piling blade/ land clearing advice...please

[200lc1]

Trying to solve some issues I've been having, prepping a 160 acre logged area for hay land. Due to work, I only get a few days per month to work the land. I started with an excavator and brush rake worked very well, but too slow, approx. an acre per day. Added a td20g with a piling blade, opens up ground significantly faster, but with the 20" spacing on the blade, I have to put the blade down too far to pick up the debris on the ground(picking up a lot of sod). Up till now I've tried some different techniques, but find windrowing the best. I basically push windrows as far as I can in one pass, so about 75 feet from either side, so about, 150 feet of cleared land per windrow. I try to roll the windrow as much as possible in each pass. I have then broken up the windrows and pushed it up into piles to burn. Two months and still burning inside the core of the piles, I cracked open the piles yesterday and they lit up again.
So, my main problem is that I can't seem to shed the dirt/sod for burning properly, the wood is pretty clean and dry otherwise. Do I add tines to the blade so I can skim the surface and leave the sod behind? Is there some other technique that works better? The land needs to be pretty clean before I subject my tractor tires to it. One drawback with my schedule is that I don't always get dry conditions to work in.
Thanks for any and all advice.

 

[farmerlund]

I use this style of rake. have had if for 6-7 years. the curve shape lets you lift up a little and allows dirt to fall out. works well for our area.
With 160 acres to do that sounds like a job that will take awhile. best of luck

 

[clearprop]

Question for ya farmer, would you mind explaining your work-flow process? for moderate to heavy clearing, do you use the dozer blade to push the trees over and then hook up the rake to cleanup and pile? or do you use another machine (trakhoe) to take the trees down and then just the rake to push it together?

 

[200lc1]

Thanks, would be happy to get 10-20 acres per year into production. I do get a couple stretches of time off in the year to work at it.
Seeing your blade reinforces my interest about adding more teeth to mine. Was hoping there was some method that might otherwise work, at least for now.
Right now just trying to push the windrows and piles over so I can plant a patch in the spring. You can see how dirty my piles are, of course the pile was quite large when burnt the first time.

 

[farmerlund]

Most of my jobs are old farmsteads and tree rows from 1 row to 8 wide, and 1/2 to a mile long. I normally push trees over with a D8H. than pick up with a 210 Volvo excavator or a 973C with a grapple bucket. I don't waste much time picking up the small branches. I just whisk them off to the side. I also try not to drive over anything, it breaks up the wood and grinds it into the ground. also try to keep the ground smooth and level. It help with the clean up at the end.

Than I come along with the 700J and the rake and slide the sticks and branches to the pile. I start close to the pile and work my way farther away. If I have a lot of debris I throw it on the piles with the excavator.

Easy peasy. LOL

 

[Mother Deuce]

Excavator rake like the pictured (long tines) on a 220 or 300 and ideally a thumb is pretty efficient for restacking dirty piles and will produce piles for burning.
A cat is going out run the excavator over 160 acres but if my target was ten to twenty for the season and I was going to burn and I had to pick one or the other
I would probably go with the excavator for cleaner piles and to handle the burn piles. (handle it once) however if I had both to draw on clear and stack with the
dozer and burn with the excavator. I envy you that project used to love to clear and burn.

 

[Tones]

200lc1, Use a rake like farmerlund's or even better have a look at the rakes that are used in Australia. Your td20 should be able to push a 20ft wide rake no worries. Raking wet ground is a PITA cause a lot of dirt sticks to the timber while your'e trying like mad to keep it clean. Before you get a rake/blade full to the stack start doing a series of very short pushes. Start this with the rake/blade on the ground and as you push raize the blade so that the timber rolls. Using this method a lot of dirt will drop out of the timber and keep your stacks cleaner.
If it was my job at this time of the year I'd be concentrating on clearing standing timber. To do this lay the timber down at 90 deg to where you want the stacks then later on as the dirt dries start raking.
One other tip, Don't make the stacks to big. Big stacks make big heat which then kills the emzines(spelling) in the soil and nothing will grow.

 

[200lc1]

I like the aussie blades, haven't seen them around my parts though. My blade is similar to farmerlund's except it only has 7 teeth, which is very common around my area. I also got a SAT blade with my machine, but am thinking the dirt problem will get worse. Unfortunately, and fortunately, I don't have trees to push over, sold them all for saw logs. I find any of that type material pushes quite easily with my setup, what I'm left with now is mostly logging debris and stumps. None of the stumps are from trees over 18" diameter, mostly smaller than that, easy to push out, but hard to hook onto. When they logged, the trees were cut almost flush to the ground. I find it difficult to keep a blade full, pushing and rolling smaller pieces like that. I'm afraid if I don't get it clean enough to start, I'll destroy my farm equipment trying to finish it.

