Hold-ups or hold-downs
Hi, OCR.
Well, for a start, an 8-foot diameter ball is going to hold the chain immediately adjacent to it 4 feet off the ground, which will allow a fair bit of undergrowth to pass under it, just like the chain climbing a tree as it falls but ALL the time.
I have never seen a 100% kill on a chaining job, not even in lighter scrub or in eucalypt mallee country where there is little if any undergrowth. How-wevver, the intial burn-off after the chaining usually seemed to kill most of whatever shrubbery had survived the chain and subsequent raking and further burning seemed to leave a pretty clean field. That is not to say that there was no regrowth if the area wasn't worked or that blade plowing would not improve the job but consider this.
In lighter going with 2 x D8H's and 600 feet of 2 1/2" chain, we were knocking down anything up to 1,200 acres a day, cutting around 400 feet wide in second gear, in 1967 prices. Even if you have to plow it a couple of times after it was all burned, that would still be pretty cheap clearing for the times. Sometimes in that lighter going, it was even possible to put a crawler tractor and heavy plow straight into it after the first burn, even further reducing costs.
Gone are the days.
I could not have known those people. The powers that be insisted that I spend my days in school, NOT wandering around some soon-to-be-but-not-yet farm out the back of beyond hob-nobbing with government officials and bureacrats. And my parents insisted that I help them on the farm after school, thus further limiting my opportunities for hob-nobbing. Get the picture?
