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Land clearing - 2,500 acres
- Thread starter rodtg
- Start date
Scrub Puller
Senior Member
Yair . . .
rodtg. 9n my opinion)about forty feet is about as wide as you can go on anything.
There have been a few monsters made,particularly on large loaders but they always seem to get cut back to a more manageable length.
Any wear/slack/movement in the arms and attachment is amplified out on the ends there and the thing can become uncontrollable is soft conditions . . . getting the strength can be a factor, hitting a stump with a bit of momentum in second gear with outside tine can test things severely.
Cheers.
rodtg. 9n my opinion)about forty feet is about as wide as you can go on anything.
There have been a few monsters made,particularly on large loaders but they always seem to get cut back to a more manageable length.
Any wear/slack/movement in the arms and attachment is amplified out on the ends there and the thing can become uncontrollable is soft conditions . . . getting the strength can be a factor, hitting a stump with a bit of momentum in second gear with outside tine can test things severely.
Cheers.
Nige
Senior Member
Simple facts from the Dark Continent for the uninitiated
- they see what you have and decide they want it without the need of having to work for it .....
- it's always the foreigner's fault ....
- they see what you have and decide they want it without the need of having to work for it .....
- it's always the foreigner's fault ....
tctractors
Senior Member
A few times now I have had offers to work in the "Dark Continent" but the Bride has checked things out for me and found a nasty fault, this is a 2 point issue with in my Wife's eyes No1 being getting home with the Cash even if you get paid? No2 is being robbed or killed so its linked to No 1 a bit, I happen to know a lad that was robbed twice at the Air-Port on his start off home by he thinks the same Bandit with a Knife, I could say to my Bride that I am off to work in any place without any trouble but Africa is a non starter.
tctractors
tctractors
Nige - Truer words were never spoken. After 2 farming projects that have gone belly up, I pretty much stick to being hired muscle these days and don't get involved in land politics and the like.
tctractors - I understand you 101%. I've been stuffed for cash in Africa personally and it's not pleasant. On one particular project we were working on, the clients vacated a 3,000 acre plot of land without paying for it after clearing 1,500 acres. Two of the farm managers were driving along in their pick up when 20 natives sprung out of the bushes and shot the truck to pieces. One guy died as a result.
http://www.iol.co.za/pretoria-news/zimbabwean-killed-in-ghana-land-dispute-1.1279566#.Vj5s07fhCM8
Africa is a great place, and there is plenty of money to be made. However, you have to have your wits about you and use extreme common sense.
Scrub Puller - I just asked as my old man saw pics of a D10 with a 60ft rake on it. We're currently debating our next project heavily and trying to come to a conclusion on the best way forward.
tctractors - I understand you 101%. I've been stuffed for cash in Africa personally and it's not pleasant. On one particular project we were working on, the clients vacated a 3,000 acre plot of land without paying for it after clearing 1,500 acres. Two of the farm managers were driving along in their pick up when 20 natives sprung out of the bushes and shot the truck to pieces. One guy died as a result.
http://www.iol.co.za/pretoria-news/zimbabwean-killed-in-ghana-land-dispute-1.1279566#.Vj5s07fhCM8
Africa is a great place, and there is plenty of money to be made. However, you have to have your wits about you and use extreme common sense.
Scrub Puller - I just asked as my old man saw pics of a D10 with a 60ft rake on it. We're currently debating our next project heavily and trying to come to a conclusion on the best way forward.
Nige
Senior Member
My list of stories from Africa is a long one. I first set foot there in 1982 in the middle of a civil war in Angola and it all went downhill from there.....
td25c - the pics I'm posting here was a private project. A London based company had taken a 99 year lease on 6,000+ acres to grow orchard crops to produce bio-diesel. Before the client went belly up for violating investment laws, we'd cleared around 2,500 acres and planted close on 1,000 acres of trees.
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Were you able to go ahead with the crop after loosing the first client or possibly find another to lease the ground to ?
Another nuisance was the distribution of money. The tribal leaders were the beneficiaries of the lease payments and had the job of distributing it. I'm fairly certain a large chunk went in their back pockets .
Our tribal leaders work about the same way .
Even our enthusiastic security force couldn't keep a lid on everything.
I like the security guard's archery kit !Imagine he is pretty good with it .
Scrub Puller
Senior Member
Yair . . .
rodtg
Yeh mate, as I mentioned up thread there have been some monsters built . . . my gut feeling is (particularly with the laid back style that tends to carry some of the load) the extra horse power of a big tractor can be better used at maintaining momentum and pushing further rather than pushing extra width.
I believe technique and conditions will have more effect on production than outright size and horsepower.
From a production and "getting the job done before the wet" point of view I would prefer multiple smaller units rather than the "all eggs in the one basket approach of a specialised D9 or D10 . . . two or three thousand acres is a nice job but not all that big in the scheme of things.
