Land Clearing

[gordon]

For lack of a better term it takes a cowboy to run one of those. The key to using one with a bobcat, you ease up to the tree and put some pressure pushing away from you before you start the jaw action. Then close the jaws and the tree is supposed to fall away from you. This works only on small trees. I've never run one but watched a guy one day run one and it's not for me! Maybe when I was younger and dumber!

But it also goes back to how tall the tree is as well. Shorter trees no problems it's the taller trees that get ya.
Gordon

 

[jyoutz]

These are called hydraulic shears and they are often used on the larger bobcat machines for pulpwood logging. They work well on flat ground, but our loggers quit using them in the woods because a bobcat machine with a 60 foot pine in the shears tends to topple over and roll on slopes. I've never seen them used on compact tractors, but I'd guess you could mount them on anything that had the hydraulic pump capability to operate the shears.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

You'd have to know what you're doing to attempt using one of those unless you are hoping to see the horizon go vertical on you!

Small trees yes, each species has different weights. Ever see a picture of what happens when a good size cottonwood tree, for instance hits a house? It doesn't lean on it like some others, it goes right to the foundation.

I woke up to my wife yelling one day, the property next to us was being cut, all she could see out of the window was a 100 foot tall fir tree "walking" around!

A guy was using a big loader, I think a Cat 544 (rubber tires) to snip the 12-24" diameter (DBH to you woodsy folks) trees off flush with the ground. He would usually put them where he wanted them but the ground was rough with old stumps etc and sometimes he would start to tip and have to put them down NOW! He never put the machine over, a couple of times he waited till the last minute to drop it. Great sense of balance!

I've also watched a tree harvester do this, they grab the tree, cut it, and they can slide the tree sideways through something to delimb it, and the computer cuts it to length!

Down south in the pine country they use a device for the tree farms on the smaller trees on previously graded land where they pull the tree, stump and all, out of the ground like a weed, cut the stump off, limb it and cut it (again that's buck it) to length.

My chainsaw and I feel a bit slow and old watching those guys!

The bad aspect to this is getting a big stump out later that is flush cut is really a problem with a typical rental size dozer, nothing to push on up high for leverage. I ended up buying the property that was logged and rented a track hoe (more fun then Disneyland). I loved it and my resting-in-the-shed-instead-of-being-destroyed backhoe loved me renting it! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

del

 

[dmccarty]

Del has some right on comments about this sorta stuff and I'll add my two cents.

I really wonder if this thing would work on oaks and other tough hardwoods. When my land was timbered the heavy equipment they used was awesome stuff. The cutting machine had a 30+ inch cutting head that was pretty close to an inch thick. This machine could cut a 24 inch tree in a second. It could carry the tree and drop it where the operator wanted. This thing could have driven over my full size pickup and not even known it was there. It was also armoured like a tank. It needed to be since once the trees were cut it could be leaned back ON the machine to be carried around....

They had two kinds of teeth for the cutter, cheap and expensive. I think the expensive teeth were carbide. They lasted something like two to three times longer than the cheaper teeth UNLESS they cut chiped.

I'm finally getting to my point, if I really have one, using on of these things to cut trees 5 inchs+ without a FOPS would be nuts. Even with a FOPS I don't think I would want this on a tractor. At least with a skid steer you seem to have a lower center of gravity and some protection. For trees 5 inches or less a decent size tractor can safely push over at least pines and have a good chance of getting the stumps out of the ground. I cut 1600 feet of overgrown road with a good Stihl trimmer with steel circular saw blades with trees up to 5 inches. Pine was no big deal. The Stihl would be a lot cheaper and more usefull on other projects.

My other question would be, how often do you have to sharpen this thing?

Hope this helps...
Dan McCarty

 

[DaleW]

For Mark and all others contemplating land clearing.........
Think real hard before you start a job like this. There are many professionals in this field and even they run into unforseen problems at times.
Just remember...Think Hard............and check out the picture
Dale W

 

[TraderMark]

Please guys... don't even think about one of these things unless you have an OSHA approved 4-post FOPS.

I work on logging equipment.
These are reffered to as "flat shears" or "pincher heads" and I can NOT believe they are advertising these things without mentioning the dangers of falling limbs or even the entire tree falling back on the machine.

The machines I work on usually have a "saw head" on them, the shear heads are becoming a thing of the past for many reasons. The saw disc is almost 6 ft in diameter and takes a 2 inch kerf and it turns 1200 rpms so the teeth cut into the tree @ 196mph.

I see almost every time I go to the woods to work on one of these machines, a tree come back over the saw head and fall on top of the machine. These machines are built for that though.
http://www.blount-fied.com/images/splashhydroax.jpg

So again.... please don't even think of one of these "shear heads" unless you're willing to get a machine designed to protect you.

 

[RobS]

Now THAT'S a Tim Taylor machine!!!

 

[RJohnson]

At the Forth Worth Stock Show this year they had one mounted to a Bob Cat and were running a video of it in action against a 24" diameter oak tree. After watching the video for about 20 minutes and see the tree shake in every which direction, I came to the conclusion that my Sthil chainsaw could have already cut it down and land where I wanted it to go. This tree was in the middle of a pasture and I finally gave up waiting for it to fall. I second the motion it looked real dangerous. Be safe.

Randy

Oh by the way, the terminator would not cut it in one wack, the operator kept running around the diameter of the tree sort of nibbling at it. I was not impressed.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Rjohnson on 03/09/01 08:27 PM (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[TraderMark]

Randy...
I'm not one to usually dispute claims made by a manufacturer, but I had my doubts when I read that about snipping a 20' tree in one bite.
As I said.... I work on logging equipment and I have seen machines with a much larger "shear heads" (9 inch diamter cylinder in fact) and those won't even smap a 20" oak in one bite.

 

[TraderMark]

RobS
You're right!
/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif
It's like a giant skilsaw turned on its side with a couple sets of arms above to hold the trees after they've been cut.