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This is a piece of equipment I built back in June.  It's designed to grapple cedar trees after they've been cut down.  It will handle trees with around 14" diameter trunks that are approx. 20 some feet tall with branches that can stick out as much as 12 feet from the lower trunk.  A tree this size can weigh 1/2 ton or maybe more when it's green.  The tractor front wheels will often come off of the ground when you're pulling.  It's designed primarily for heavy straight line pulling, and also to resist stress when you make a turn as you're pulling.The large grapple clearance (area within the enclosed area after the moveable arm closes) is for a reason.  Many cedars have very heavy lower limbs.  When you hit the hydraulics, that arm will attempt to crush anyting it's closing on.  The extra clearance allows you to effectively snag the tree without attempting to crush the lower limbs clear into the trunk.  Be doin' a lot of repairs if you attempt that little stunt.  Hydraulic cylinders work until they get into a bind.  Bind = SNAP!!!This was another one of my crazy, needed it yesterday, projects.  I hired a guy with a tree shear mounted on a skid loader to clear some pasture.  That section of ground literally has large cedar trees growing so close that it is almost impossible to walk between them.  It's literally a wall of trees.Well, this guy's equipment could cut the trees allright, but when they fell (more like just tilted against the next upright tree) he couldn't get behind them to push them out of the way because of the thick growth of trees.  At $40/hour, you don't want to stand and watch the guy take all day to cut ten trees because he can't effectively move them.I asked the guy if he could hold off a while, and go to another customer if he had other work lined up.  He agreed because he was also getting frustrated.Took about a day of sitting around, and walking around looking at cedar trees, to figure out what I was gonna do.  Took around 4 days to make what with rain delays, and headscratchin' delays.  A lot of the stuff I do is design as you build kind of stuff.  It pays to sit and think hard before committing expensive steel to the torch.  Sometimes I see a flaw midway through, and it's a real killer to rework it.I don't have pics out in the field because you just don't stop to fool around when you are paying someone machine time.  I even had the camera on the tractor, and forgot all about it.  Anyhow, after the tree trunk is sheared, you back into it with the moveable arm on one side of the trunk, and the fixed arm on the other side of the trunk.  I can snag a tree that's fallen probably less than 20 degrees off of vertical.  If it's not at a good angle, I can nudge it with the boom.  Once you have the trunk between the arms, activate the hydraulics, and the moveable arm crushes the branches and completely encircles the tree trunk.  I grab them at the lower end of the trunk just high enough to cause the rest of the length of the tree to act as leverage to keep the trunk from falling out as you pull forward.It would be a a great video.  When that tree falls at the same time you're pullin' forward, that whole boom twists like a snake.  The moveable arm is at least 2-3 inches out of alignment with the fixed arm when pulling a really big tree.  It's the main reason I favor square tubing on a lot of my projects.  It can take horizontal stress, vertical load, and large amounts of torque.  Woo HooAs usual, it's get it done, and get to work with it.  No paint until Fall.  Might als be a good idea to make some brackets to hold the hoses instead of using baling wire  Attached Images
Reply:heh, thats pretty schweeet.*insert welding gibberish here*                    Mandy
Reply:Originally Posted by farmersammAs usual, it's get it done, and get to work with it.  No paint until Fall.
Reply:That's a neat build, I was thinkin bout building grapple for the front of the tractor.DewayneDixieland WeldingMM350PLincoln 100Some torchesOther misc. tools
Reply:In the UK you used to (not sure now) be able to get a Explosive Day License. My father used to fell trees and blow the stumps out with Explosive. One time we had unsuccessfully tried to blow a very large Oak Stump first thing in the morning. So we thought we'd have another go at the end of the day with whatever Explosive we had left. (You had to use all the Explosive in the day)So the end of the day comes around and we have been frugal with the Sticks all day. We packed it around the Stump and retired to the safety of the other side of the Landrover about 150yds away in the corner of a sugar beet field.BOOM. Wwwwwuuuuuoshhhhh, the explosion just about striped the leaves off  2 acres of sugar beet and the stump landed 200yds away