I am sorry for not getting back with you guys on your questions. I have been busy as he** and have been spending my little computer time at garagejournal.com (awesome place) getting ideas for finishing my shop and garage. I go by the same username on all the forums I am on.
45 x 67 Woodshop/Metalshop-Garage-Mancave - The Garage Journal Board
I will try to get some more pictures posted within the next couple of weeks. I am going to try and clean it up and paint them all this summer/fall to match the tractor. I only used 3/16" material for the scoop and there hasn't been any issues whatsoever of it flexing or bending. I would like to add some removable teeth or something similar to aid digging through the harder soils and roots.
The design works great. I helped my dad move 30+ 4 - 6 foot pine trees at his property and we were able to dig the new holes and move them all in less than three hours in hard clay soil this spring. I can imagine how long this would have taken if we had to dig them by hand. So far everyone of them have survived and I think the design is a success for what I wanted to use it for. I also moved a 9 - 10 foot pine for his neighbor while we were at it and I had it popped out of the ground with a large root ball in less than 10 minutes.
Once you get the technique down it goes pretty easy. I usually on the smaller trees attack the tree from one side first to cut the roots on that side and then move 180 degrees to the other side to cut those roots and then lift out the tree, rootball and all. On the larger tree I attacked it from 3 sides and it was no problem at all. Only issue is the lifting capacity of the FEL on my 2305, but that also keeps me out of trouble. I have also used this scoop to help with burying my downspout tiles and it is much easier than digging by hand and i don't have to rush to get the rental trencher back.
What size steel did you use for the fork mounts?
Did you make your own slots with just 4" or so pieces welded up to another flat iron? Any chance of a closeup of that? I'm looking to do the same thing with mine but was going to 5/16" angle iron somehow.
I will get the measurements i used and materials used. But yes, I just used small pieces and spaced them to create the notches for the forks to lock in. I did change the design from my original pictures I posted. I remove the center top piece so i can just slide the forks to the middle and remove. I also just leave the tracks mounted and only remove the forks and bolts that hold the scoop on and then bolt the scoop on top of fork tracks.
Can you make the stump bucket to mount like the forks instead of the 16 bolts? Layers of quick attach..
With my cordless impact wrench, socket adapter, socket, and a wrench I can change out the forks and put the scoop on in less than 15 minutes. I would rather not have to worry about the scoop moving and haven't really sat down to think about making it quick mountable. I am thinking about making another style scoop for trenching that doesn't have angled sides and i still don't think I would mess with trying to make it quick attach since it takes suck little time to switch out since i am not doing production work.