IslandTractor
Super Star Member
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2005
- Messages
- 15,802
- Location
- Prudence Island, RI
- Tractor
- 2007 Kioti DK40se HST, Woods BH
The trouble with forks is that you will need to get off the tractor to secure each rock and again to unload the forks as you'll need to remove the chain or whatever each time. Benefit of forks is that they are cheaper and have other uses besides brush, logs and rocks.
You certainly don't need a six foot grapple to move rocks. A smaller grapple will do the job just as well and give you greater net lift capacity. You should also be able to carry your standard bucket in the grapple if that is useful. Even lightduty grapples can lift pretty big rocks. I can lift a five or six foot Jersey barrier size slab with my 48 inch light duty grapple.
Using forks and chains to place a single decorative boulder makes a lot of sense. It would be rather time consuming to attempt using that system moving hundreds of rocks to actually build a wall. If a BH thumb is out of the question then just a grapple plus a few big crowbars would be faster. It is possible to be fairly precise with a grapple even though that is not how they are typically used. Certainly forward and backward is easy with the loader dump/curl and moving the tractor a bit. Lateral movements obviously require repositioning the tractor so moving inches laterally can be a hassle and difficult to do accurately.
You certainly don't need a six foot grapple to move rocks. A smaller grapple will do the job just as well and give you greater net lift capacity. You should also be able to carry your standard bucket in the grapple if that is useful. Even lightduty grapples can lift pretty big rocks. I can lift a five or six foot Jersey barrier size slab with my 48 inch light duty grapple.
Using forks and chains to place a single decorative boulder makes a lot of sense. It would be rather time consuming to attempt using that system moving hundreds of rocks to actually build a wall. If a BH thumb is out of the question then just a grapple plus a few big crowbars would be faster. It is possible to be fairly precise with a grapple even though that is not how they are typically used. Certainly forward and backward is easy with the loader dump/curl and moving the tractor a bit. Lateral movements obviously require repositioning the tractor so moving inches laterally can be a hassle and difficult to do accurately.