 

[Tones]

I see you have a ripper on your dozer. Is it single or 2 tine? If it's 2 tine make yourself a cutterbar. This is done by welding something like a worn cutting edge between each ripper boot. With that attached pull the rippers at about 18"- 24" below ground. That should pop the stumps easy as then clean up with the rake. Over here it's called blade ploughing.

 

[Queenslander]

I’ve found that, if you’re burning dirty piles, you have to rake them out while they are still really hot so that there are plenty of coals to catch the unburned timber alight.
This can be pretty spectacular and nerve racking at the same time but it is pointless pushing up burnt heaps even further.
You have to try to rake the unburned timber into mini piles mixed with hot coals.
As Tones said, don’t make the piles too big if they are dirty and don’t light more than you can clean up before the fire gets too cool.

 

[200lc1]

It has 3 positions, but only got one blade and mount with the dozer, a second was offered at first then the guy said he wasn't sure where he'd left it and wasn't too concerned to find it. It's a bit different, Ateco, tines pivot against a snubber, and the blade assy pivots on a pin on the dozer mount. I've looked pretty hard at those ploughs, not sure what type steal and thickness I'd need. I think I can build the receivers for it on this ripper, if I had the second Ateco tine I'd use them, and weld a blade across. I'm assuming 2" thick a/r plate would be required, say, 2 foot by the width of the tracks. Be a bit spendy for the materials, but if I knew a hundred percent it would work and save time, probably be worth it.

 

[200lc1]

Queenslander, I know what you mean, glad it has a cab, the ash cloud can get pretty crazy when disturbed, prefer the distance the excavator gives when turning over the piles. Unfortunately, my work schedule dictates my clearing schedule. I kind of had to force burning a bit this fall, hoping it would consume most of the piles, and it did. Yesterday, I expected to spread out the piles and repile what was unburned, didn't expect it to still be burning inside, no sign of any smoke, till I disturbed it. We have had little snow so far this fall, thought I could get some days in over the Christmas holiday. Today we got a good dump of snow, hopefully I can get a bit more work done yet.

 

[catman13]

1 ) those piles will be hot for up to 6 to8 months
2 ) do you have a picture of your rake blade and the other blade too.
3 ) do you have a picture of the rake on the excavator

 

[epirbalex]

Trying to solve some issues I've been having, prepping a 160 acre logged area for hay land. Due to work, I only get a few days per month to work the land. I started with an excavator and brush rake worked very well, but too slow, approx. an acre per day. Added a td20g with a piling blade, opens up ground significantly faster, but with the 20" spacing on the blade, I have to put the blade down too far to pick up the debris on the ground(picking up a lot of sod). Up till now I've tried some different techniques, but find windrowing the best. I basically push windrows as far as I can in one pass, so about 75 feet from either side, so about, 150 feet of cleared land per windrow. I try to roll the windrow as much as possible in each pass. I have then broken up the windrows and pushed it up into piles to burn. Two months and still burning inside the core of the piles, I cracked open the piles yesterday and they lit up again.
So, my main problem is that I can't seem to shed the dirt/sod for burning properly, the wood is pretty clean and dry otherwise. Do I add tines to the blade so I can skim the surface and leave the sod behind? Is there some other technique that works better? The land needs to be pretty clean before I subject my tractor tires to it. One drawback with my schedule is that I don't always get dry conditions to work in.
Thanks for any and all advice.

I think you are doing the best you can ,dirt is going to hang to stump because of the roots contained in it . Wish I had a digger to rake a fire over as one can pick and choose stump by stump . Both me and a neighbour are doing much the same on our blocks , he is taking his ground good enough to do what you are planning while all I want is to grow grass to graze cattle on . Neighbour is still only planning to graze his bit , just no small sticks to rupture tires . His operation ,dozer , digger , wheel tractor ending in drilling seed , takes over a year for him to grow grass and it goes yellow because he's knocking around his first few inches of soil , burrying it . Mine , run dirty big dozer at the trees , up to 400 mm dia , follow them to windrow 2 - 3 times further than yours or just a big pile in the middle somewhere , flick match in the autum or spring so long as there is wind , follow up on the clear with seed , by hand as soon as it rains . Prior to seed is where you digger would be handy cleaning up the small stuff and stoking , the fires . Grass in weeks and its green a year later or whats left of it after the quail, wild pigs, goats and deer have done their collective damage .

 

[200lc1]

Catman here's some picks of my rakes, the other blade is a standard 12ish foot manual angle, hydraulic tilt, no pic.
Managed to rake out and restack a couple piles today, wind helped spark them back up. Happy that there is only small pieces left. If I got everything down to that, my farm equipment will be fine. If I can this week, I'll try roll my windrow over some more and pluck out some material to burn. Come spring, burning is pretty much over, for the fire hazard.
I appreciate all the advice, really need to improve my productivity next year.View attachment 190119 View attachment 190120