Clearing Land?

[daswafo]

If you can rent and operate a Bobcat, you should have no problem operating a small bulldozer or excavator. Bobcats are not really made for that kind of work and you will probably have to spend more time and money with the Bobcat than a single day with a dozer or excavator. If you plan to cut the trees before using the equipment, it is essential that you leave a ???tall??? stump so that you have some leverage to push against so that you can break the roots loose. I have found it easiest to simply push the entire tree over stump and all. If you can find someone to rent you a dozer with a brush rake attachment on the blade, you will have a cleaner brush pile (i.e. less dirt in the pile). Unfortunately, most rental places I???ve dealt with don???t offer brush rakes.

If you want to get the most of your house logs without damage, dig the roots up with an excavator or backhoe and push them over. If you are using a very small backhoe like I have access to, you can put a winch cable high up in to the tree, dig on the roots some and then pull it over with your winch. I always use a snatch block off of a nearby tree so that my truck is well off to the side of the tree fall area. Once the stump is out of the ground, you can cut it as close as you like.

If you push your house trees over with a bulldozer, you might get some dents or gashes in the log depending on the thickness of your bark and how rough you get with the tree.

As for the difficulty of digging up stumps that are flush to the ground, let me put it into a time perspective from my experience. I was pushing 16??? to 18??? diameter trees over in less than 5 minutes if they were stubborn. It took seconds if they were easy. Bare stumps that were cut close to the ground took up to an hour depending on where they were located and how much time I had to spend in the hole cutting roots by hand. Of course this is all dependent on the size and condition of your equipment. I was using an old John Deere 450 dozer that weighed around 15,000 lbs.

BTW, I expect that dozer rental in Alabama is cheaper than the NorthWest.

[mbolin]

Thanks, thats exactly what I needed to know. One of my options was to let a local logger cut the small pines for pulp wood, but the logger will not want to leave a tall stump for me to work with. The small amount of money I would make selling the pulpwood may be eaten up by the extra time it would take to clear all the stumps.

[GrafikFeat]

Sorry if this is off-topic, but I have to ask...

How do you get logs out to an island?

-Jeff

Ummm... Over the bridge.

:wink:
Jim

[dmorgan]

Lots of good responses in this topic.

I did my own clearing on a 6.5 acre lot. I say clearing but I'm a tree hugger so I didn't cut any more of the large stuff than absolutely necessary.

I used a Ford 550 4x4 backhoe for most of the work. Couple of things a small dozer would have been better for but it didn't seem to be enough to rent one.

I used the bucket to push and pile the trash and the waste timber, relocate materials, unload trucks and trailers, etc.

I used a 12 inch bucket on the hoe end for the stumps. The slim profile worked great for stabbing deep around the stump to break/cut roots and the cupping action worked well for getting behind the stump and breaking the tap root. After that just a few pushes against the stump and i could snatch the thing and place it where I wanted it. Nice thing about the 12 inch bucket is you don't create a monster hole. pretty much the hole is the size of the stump.

And there are fancier tools made but I bought a Ford 8n tractor and some three point hitch tools pretty cheap and that's been the handiest darn thing I've ever owned. A box blade behind a tractor is one amazingly versitile tool. If you own a gravel road you want a box blade. :-)

Another handy tool I used in clearing is the Bobcat. Those little rascals will knock down a ton of underbrush and small trees and lifting the bucket up and down it's full reach while moving slowly throught the underbrush did wonders with pulling down and cutting off vines. Best types are the tracked models though.

David
Belmont, NC

[rreidnauer]

Sorry if this is off-topic, but I have to ask...

How do you get logs out to an island?

-Jeff

Ha, float em over! :D

[DYork]

A few things to consider, if you haven't done a lot of work with hoes, excavators or small dozers. Small dozers are good for roads, brush, and saplings, but simply don't have the weight, track surface, or HP to push over big trees.
1. In wheeled backhoes, even with a front loader, the power is in the hydraulics, not the wheels. Set the stabilizers and front bucket and use the power of the backhoe. You can push and pull more with that than you can ever get out of the wheels. As said above, use the backhoe to dig the earth away and cut the roots. Unless you have a really big machine, you will find the power in a backhoe is in the stick and curl--not the boom.
2. Dozer. One sizable enough to do all you need done may be out of your price range--the bigguns get expensive. You can get by with a smaller-lighter one if you use it right. If you can, rent one with a rear winch. Pick a helper up in the front bucket of the backhoe loader combo, and hook the winch line up about as high as you can on stubborn trees. (Don't get so far up you break the trunk off when you pull on it.) Then free spool out the cable as you move away from the tree as far as possible. Engage the winch and pull the tree over, using the leverage you gained by tying the cable up the tree trunk.

We used this method with great success 30+ years ago when all we had was an old International TD14 with cable operated blade. (No hydraulics on the blade). We had mounted a front loader on one of the 9N Fords we had, and put a fork in place of the bucket and used that to pile brush and to pick the the guy hooking up the cable on big white oak trees that the TD14 couldn't push over.

Regarding stumps. It may seem that cutting the trees down close to the ground will be ok, and it is if you never want to drive a car or truck out over the area. If in a road, the ground will settle, and the stump will end up 2-6" above grade and be a pain in the butt for years. Often, leaving a stump will result in the tree growing back as well-from the stump. Depends on the species and when it was cut. And forget about it if you ever decide to do any plowing in that area.
Way back when, we could pile brush on a dried out stump and burn it--or an old tire or 2. As dry as it has become in the last decade, I'd be afraid to try this.