Homemade JD claw turned Green today

Yep, just grab what ever you want and move it out of the way.

 

...Them city folk gotta learn not to park any where near your place... ... I love it !!! Need air... OMG...

You just made my day CG !

 

That mini FEL would be NICE. I kind of hate the Bobcat because it tears the crap out of the ground. I looked at a few but they are hard to find in good used shape. The ones that do come up are nearly the price of the fullsize models.

I usually carry a couple trees at a time, depending on how big. Usually cut to 20ish ft lengths. Have done treelength but it's tough to handle with the limited room I have.

As far as what I pick up, I normally cut to 20-30ft and I'll grab 4-5 of them depending on size and straightness... sometimes better to do more trips instead of having a mess to untangle.

 

Gotta pic? What are you using?

 

Only one I have. Hard to take a photo in action since I'm the operator and camera man. Grapple is 84ish" wide I believe. Just barely fits on my trailer.

 

Clever design on the grapple. A tractor with a loader is one of those things you never knew you needed until you have one.

 

It's been, by far, the best equipment dollars spent for me. It works in all 4 seasons here in Maine and makes it fun. MM has been great in giving me the info I need to try and do more maintenance myself. Sure appreciated that... This group of folks at FHC are a gold mine, for many different reasons.

 

Made yet another discovery this morning. If you've made a lot of attachment changes on tractors, you'll know why I liked what I found. If you haven't been around much of this stuff, I'm sure I can explain it right into a confusing cluster fugg... OK, getting ready to take the loader off the tractor to put the mower on. For 11 years, since I made the claw, I have pulled all of the hinge pin bolts out, dropped the claw away, put the bucket back on the arms... and then, took the loader off the tractor. With the claw attached, the main arms wouldn't go low enough to allow the main loader attachs to rotate enough to let go of the tractor mounts. Here are a few pics... the odd shaped mounts first.




I wondered if I took just the support arms off (easy 2 bolts), and tied the upper claw to the main claw, if I could use the tilt rams to swing it up enough to let the whole thing lay the way it had to, to disconnect.



It worked perfectly.



So... for 11 years, I've hassled with this change over many times and never once thought of trying this...
At this point, prolly can't get away with saying it was always part of the design, huh...

 

I always reserve the right to get smarter as I go. Sometimes it takes a while though.

 

I been waitin fer an awful long time for the wit to hit me... spose there's a chance it'll get any better in the next 50 years?...

 

I put the claw on the JD this morning. It was awesome being able to now use the tilt rams to "set" the position of the whole claw, so the main 2 support arms could easily be attached. I didn't even get the impact tool out, just used channel locs on the 2 easy 3/4" nuts. This little smilie doesn't even come close to how nice this was...

 

Good set up Talking about moving some logs that something else

 

To cool. Wish my dad had something like that on is Massey down on the land.

 

Claws on larger tractors are amazing. Move whole trees no sweat. But, I'm very happy with my lil ole JD. Can't lift too much or go too fast... just like me...