wear safety glasses with this thing!

We thought about building one. Unless you have access to a nice machine shop, you can't beat the price. Received it in about 10 days.

Some pictures:

Went after this MONSTER stump. Still working on it.

 

[GreatWhitehunter]

Very nice, in regards to pricing do you guy's really feel it's that great of a price? It's got very limited function. I think a 9" bucket might be a good compromise and has more uses. I was real close to ordering one from MIE but just don't think I'll use it enough to justify the cost. I'm not knocking the craftsmenship or there pricing just it's usefulness. I mean there hoe specific and after your all done the stumps or rocks then what?

Matt

 

[JoshPA]

I have 14 acres worth of stumps and rocks to deal with. Give me 10 years or so and I will get back to you!

This thing eats roots. Thick roots. I could see this actually paying for itself based on the amount of fuel I would go through if I just used a bucket.

 

[GreatWhitehunter]

For your situation it will definately work out. With only a few acre's and most of my stumps removed I just can't justify it. Well mabe I'll find a way LOL. It sure is mean looking. I wonder how it would work from trenching.

Matt

 

[RaytheOne]

Very nice, in regards to pricing do you guy's really feel it's that great of a price? It's got very limited function. I think a 9" bucket might be a good compromise and has more uses. I was real close to ordering one from MIE but just don't think I'll use it enough to justify the cost. I'm not knocking the craftsmenship or there pricing just it's usefulness. I mean there hoe specific and after your all done the stumps or rocks then what?

Matt

I have a TAG ripper, and I can say you disturb a lot less dirt with a ripper, than you do a bucket. You have to to try and work the bucket in between roots, and the ripper concentrates force on a single point. Better for me anyway initially, but i usually end up using both on a big stump. More seat time, and that's always good. :thumbsup:

 

[nickel plate]

I also have the MIE ripper tooth on my Woods BH90-X and am in full agreement as to its ability to slice through tree roots with relative ease and not disturb the soil near as much as the Woods' smallest offered 12" bucket would do.
It takes a bit of time to attach to the dipper stick even with the aid of an overhead chain hoist but what it does totally outweighs that slight inconvenience.

 

[IslandTractor]

Very nice, in regards to pricing do you guy's really feel it's that great of a price? It's got very limited function. I think a 9" bucket might be a good compromise and has more uses. I was real close to ordering one from MIE but just don't think I'll use it enough to justify the cost. I'm not knocking the craftsmenship or there pricing just it's usefulness. I mean there hoe specific and after your all done the stumps or rocks then what?

Matt

I don't think a 9 inch bucket is in the same league as the ripper for digging out stumps but it is even better for ripping out full trees. I removed about 50-60 trees last fall with mine and could get a good size tree down in about 20 minutes start to finish. A good part of that time was moving the tractor and carting off the whole tree. The key difference is that with a bucket you are digging, with the ripper you are doing what a subsoiler does only with precision. I could rip through most roots of trees up to six inches or so in a single pass without moving any dirt. Bigger trees up to 14 inches or so require a bit more work to locate the main lateral roots as they can be deeper but I still didn't need to move much dirt as the MIE ripper tends to plow the dirt away as you rip so the next pass can be deeper. And, you are not wasting a lot of time building piles of spoils that you later need to move back into the hole. The key reason I think the ripper works better than a narrow bucket is that you are putting all the backhoe curl force into a ONE inch area of the target root rather than spread out across 9-18 inches with a bucket. It is a knife not a scoop.

The only thing I found a bit frustrating was the occasional big root that I could not immediately break with the ripper. I had to pick away at the root or move outward to where the root was smaller. I modified my ripper over the winter by adding projections on the front and back of the ripper shank to tear out chunks of a root if the ripper slides over it rather than breaking it. Cannot report yet on how the mod works (haven't remounted it yet and may not for a while as Fall is tree dropping season around here).

Although the ripper really is pretty specialized for tree work, I also found it better than a bucket to dig out surface rocks. Instead of messing up the area around the rock I could just slip the ripper right down next to it and curl it up. Pretty slick. I haven't yet used it for digging a micro trench for electric wire or pipe but it does a good job of creating a 8 or 9 inch wide six inch deep trench with 18 further inches of soil below loosened with a single swipe. Multiple swipes in the same trench tends to push the soil out and deepen the trench by six or so inches each stroke. No need to pivot the bucket to build a spoils pile at least if you are only going down a foot or 18 inches.

Digging stumps is less efficient as you don't have the weight of the tree to help you unroot the thing. The task that was closest to using a bucket was digging out large stumps (24 inch diameter) as in those cases there was just a lot of dirt that needed removing before you can get to the deepest roots. Still, I'd use the ripper rather than my 18 inch bucket for those jobs.

 

[GreatWhitehunter]

Do you guys think the ripper would help with this size stump? This is one of the smaller ones I've removed.

 

[IslandTractor]

Do you guys think the ripper would help with this size stump? This is one of the smaller ones I've removed.

I have removed a bigger one and it went a bit faster than with a bucket but stump removal is not as quick as tree removal with the ripper. It really helps to have the weight of the tree to pull up the lower roots once you have ripped the main lateral near surface roots. Otherwise you need to dig low enough that you can get leverage to tip the stump over. That size tree can be "outed" in about half an hour of side ripping and then pushing over but to dig out just the stump took me probably two or maybe even three hours solid work with the ripper.

 

[acme97]

I've been thinking of getting a ripper for Kubota L35 backhoe. I've been looking at the MIE and Bro-Tek versions. What made you go with MIE vs another one?