Rake What is the best attachment for quickly locating and pulling buried boulders?

[TerryMcQ]

I'm not sure if I need a rake or box scraper with teeth or WHAT! I think the former owners of my property buried the old house and its foundation and old outbuildings over the years here, there, and everywhere on the property and I keep finding large chunks and boulders with my mid mount deck on my Kubota B2320 and have ripped the anti-scalp wheel bracket welds apart three times now. I'm tired of hauling the deck in for repairs (I don't have a welder to teach myself new tricks yet) and I need the best solution for locating and pulling these destructive objects up at least partly out of the ground so I can easily get at them with the loader to yank them the rest of the way. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions to quickly and hopefully cheaply solve this problem.

 

[ddipert]

I would use (rent) a Harley rake or teeth on a box blade. Either of these options are going to require you to replant grass or whatever. The Harley rake Well give you a flatter area with less rocks if done right.

 

[CalG]

A box blade with scarifier shanks sounds right.

You must not be from New England When I find a "boulder" in my yard (the frost pushes them up) It means a stone at least 3'x3'x2'. and not a projection of ledge. There is no single "attachment" that handles these stones except several lengths of 1/2" chain and a good spade. I fought one stone for 3 years. Now it sits above ground as a sort of corner marker ;-)

Harley rakes are pretty costly and do not take well to "boulders". They do well with stone that would screen less than 3inch.

 

[PhysAssist]

I'm not sure if I need a rake or box scraper with teeth or WHAT! I think the former owners of my property buried the old house and its foundation and old outbuildings over the years here, there, and everywhere on the property and I keep finding large chunks and boulders with my mid mount deck on my Kubota B2320 and have ripped the anti-scalp wheel bracket welds apart three times now. I'm tired of hauling the deck in for repairs (I don't have a welder to teach myself new tricks yet) and I need the best solution for locating and pulling these destructive objects up at least partly out of the ground so I can easily get at them with the loader to yank them the rest of the way. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions to quickly and hopefully cheaply solve this problem.

We live in an area of upstate NY where the gravel quarries out number home owners, and we also have a 1 year old Kubota B2320 with the 60" mid-mount mower. The place we live is a long over-grown and gone-to-seed apple orchard, where the farmerapparently buried all the boulders and rocks he cleared from his fields, in addition to the glacial morraine deposits.
Perhaps it' s needless to say that we have found multiple rocks with a variety of mowers over the 18 years we have lived here- resulting in bent crank shafts, dinged blades, and since we got the B2320, 2 ripped welds on the anti-scalp wheel mounts.

Our dealer repaired them under our (rare for us to buy) extended/enhanced warranty.

We tried the chain-on multi-spade, and while that, and the scarifiers on our Gannon Rollover Boxblade, have been helpful, nothing has worked as well as our most recent addition- a Piranha toothbar from BXpanded.

It makes the bucket so much more efficient at digging out and picking up any rocks or boulders that the loader can lift.

For those than are too heavy or with strange or eccentric centers of gravity, that are her to tip into the bucket, we use chains with "J" hooks on the end to leverage them up with the curl function of the loader.

Keep plugging away at 'em,

Yours,

Thomas
No matter where you go; there you are...

 

[bcp]

I've always wanted one of these, but I don't think it would work with the BX or Jeep. Maybe make a little one.

Rock Digger

Bruce

 

[kco]

I have an old coil spring cultivator similar to the front bar of the one shown on the attached image. I think it is an old Deere because of the faded green paint. The narrow straight shanks as shown on the front bar of the image easily dig up softball-size rocks and with a couple of passes will bring soccer ball-size (or larger--I can't lift them) to the surface.

I use it to smooth rough sections of my walking paths, and also used it to work up a neighbour's riding ring. Another neighbour borrowed it to work up his riding ring.

It is very easy to bring the rocks to the surface but the hard part is handling them from there. I have a heavy duty landscape rake which helped but it still required much hand picking and loading into the bucket. I'm sure there are better ways to do that part.

 

[tractchores]

Personally my backhoe is great at locating boulders - everywhere I did I find one! Seriously though, I would use a box blade or just the FEL to scrape a few inches to find stuff. A harley rake is nice, but expensive and not good with big rocks. To get them out if you don't have a BH digging around as much as possible and getting a chain around it will work well, you can also do a decent job with a FEL to pop them out if they're small enough. I didn't see where you live, so not sure if frost movement is an issue, but a few inches of loam and a new lawn would solve the issue as well (I ended up doing that because all my rocks are car sized and not easily movable).

 

[oldnslo]

How deep do you want to go? A sub-soiler will reach down and hook on rocks much deeper than than your standard Box Blade shanks will go. May want to look at sub-soilers with sheer bolts for some shock protection when hooking the big ones.

twin shank chisel plow will also lift rocks to the surface and can reach down 6 - 8 " pretty easily. Not sure you would have the traction with your 2320 to pull this at that depth though. Like others have said you will have to reseed when done.

 

[boggen]

listing some general location of were you live, as in state and country, might help others help ya better. some places i hear folks saying they grow rocks, while others. it is blasting all the way, while others are like what are rocks?

how many acres are you needing to deal with?