Another stick rake

[Aussiebushman]

I needed a rake to stack tree rubbish after cutting out the useable firewood. The front dozer blade on my Ford 6000 of course pushes earth and even lifted slightly is not very good for pushing small stuff. The rear blade is impractical for this job too so adding a rake to the front blade seemed the best option

There were several builds posted on this forum but you go with what you have - in my case a FREE length of heavy angle, some 1/2" chequerplate and a couple of lengths of 2"X1/2" flat bar. The total cost was a few bolts, welding rods, power and paint

It all seems fine - the angle is hard up against the blade and sits on the slightly extended cutting edge of the blade so it can't go anywhere. If it needs more reinforcing, I'll just weld on some additional brackets.

 

[jenkinsph]

I suspect it will fare better if the teeth are about half the length you have now. As long as you can keep the bucket above the ground to reduce the amount of dirt you would collect. Let us know how it works out.:thumbsup:


If it were me, I would consider using the side plates as skids to help control the whole thing as it slid across the ground. Similar to a land plane grader scraper skid that would help gauge the depth and eliminate gouging.

 

[Aussiebushman]

Good advice thanks.

The ground here is very rough and that is why I left the teeth so long to provide a lot of clearance between the ground and the blade. They can certainly be shortened if necessary after some experimentation.

Any suggestions about the best way to turn the side plates into skids? I guess flat bars with the front end bent well up might do

 

[Wyobuckaroo]

G'day....

Great build.... Sometimes quick and easy builds are the most useful.....

When you have time, and with that size tractor, I presume you have a good sized back blade with angle capability....
You might want to invent and build a set of short brush teeth for the blade, and skids to limit the depth it would dig in the ground..

With a wider back blade you may have more reach and easier to move brush to piles etc...

Good luck...

 

[Aussiebushman]

Thanks for the feedback

The 6' back blade can be angled laterally so the idea of adding some brush teeth and skids could be useful.

The previous suggestion about adding skids to the new front stick rake side-plates does not look to be simple. While nothing is imposssible, these plates are well clear of the ground and it would be necessary to extend them down to skids at ground level and they would probably need to be adjustable for height. Also the entire weight of the blade will be on them

I'm still in the process of adding traction bars to both back wheels and won't try out the rake until these are completed - otherwise I'll get into a pile of timber and won't be able to back out without the wheels spinning.

 

[Sportsman762]

I have the same back blade here in the USA! It is a Massey 21, they came with rippers that mounted on the blades frame in the rear. To use them you swung the blade around and lowered the rippers.

 

[Aussiebushman]

Interesting!

Any chance of a picture please? I might be able to reproduce the arrangement

 

[bcp]

Some import/export sites show them:

Rear Grader Blade Ripper - China farm implement;tractor

Rear Grader Blade - China Rear Grader Blade, Implements

Rear Grader Blade With Rippers China (Mainland) Other Farm Machinery

Lots here:
rear blade,Buying rear blade, Select rear blade products from rear blade Manufacturers,on Page 1, over 30598 products

Bruce

 

[jenkinsph]

Thanks for the feedback



The previous suggestion about adding skids to the new front stick rake side-plates does not look to be simple. While nothing is imposssible, these plates are well clear of the ground and it would be necessary to extend them down to skids at ground level and they would probably need to be adjustable for height. Also the entire weight of the blade will be on them.

Something similar to the skids on this land plane but shorten to about 3' long. The ones in the picture are 5' long oal.
These are made out of rectangular box tubing with a piece of heavy flat bar stock on the bottom. This flat bar wraps around the end of the skids and is trimmed and ground at the top sides each end. This provides a good wear surface and can easily handle the weight of the tractor front end. If you have them stick out in front of the rake it would help hold in the sticks that you gathered. No guarantees but I think it is worth a shot. I should mention that you would have to get the sticks inside of the skids to gather them as the skids themselves will hold them down if running over the ends. I would think the skids could be set to allow the teeth to skim about 3/4" below the surface without much need for other adjustments.