Cheers.
rodtg
Yeh mate, as I mentioned up thread there have been some monsters built . . . my gut feeling is (particularly with the laid back style that tends to carry some of the load) the extra horse power of a big tractor can be better used at maintaining momentum and pushing further rather than pushing extra width.
I believe technique and conditions will have more effect on production than outright size and horsepower.
From a production and "getting the job done before the wet" point of view I would prefer multiple smaller units rather than the "all eggs in the one basket approach of a specialised D9 or D10 . . . two or three thousand acres is a nice job but not all that big in the scheme of things.
Cheers.
Yeah rodtg , that's one thing I learned from widows thread . They have plenty of help on foot for manual labor at low cost .
This is an interesting topic . Was working for a retired farmer couple weeks ago fixing some grass waterways & cleaning up around the field with dozer .
At dinner time I ask him ( farmer is 91 years old ) " when were these fields first cleared ? "
He paused for a moment & then went on to say most good farm ground in the area would have been cleared in the mid to late 1800's .
Not all in one shot . It was a generational thing . A farmer would start clearing sometime around 1800 and by 1900 his great grand son was farming big but still pulling trees if they thought the ground would produce good . Something like that .
Way before any heavy equipment showed up ....... I'm guessing fire was the big clearing tool in that day .
TD, your comment about the old farmer and the generational clearing hits home for me. I'm in PA Dutch country, and my grandpop made comment that nothing impressed him more than an old stone barn
"How come, Pop?"
"Where'd the rocks for it come from?"
"Out of the field."
"where did the field come from? Out of the woods...."
I cant imagine the work that people used to do just to live, and did it for decades. No offense to anyone, and dont let me sidetrack this post, but I think most people's ancestors would either be so glad that we didn't have to do things the way they did, or so damn embarrased about the way that we live now that when rapture happens, we're all gonna get it.
Garrie Denny
Senior Member
Who is paying for all this??
seatwarmer
Senior Member
I was in Angola at the same time, just in the south
Nige
Senior Member
That would be with SADF somewhere around Jamba I take it..?
We were working in the diamond mines in the northeast right on the Zaire border. Our biggest worry was always if Big Joe's came marching north in our direction
seatwarmer
Senior Member
Bit more south but yes doing the 2 year conscription duty in the SADF.
There is lots of stories about the dark continent adn most of them are true.
td25c - After the whole thing went belly up, my part ended in the project. The clients did try to keep the project going by growing many hectares of vegetables to provide cashflow. It didn't last very long as the whole thing couldn't support the overheads (expat employees, travel costs, housing, office staff etc).
They made off into the sunset with most of the machinery to a neighbouring country. Whatever was left behind was seized by local creditors. They had retained just a portion of the land (about 30%) which was cleared and has 2 irrigation reservoirs in place. It was recently sold to an unspecified foreign company (possibly Hong Kong based) who want to farm the land.
The guard with the bow and arrow used to put poison on the tips. I'm fairly sure a lot of security guards in the country were slung out of the army for brutality as some of them were real lunatics.
Scrub Puller - I'm pretty much thinking along the lines of 2 older D8's now (most likely k's). They'd be a good all round machine for us as they could handle chaining (if required), raking and do some decent earth moving on the earth dam. What we'd save on the K's compared to buying an N, I'd put into a good stock of spares which would be worth their weight in gold out in the bush - engine overhaul kits, starter motors, alternators, oil pumps, undercarriage parts etc.
For chaining, around 400ft of 2" chain is my school of thought, with an additional small section of 3" in the middle to give it some extra weight.
I'd keep the rakes at 30ft. You previously mentioned that a 250HP tractor would manage a 30ft rake, so the 8K which has around 300HP should be able to keep up a nice momentum (especially if two are raking simultaneously).
I've been looking closely at the rake designs and was wondering about the durability of the teeth on them. Some of the trees/bushes we encountered on our last effort had surprisingly stubborn roots on them although small. I've seen the teeth on the rakes get warped/bent through looking around online.
My old man came up with the idea of using scarifier shanks off a Cat 14-16 G/H grader instead of the usual teeth in the hope they'd be more durable.
They made off into the sunset with most of the machinery to a neighbouring country. Whatever was left behind was seized by local creditors. They had retained just a portion of the land (about 30%) which was cleared and has 2 irrigation reservoirs in place. It was recently sold to an unspecified foreign company (possibly Hong Kong based) who want to farm the land.
The guard with the bow and arrow used to put poison on the tips. I'm fairly sure a lot of security guards in the country were slung out of the army for brutality as some of them were real lunatics.
Scrub Puller - I'm pretty much thinking along the lines of 2 older D8's now (most likely k's). They'd be a good all round machine for us as they could handle chaining (if required), raking and do some decent earth moving on the earth dam. What we'd save on the K's compared to buying an N, I'd put into a good stock of spares which would be worth their weight in gold out in the bush - engine overhaul kits, starter motors, alternators, oil pumps, undercarriage parts etc.
