Poor mans small tree shear.

Stephan might be able to adapt this to his DR, not sure how much power it has?
I'm clearing 10 acres of 1/2" to 3" of piss Elm and wasn't interested in bending that much!
A buddy lead me to this design, simple, cheap and very effective! 3/4" and smaller it slices right through it, bigger stuff you have to hit a few times, bigger yet, you have to get from three sides, but it works!
The box tubing is a bit large for my forks, but it works, 1/2" bolt on each keeps it on, the first design worked but I didn't use heavy enough angle iron, I had to beef it up the second time. The blade is an old wear edge off of a road grader that I cut down and sharpened to a knife edge. Works very well!

Interesting and most excellent!!!

Old chipper knives might just have a new use. Good stuff Andy.

The original design was based on a plow shear, I couldn't source one locally, I used what I had. The blade is 17" long, really to long for the mini, but I made this one to fit on a lager machine as well, hence the larger material gives it a dual use. Hadn't thought of chipper knives, but creativity certainly counts in my world!

Even at 17 HP I doubt the DR would push it hard enough to chop the tree down. I can see where that would work on a tractor or mini... Bang bang..
Pretty cool ....
I have taken up to a 3" base on a bush an a live oak... Noisy... but if it flexes enough for the DR to climb it.. CHop CHop
I need to get a camera I can depend on to video that....
Thanks Andy

Possible idea also that I didn't see in the pic's would be to put a push bar like the Fecon' s,Timber axe's except directional. say its reclaiming field and if you are going around outside to center you would want the corn row exiting left if you started left ect. Hope this is understandable

Also to this, as most newer skidsteers have float one could make a plate for a skid so the cuts would all be the stame height.
Forgot where I lived no rocks here

What are you doing with the cut material? 10 acres is going to be alot of brush!!

Stephan, the mini is only 25hp.

It's getting burnt in Spring, they plan on haying it next year. These tree's should be dry as a bone by then and burn easily with the grass.

So you ram the shrubs?

Yup! A couple of times or more if they are bigger.

That looks like good training if you ever were to get into destruction derby. I like the knife edge working as a shear like that, it shows some thought.

You gave me an idea. I have been toying with making a tree ripper to go on the 3 point hitch on a tractor. I was thinking vertical rippers, but horizontal is a better idea. My property has a few saplings that should go and my neighbor has a lot.

I like it Andy, Do you think it would work if the blade was twice or 3 times as long?

Can branch manager hijack that?

I am thinking of making it a V with the point leading, and cutting under the trees 8-10 inches where the taproot is smaller. I would have to cut the trees off about a foot high in order to drive over it. Maybe a V point back would be more effective. I could leave some slop in the 3 point hookup and it would self-center. Get rid of the pesky roots. Plowing up big tree roots sucks.

The problem I have is the tree's are so close together in this area, any larger and you are hitting multiple tree's and the machine doesn't have the power. I wish I'd have taken pics before I started on this job but I didn't. Originally I though cutting a full swath the blade would have been slick. Using it, I'm glad it's not that wide.
I'd use something thinner were I to produce it, the blade I have is almost 5/8" thick and that eats a lot of power, 3/8" should be plenty strong enough. I also had to redo it with 3/8" angle iron, I made two mistakes the first time, I used 3/16" angle and put the flat across the top. Most of the force is on the bottom, and it helps to set it better having that extra flat on the bottom.
When you have it set right, it slices and dices, too high and it folds the smaller stuff over and leaves high stumps on the larger tree's. Too low, or too much down angle and it just plows into the ground.
Knock yourself out Dave, but play with it a lot before you go full scale production, I know a lot of improvements can be made over the junk I had lying around.

Cobleskill said:

I am thinking of making it a V with the point leading, and cutting under the trees 8-10 inches where the taproot is smaller. I would have to cut the trees off about a foot high in order to drive over it. Maybe a V point back would be more effective. I could leave some slop in the 3 point hookup and it would self-center. Get rid of the pesky roots. Plowing up big tree roots sucks.

Click to expand...

I thought of that as well, but with the limited power of the mini, it'd be useless on the larger, 2-3" in my case, tree's. I can't see this design being effective on anything over 5-6" no matter the amount of power you throw at it.
Maybe if you angled the cutters, much like a plow, on both sides to cut the taproot you might lower the cutting force needed.

Not good pictures, but pictures. I went out for a couple of hours to work on it while the weather was nice, here's some of the mess.

You Tree Murderer! now its nothing but a buffalo pasture. What the hell that looks like about 40 acres of rammin there.

F that can't help your back any, Glad to hear yur up and at it though.

I think the v idea with both leading edges pointed also, so if it didn't shear she would go into the soil a little easier and maybe POP the 3" out.
Mounted close to the Plate the lift arms would have a lot of force for grubbing, might work real well on our Buckthorn problem around here.

The Branch Manager ahhhh ....... AndyRam ......hAndy Shear . . . . gut Popper

Good idea Andy. Try sharpening your blade angle to 30 degrees. From what I can see it looks blunt for slicing through trees . 10 acres is alot of ground. Wouldn't it be faster with a small clearing saw like a 250 with one of those saw blades on the end of it. I don't know what your getting paid but a job like that I would just charge the cost of any small hand tools to the job. You should have enough margin on 10 acres to pay for a clearing saw and save your mini for pushing the stuff into piles

Too bad you can't find an old Bachtold brush mower with a circular saw blade on it . It would walk through stuff like that no problem and no bending over.

That lot is 16 acres Dave, ten needs cleared and there is no hurry with it. I'm through the worst of it now, after today at least. I average an acre every two hours. Two hours and I've run a tank of gas through the mini, and I'm ready to get off and rest anyways. It's three miles from home, so it's convenient and the owner is understanding of my situation. If I get it done by spring, cool, if not, oh well. It's one of those jobs, which is nice right now.
Close is fine Dave, but you have to keep it visible! My forks are hella overkill for that machine, but it's what I could buy and put together for a decent price. But I sure like having it out where I can see what I am doing! Anything shorter than the tip of the bucket, it's too close!
You can try the V, but I'm telling you, when you have this thing set right, it glides right over the heavy grass and slices like a mother!
The "Redneck ram", "Sawin's no saw cutter"

It's around 35deg Larry, I assure you it's not blunt! When I got done I could slice a piece of paper running across it! I have a 30" blade with carbide teeth I could set up with a slow hydro motor, 600-900RPM, but the majority of these tree's are 3/4" or smaller and little effort is needed to slice them.
I'm not going to retire off of this job, but it's decent money, I don't have to work that hard at it, I don't have to get in a hurry with it, I get to experiment with some ideas and it's close to home. Not a bad deal all around.