Ripper tooth for BH...Do they work well?

[radioman]

You used to have to deal with email directly to get anything. Does any one have any links to the "trencher"?

Also I like the concept of having a tooth horizontally to undercut the root mass. I've a maple with a deep tap root in hard clay.
I can trench around it and use a horizontal tooth to further tear it up.

main website:
Bro-Tek: Tractor Add Ons

ripper tooth/trencher:
Bro-Tek Ripper Tooth

 

[newbury]

I would suggest getting the ripping/trenching plow with the ripper.

Where is the ripping/trenching plow?

ripper tooth/trencher:
Bro-Tek Ripper Tooth

only shows the ripper tooth as far as I can see.

 

[Tom_H]

As I said in my earlier post, my hardpan is so hard that it wore the originally sharp edge of my ripper quite dull in just a few minutes. I had my Kubota parts manager find a small replaceable pointed plow tip. They cut off the flat tooth that came on the ripper, welded on some more plate, ground that down to form a stud for the pointed plow tip, and bolted the tip on. This was far more effective in ripping my hardpan, especially after it had been soaking for a few months of our cool and very wet winters. Unfortunately though, the pan is still so hard that the steel plate they ground down into a stud simply snapped one day while I was ripping some of the pan.

Just for the record, and anyone who may be wondering about it, not all hardpans are the same. Mine is Duripan, clay cemented by silica which has leeched down out of a higher layer of volcanic ash for hundreds of thousands of years. Other very hard pans are Ironpan, aggregates cemented by iron oxide, and Caliche, aggregates cemented by calcium carbonate. Fragipan, clay packed artificially by heavy machines is not as hard and is not a true hardpan. Claypan is clay that has settled and packed naturally for many millennia, but has not been cemented by another mineral; it is sometimes referred to as compacted soil. Those first three can be classified as sedimentary rock, soft as far as rock goes on the Mohs hardness scale, but much harder than compacted soil. I needed to dig trenches deep enough for some drainage. Backhoes on big tractors dig through this stuff o.k., and bulldozers rip it all the time. The Bro-tek ripper (especially with the modified tooth) allowed me to break through it a little faster than I could scratch into it with the regular Gannon bucket on my Woods BH6000 on the BX.

To order the Bro-tek, you have to communicate with him directly. You can't place an online order. Don't worry, it's not you.

 

[Shutesbury]

I think you're loosing a little of the digging power by having the tooth facing backwards like that. Extending a cylinder has more force than retracting it since the piston has more surface area.

I've had luck with putting the tooth on the root and trying to just rip part of it out. I've also had luck putting a bucket tooth or two under the root and then curling the bucket to try and snap them. It doesn't try to lift your front wheels off the ground by doing so.

I switched it to the opposite direction within about 15 minutes, and have left it since. Because the root ball was in-ground and impacted, I thought this pictured orientation would be best, but I found I had the clearance to face it downward and spear in, then strip downward.

 

[Reg]

I switched it to the opposite direction within about 15 minutes, and have left it since. Because the root ball was in-ground and impacted, I thought this pictured orientation would be best, but I found I had the clearance to face it downward and spear in, then strip downward.

What you used as a ripper looks to me very much like a box blade scarifier.
Is that what tractor supply sells them as ?
If so I might just pick one up th next time I'm passing.
For the outlay - why NOT give it a try ?
(-:

or.... I guess I could just "borrow" a scarifier off my box blade, just to prototype.
Then if it all works out I have 5 spare "teeth" - until I need to use the box blade (-:

 

[Shutesbury]

What you used as a ripper looks to me very much like a box blade scarifier.
Is that what tractor supply sells them as ?
If so I might just pick one up th next time I'm passing.
For the outlay - why NOT give it a try ?
(-:

or.... I guess I could just "borrow" a scarifier off my box blade, just to prototype.
Then if it all works out I have 5 spare "teeth" - until I need to use the box blade (-:

Good question. From my photo, the TSC labeling says "Ripper Shank w/teeth BB" and a UPC Google search doesn't give any info. Perhaps the "BB" denotes box blade? I'm new to this world, and just exercised my creative side when I saw it hanging on the display rack...

 

[oj may]

I tried getting a large maple tree stump out with my BX24, and after trenching all around with the BH, found the remaining tap root system still held it solidly in place. My pickup wouldn't budge it with chains. I want a Bro-tek ripper, but it isn't in the budget.

I went to Tractor Supply and bought a ripper tooth for $38, bought a new 5/8ths drill bit for $14, and some 5/8ths 2" bolts, nuts, flat and lock washers.

A short time later, I had a reversible ripper tooth attached to my backhoe bucket. Originally I mounted it "tine up", but found "tine down" worked better to spear under the main root ball and strip away soil and break apart the underside roots that kept the maple in place. As soil accumulated in my perimeter trenching, I still had the use of the bucket to pull it out, without switching between a dedicated ripper, and dedicated bucket. I mounted it in 'bucket neutral' alignments, so I can pull in or thrust out; and it doesn't hit the BH frame when I curl the bucket all the way in.

The ripper is very solid, and I was lifting the tractor with the torque applied at times. I may sharpen the inner shaft edge above the tooth, to cut through roots rather than snapping them, but I'm extremely happy with this multipurpose adaptation, that cost less than $55.

Being able to switch it between "tooth in" and "tooth out" in five minutes with just a ratchet wrench adds to the versatility! I've only been playing with it for an hour before losing daylight, but I used it to grab some surface roots I've been bouncing over, on the way to the storage shed, and that worked like a charm, too.

Photos attached, in the "tooth out" original position.

I like this concept. I have been thinking about welding two pieces of angle iron on the bottom center of the bucket and attaching it that way. Since I am new at this, I have to ask, 'what am I missing'?