Tree Shear

[texbaylea]

Has anyone seen plans for building a tree shear? I had someone to come in with a tree shear mounted on a large skid steer. He is the only one I could find but lives very far away. I caught him at the end of a very large job nearby. He cut down 50-60 large juniper/cedar in about 4 hours with stacking them. These had trunks of up to 12" at the ground where he cut them. I don't want to burn and want the trunks for fence post so I am delimbing and shredding the branches - slow job - which means I have to catch him in the area for a day occassionally. I am planning on buying a new 30-35hp Kubota and would like to build something sized to it. If I could take out all the small stuff I could get the tree shear man for 2-3 days to take out the rest of the large stuff.

Looking at a Kubota L3130 or L3430.

[leaddog]

here is one that someone posted a while back. Its pricey but you could use it for what you need and sell it so your final cost wouldn't be much. www.treeshear.com/hydrasnip.htm
leaddog hydrasnip

[MMM]

Do a search on "tree snipper" in this forum. I'm thinking of building one for my loader tractor. There may have been some links to shear attachments also,. I priced one at $2,500 and figure I can build one for a fith of that price.

Mac

[slowzuki]

I'm looking at that hydrosnip picture thinking what the cab would look like after snipping... The is no grapple to hold the tree after the snip!

Does this concern anyone?
Ken

[Charlie_in_TX]

I assume you are talking about ceder in the 4" range and smaller?

A shear similar to what was shown except only one movable edge. Shart off with 4" square tubing. Build something that looks like a '4'. The long side goes closest to the loader. The tringular section goes out horizontally. Where the long side makes a 90 degree angle with the fixed edge make a hinge for a 1/2" movable cutter. Place a hydralic ram between the cutter and the long side. You may need to double up this long side too make it stronge enough. Where the hinged cutter hits the fixed section weld on a 1/2 cutter edge. If I did't make myself clear let me know and I will try again.

[texbaylea]

slowzuki: I share your concerns. The rig that I hired had a grapple about 6' up on an 8' protective back frame. This allowed him to lift and carry the whole tree to stack them.

texbaylea

[texbaylea]

Yes, I was thinking about being able to take out cedar and yaupon up to about 5". That is about the limit of what my Woods 5000 chipper shredder will handle. I was looking for prepared plans to have a reasonable hope that whoever was selling therm had really understood the strength of materials involved. I am a physicist not an engineer and don't want to have to learn that disicipline.

[frank_f15]

i don't know anything about these things , but i do have to admit i was thinking the same thing. what stops the tree from falling back on the tractor? [img]/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]