Hey Scrub I was actually told on day one something long the lines of don't pull in, keep that slash the fu** away from my machine, I modified it so I could tell the landowners, "don't pull or you'll go blind!" Which was potentially true with the hairy slash on pines.Much safer and faster to push away and plenty of power there even if you have to dance her on her heels a bit for the bigger stuff but that was only with ridiculous slash say 10 feet deep where a processor has just sat and done 1000 tonne of delimb/debark in one spot. We used to run a two way rake which would sit off the machine standing up and easy to hook on, but the single push away was way faster, felt lighter and more balanced. The supervisor sometimes wanted us to pull slash down but only if we were in a steep sided gorge or working along a near vertical bluff.
Saw wider rakes than this and I reckon you can use them ok just do any stump pulling with the stump inline with the stick/boom, even with this normal width one I would never try poking a corner under a stump because you could see the stress it places on the gear. It would handle bumping into hidden stumps under full power, but I wanted to make sure when I went to work I had the machine fully operational all day so didn't lever the tool. That said I could go round or slid over most stumps, only run into one in the wrong place on a narrow ridge maybe once a week at worst. Did about 1000 hrs on a ex200-5 and 2000hrs on a komatsu pc200….-8 I think raking. There's about 20 excavs in Kaingaroa doing mostly spot cultivation but I'd say most have a rake with them too, mostly 20t with a few 25t units.Cheers