Ideas needed!

[nasdaqsam]

OK, heres the deal. I have a parcel of property that has a beach. Well could be beach......currently it is clay base (so limited movement is the order of the day, bucket work other than back bragging and dumping is out) with pea stone/sand mix and then 2" to 2' or larger rocks scattered through out. I want to have my fabricator build some kind of a rake to mount to the BH bucket so I can set-up and "rake" the beach, pulling all the stones and leaving the peastone sand mix. The bucket itself works good for this but 12" at a time is very time consuming. I'm not worried about the large rocks as we are building a thumb for that. A rock bucket will not work as I will just sink out of site trying to push through it. Ideally it would be easy-on. easy-off type set-up.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

 

[Bob_Skurka]

If I was you, I would buy something like a 3pt mount Midwest TILT landscape ("22 series" Landcape rakes have the tilt feature). The reason I would buy a Tilting landscape rake for the 3pt is because I could take apart the rake at the tilt pivot. Then I could fashion a way to mount the rake end onto the front bucket. When you are done raking the stones out of the beach, then you could simply put it back together and have a landscape rake for the back of the tractor too!

The only thing you'd have to fabricate would be the mount to clamp it to the FEL bucket. The rake would then stick out in front of the tractor, and you would simply back drag with the tractor pulling the rocks.

I would think a landscape rake would do a very nice job of straining out the rocks.

 

[bobodu]

How about a boom pole dragline type thingie?

 

[nasdaqsam]

Hi Bob,

I think your right a landscape rake would work best. I do have a woods but like I said I can not pull it with the limited traction on the beach. Also the area is very small so any type of dragging or FEL work is very limited thats why I was thinking along the lines of something around 3' or so wide for the BH. I could work an area then move and work another.

I guess I was a little confusing on the FEL work. I can dump loads of pea stone/sand mix then back drag slightly. I'm pretty sure I could not drag a rake with any amount of stones in it at all.

Maybe I can find a small landscape rake (cheapy) and fashion that somehow. Possibly something with removable tines so I could remove every other one to get the larger rocks and work my way down to the small stuff that is left. Any thoughts?

To explain the beach and base a bit better. Being the base is clay and always wet (prox. to lake) it barely holds this size tractor up. If I work it back and fourth at all it becomes soup very quickly. I pulled a mid size BH on it the other day and instantly buried it to the cab. Also because it is a beach the land slopes to the water which means I am pulling everything up hill. I believe the BH is the only solution. It's a lot slower but still better than hand work.

 

[nasdaqsam]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( How about a boom pole dragline type thingie? )</font>I'm not quite sure of what that is. Do you have a link to such a thing?

Thanks

 

[Bob_Skurka]

I guess I didn't realize you had a BH. That said, why not take the bucket off, and just mount the Landscape Rake onto the bucket pivot points, then use the backhoe to back drag the modified rake?

 

[nasdaqsam]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I guess I didn't realize you had a BH. That said, why not take the bucket off, and just mount the Landscape Rake onto the bucket pivot points, then use the backhoe to back drag the modified rake?


)</font>Now that would work. I kinda wished I could do it with out removing the bucket but by removing it and fabricating the rake to pivot like the bucket may give me more flexability. Now I just need to find a small cheap rake with removable tines to hack up...er fabricate.

Thanks

 

[jmc]

Maybe you could find the landscape rake tines and make a rake any width/spacing you want just by bolting them to a bar.

Or possibly rake teeth (Rural King rake teeth) might work for certain size rocks. You almost have to see one to judge. As I recall, they are about 12" long made from about 3/16" diameter spring steel. Looks like they could just slide on a round bar and be held on with a central bolt.

Bob's idea of a pivot would be nice in mounting your bar of springs since the ground you are raking will often not be parallel with the ground your BH is sitting on. Otherwise, your're raking on one side of the rake or you need whimpy springs.

 

[nasdaqsam]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Maybe you could find the landscape rake tines and make a rake any width/spacing you want just by bolting them to a bar.

Or possibly rake teeth (Rural King rake teeth) might work for certain size rocks. You almost have to see one to judge. As I recall, they are about 12" long made from about 3/16" diameter spring steel. Looks like they could just slide on a round bar and be held on with a central bolt. )</font>I think making it from scratch may be a viable option if to much fabrication is required. I think the rake teeth you have shown may be a bit small for this application but I will look into it a little deeper. As "most" of the rocks are in the 6" and under range and well embedded in the clay it is going to take a pretty strong tine to handle the load.

