Toolguy
Platinum Member
I have a stand of red pines along the back edge of my property, my guess is about a 1/4 acre or so. I also have lots of other trees, elm, maple & oak on my 3.5 acres. The red pines are getting old and one or two of them die every year and fall down when the wind blows hard. After the most recent one fell I decided it was time to clean up the rest of the downed trees and brush around the place. Doing it totally by hand is a lot of work so I needed to figure out a way to use my tractor. The standard bucket is not much good at moving piles of wood and brush unless it can just be pushed from one place to another. I need to move this stuff about 500 feet to an area that is safe to burn it. I also have a big pile of junk, rotten wood and brush behind my barn from when I burned wood in the house. That has been there for about 15 years and has rotted down to mostly dust. I knew I need some forks to lift the stuff. I didn't want to spend a lot of money because once the main piles are moved I probably won't use them again very much. This is what I made. I started with a piece of 2x3" tubing along the back of the bucket. I welded tabs on the ends and then bolted it throught the side of the bucket. I then welded five pieces of 4" channel iron 40" long to the tube and bolted it to the bucket. Then two 3" pieces of channel 36" long welded to the 4" channel upright and bolted to the top edge of the bucket with tabs welded to the 3". I then put some 4' 2x4s across to hold more stuff. This is the result. It takes three normal loads to fill my little 4' x 7' trailer. I then pile the bucket full by hand and make the trip to the burn pile. Once there, I unhook the trailer and use the bucket to tip it up and dump it. On Sunday, Dec. 23, I moved my whole junk wood pile in about five hours and 12 loads. Now I have to clean out the brush in the woods as the winter weather allows.
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