Gathering sticks in bottom land fields is something I have to deal with frequently. Spacing is important as it is very easy to get them too close together and gather dirt with clumps of sod. Round rod or flat bar on edge as you have is better for this than a landscape rake. Too much surface area and you wind up carrying dirt.

Small sticks, stuff that flows through your teeth can be gathered with a pine straw rake which has 2" spacings and smaller tines guessing 5/16" rod. That said I would really like something made with heavier tines maybe 1/2" but similar in design.


Here are pictures of the land plane and skid when I built it and a pictures of a pine straw rake for reference. This is an older Leinbach rake but I recommend the newer EverythingAttachments rake with replaceable tines.

 

[boggen]

Some import/export sites show them:

Rear Grader Blade Ripper - China farm implement;tractor

Rear Grader Blade - China Rear Grader Blade, Implements

Rear Grader Blade With Rippers China (Mainland) Other Farm Machinery

Lots here:
rear blade,Buying rear blade, Select rear blade products from rear blade Manufacturers,on Page 1, over 30598 products

Bruce

awesome! scraficer teeth like a box blade but on the rear side of the blade. very very cool!

just need some bolt on wings, to have rear blade, box blade, and scraficer teeth all in one!

form some metal into a J shape, and weld onto each of the outside scraficer teeth you have.
drill a couple extra holes in each tooth, to adjust them up and down, much like scraficer teeth on a box blade


one thing that has me worred some, is snagging a tree root. and one of the teeth bending back into the cutting edge of your blade, and going to guess blade gets dented at the cutting edge vs the bolt holding the tooth shearing apart and letting the blade drop.

 

[ferrari99]

Personally I don't think skids on the outside tines would be strong enough to hold the weight. I thought the same thing about snagging on a stump or something, the only thing I think you could do to solve that would be to spring load the tines like a stump jump plow. But it is a great build Aussiebushman.

 

[Aussiebushman]

I continue to be impressed by the quality of feedback and help on this forum!

All of the suggestions made so far are very useful and ultimately, the solutions will be a combination of practicality and what is available/affordable by way of materials.

Re skids, Jenkinsph pictures are excellent and 3' long seems about right, so does setting them just an inch or so below the teeth. I'll have to work out the best and strongest way of mounting them to do this and a "wrap around" plate welded to the existing side-plates with some internal reinforcing would probably do the trick. Making the skid height adjustable might also be feasible because adjusting the height of the teeth is not as simple as drilling extra holes in each one because each has a "step" cut into it below the angle iron mounting plate to prevent it from lifting. I think it will be better to work with the device for a while, then cut them down is it proves necessary

I think the skids should NOT be extended forward beyond the alignment of the teeth because that would inhibit pushing branches etc longer than the blade

Adding "brush teeth" to the rear blade like the Chinese ones doesn't look too hard to do. They would certainly help the cleaning up process without scraping earth so I'll probably make this addition. The idea of side plates (wings) is a great idea thanks. I do not need rippers on this assembly because I already have a separate single tine ripper for heavy work (though that means changing the entire rear assembly).

Potential damage is likely to occur only to the teeth themselves (the reason they are removeable). The main blade has been bashed about many times during its lifetime and apart from scars, shows no sign of real damage

Thanks again guys - will keep you posted on developments (might be a while though)

Alan

 

[Sportsman762]

My blades does not have the rippers or extensions. I keep looking for the extensions but have yet to find any. I filled the rear of the blade with concrete to make it heavier so that I would actually cut.
Here is a snip PDF of the sales brochure for AU. I tried to upload the brochure but it was to large and the website I got it from is no longer functioning. There are side plates that can also be bolted on to make the blade wider and end plates that can be bolted on to make it a box blade.

 

[Aussiebushman]

Interesting! For my application, I really don't need the rear rippers but a way of widening the blade could be useful