Thanks

 

[jmc]

I agree they would be too light for embedded rocks. If the ground is very soft, you may just need to make a rigid "comb". Sometimes things like this are best designed by the fabricator around the materials he has on hand, preferably scrap.

 

[nasdaqsam]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I agree they would be too light for embedded rocks. If the ground is very soft, you may just need to make a rigid "comb". Sometimes things like this are best designed by the fabricator around the materials he has on hand, preferably scrap. )</font>My fabricator sure is happy I bought this new toy. LOL

 

[bobodu]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( </font><font color="blueclass=small">( How about a boom pole dragline type thingie? )</font>I'm not quite sure of what that is. Do you have a link to such a thing?

Thanks )</font>

I was thinking about a pole that attaches to a three point hitch.


Use this to drop a rake or box of some sort at the water's edge.Then just pull the tractor up the grade.You could use a pretty long pole because there wouldn't be much weight hanging from it.

 

[nasdaqsam]

Thanks for the picture. I think if I did not have the BH then that may have been a good option. I feel the BH will give me more control over an area with regards to depth and size of stone I want to pull. A good idea none the less.

Thanks again

 

[sodamo]

Possibly adapt an ATV landscape rake to the BH.

ATV Rake

 

[nasdaqsam]

The rake is done. We ended up using my Woods rake and making it so we could just unbolt the 3PT portion and bolt this adapter on.

I will try to get and post some pictures of it tonight, if I can figure out how to do that.

It looks real slick. We even figured it to beable to angle as original fit.

Stay tuned.

 

[nasdaqsam]

Picture 1 of the adapter.

 

[nasdaqsam]

One more different angle. I will get some of it mounted this weekend and post them.

 

[have_blue]

Looks like you solved your problem Sam! Nice looking adapter!


About the traction problem: Couldn't you just dump a couple of loads of sand up higher on the beach? It would make it nicer anyway.

 

[nasdaqsam]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( ( Looks like you solved your problem Sam! Nice looking adapter!))</font>Thank you.


</font><font color="blue" class="small">( ( About the traction problem: Couldn't you just dump a couple of loads of sand up higher on the beach? It would make it nicer anyway. ))</font>I could if the D.E.C. didn't exist. Unfortunitily they do though. I am going through the permit process now to just be allowed to remove the non-native rock that gets deposited there yearly from neighbors retaining walls and then grading and putting down pea stone (thats the smallest they will allow).

I'm thinking of piling the stones and then selling them back to the neighbors when they need them. A few more years and I should have them all.

 

[OldMcDonald]

Not sure if this will help, but it might give you some ideas. I moved from Scotland to Portugal supposedly to be sort of retired, but......

The 16 acres we bought has, or had, a lot of stone, literally 100% ground cover over a few acres, and less in others. Sorry I do not have a camera so cannot post pictures. Stone size is the same as you say, 2" to 2', but mainly less than the size of a loaf of bread. I built a vee shaped tpl mounted rake. Metric, but say 3 feet to a metre. 3 metres wide behind the tractor, 3 metres long and half a metre wide at the tail end. The walls are made up of angle iron say 3", top and bottom, and about 1 foot high, with sheet steel as the lining. Concrete reinforcement bars, say 1", behind the lining, use the angle to weld to, or drill through and weld (I now think box section on the bottom might have been better than angle) stick the re-bar (not sure if you call it that) about 4" down below the bottom angle/box section at about 1 foot spacing. That gives a narrow space when the vee shaped rake is pulled forward and it shifts all loose rock within 4 " of the surface. The rake is purposely wider than the tractor so that I can run alongside a row of stone and move it until the rake is travelling full of stone. I have very satisfactorily raked about 12 acres since I built it just before Xmas, and after windrowing pick up the stone with a box I made, also tpl mounted, solid back and sides and say 4" x 1/4", plate welded to a flat bottome and shallow slope as the leading edge (furthest from the tractor) with re-bar welded into the gap and against the back of the box. About 1 and 1/2 inch gap between the bars so that soil (sand in your case) and small stones fall through. I am in the process of using the stones picked up to fill a depression about 15 to 1800 square metres and up to 2 metres deep. I am short of half way, but have done more than enough to know that what I built does the job. Some stone is lost on each pass, and I have raked the worst areas three times, and might need to do some more - it is all to end up as arable and capable of being sut for hay, so I need to get rid of everything over about 2", but one pass gets rid of all the bigger stuf. Hope that helps. Old McDonald.