For chaining, around 400ft of 2" chain is my school of thought, with an additional small section of 3" in the middle to give it some extra weight.
I'd keep the rakes at 30ft. You previously mentioned that a 250HP tractor would manage a 30ft rake, so the 8K which has around 300HP should be able to keep up a nice momentum (especially if two are raking simultaneously).
I've been looking closely at the rake designs and was wondering about the durability of the teeth on them. Some of the trees/bushes we encountered on our last effort had surprisingly stubborn roots on them although small. I've seen the teeth on the rakes get warped/bent through looking around online.
My old man came up with the idea of using scarifier shanks off a Cat 14-16 G/H grader instead of the usual teeth in the hope they'd be more durable.
Scrub Puller
Senior Member
Yair . . .
rodtg. I believe rake design/construction has evolved to the stage where there is no point in deviating from the tried and proven.
A Google images search of "stickrakes" will yield some eye popping one offs utilising all sorts of tines and configurations.
All most without exception the volume manufactures of large rakes have standardised on teeth profile cut to wrap around a large box or fabricated section that forms the bottom chord of the rake.
One of our members here did a fine job of building a blade rake for his D6 using the same principle . . . .
I am unsure of the steel available but these days but when I was building rakes we used an "Assab" alloy for the tines and the rest was mild steel
The main thing with the teeth is that extension up the front of the bottom chord . . . in other words they are held on mechanically and the welding just glues them in place.
We experimented with replaceable wear shoes but found some thing like old (say) D8 pins from behind the track-press more effective.
They just need a real good dab of weld front and back and a gas axe or, these days. a 1mm cutting wheel to cut them off when worn . . . very quick and simple.
Cheers.
rodtg. I believe rake design/construction has evolved to the stage where there is no point in deviating from the tried and proven.
A Google images search of "stickrakes" will yield some eye popping one offs utilising all sorts of tines and configurations.
All most without exception the volume manufactures of large rakes have standardised on teeth profile cut to wrap around a large box or fabricated section that forms the bottom chord of the rake.
One of our members here did a fine job of building a blade rake for his D6 using the same principle . . . .
I am unsure of the steel available but these days but when I was building rakes we used an "Assab" alloy for the tines and the rest was mild steel
The main thing with the teeth is that extension up the front of the bottom chord . . . in other words they are held on mechanically and the welding just glues them in place.
We experimented with replaceable wear shoes but found some thing like old (say) D8 pins from behind the track-press more effective.
They just need a real good dab of weld front and back and a gas axe or, these days. a 1mm cutting wheel to cut them off when worn . . . very quick and simple.
Cheers.
tctractors
Senior Member
The D8K is a good bit heavier than the H series tractors and chunkier also with a higher blade, K blades have 3 section edge plates with 7 bolt fixing compared to the H blade with 2 10 bolt edges, you will need the high output fans and big outlet mufflers lay flat on bonnet top, it might be worth even running them on a straight pipe to get the heat away, if you run them out of fuel or fail to shut them down correctly you will ping the heads (crack them) to stock a rebuild kit for the engine might not be a good idea, but having someone who knows about K's would be advisable as they can give blinding service and rack up massive hours with the correct bit of fettling, the people who moan about the K series tractor often lack system knowledge of them blighting a good tractor, oh and if you can get the after-cooled tractors as they run a water cooled turbo as its all more water in the tea pot if you understand.
tctractors
tctractors
Scrub Puller - As always, outstanding advice. Thanks alot
tctractors - Thanks for that. Competent mechanics/operators aren't the easiest things to come by. We've tried countless lads from Togo, Ghana and Benin and I can't say that any of them would deserve a round of applause. We've had some decent enough operators, but they're pretty much limited to operating the machines. As for indepth knowledge of the machine they're operating or taking an interest in it's upkeep - you're really scraping the barrel there.
We couldn't really absorb Western style wages on the sort of projects we do to bring in a good mechanic and some good operators. So next time around I'm looking to bring in a couple of operators and a mechanic from India/Sri Lanka hoping it will be a vast improvement on the local talent.
tctractors - Thanks for that. Competent mechanics/operators aren't the easiest things to come by. We've tried countless lads from Togo, Ghana and Benin and I can't say that any of them would deserve a round of applause. We've had some decent enough operators, but they're pretty much limited to operating the machines. As for indepth knowledge of the machine they're operating or taking an interest in it's upkeep - you're really scraping the barrel there.
We couldn't really absorb Western style wages on the sort of projects we do to bring in a good mechanic and some good operators. So next time around I'm looking to bring in a couple of operators and a mechanic from India/Sri Lanka hoping it will be a vast improvement on the local talent.