With a unique combination of strength, control, and flexibility, The hydraulic grapple rake, a versatile new loader/tractor/skid steer attachment, is speeding forest management tasks.
Even when equipment is used to pick up, move and stack trees, logs, brush or other fire hazards, there are drawbacks whenever management tasks are still being done the old fashioned way: with shovel, chainsaw, and backbreaking sweat. From logging and national park conservation to fire prevention, property and habitat protection.
Bucket attachments of the past tend to scoop excess dirt, incapable of holding unwieldy loads, and are largely ineffective for tasks in need of fine control such are raking limbs, or debris. Those who find themselves responsible for managing private and public forestland are now adding a new, versatile attachment – The hydraulic grapple rake – to their skid steers, tractors, and loaders. This new attachment is much more efficient than manual labor, and adapts easier than the bucket. It hydraulically opens, closes, and moves its jaws of spaced metal tines so it can remove trees, logs and brush or surface rake limbs and debris without removing topsoil that is essential in management of lands. No piling up of unnecessary dirt either. This grapple rake can dig out roots and stumps. It can safely pick up, move, and stack logs, trees, or irregular loads up to several thousand pounds. The grapple rake, with it’s intertwined teeth, can also grab and place material down to three inches, and reach within inches of desired forest habitat without disturbing it to lift, drag, rake, or haul loads. This attachment can make piles and pick up from the front or lift them from the top, being helpful when loading debris piles onto trailers or preparing piles for burn disposal.
Bob Chapman was faced with the unwelcome task of removing over 300 trees on his 70-acre, Steamboat, Colorado property due to beetle kill. Due to the enormity of the task, he hired a commercial timber company to do the work.
“I wondered how they were going to clean up the huge mess without destroying habitat for the living trees and adjoining grassland. I was so impressed with the way a skid steer mounted grapple rake navigated living trees while removing huge loads of debris that I talked the timber company into letting me operate it for a few days.” Chapman said “It looked like a war zone, with logs, branches, and stumps everywhere.”
He used the hydraulic grapple rake manufactured by Colville, Washington-based AnBo Manufacturing, which specializes in high quality designed products for tractors, loaders, and skid steers. While their attachment operates like a bucket in that it can be raised and lowered, and rolled forward and backward, it has a third hydraulic function to open and close its jaws.
With the ongoing beetle kill and the ever ending fire prevention tasks, Bob Chapman decided that he wanted a grapple rake for his own multi-terrain loader. Anbo Manufacturing was contacted and built the rake to fit his loader. A six-foot grapple rake with 6-inch tine spacing was decided upon. This would allow the dirt to sift through the rake’s tines, but not brush and debris.
Before to remove debris, Chapman used a 4WD tractor with bucket attachment He didn’t like the results. “Because the bucket lacked finesse, it left holes and skinned spots that removed topsoil and made it difficult for decorative grassland to grow back.” Chapman liked the results of the grapple rake, he continued, “Since the grapple rake just scrapes debris off the top and can back rake with accuracy, the grass grew back beautifully in one season.”
Chapman has also put the hydraulic grapple rake to good use for fire mitigation on a five acre, Nederland, Colorado property. While trying to clear a defensible space around the property before, he’d tried to remove flammable juniper ground spread and preserve the desired aspen. But as the juniper grew among rocky outcroppings, it had proved difficult.
With this difficult task in front of Chapman he said. “I’d hired a crew to remove the juniper, but it was basically pickax, shovel, sweat and cuss.” Chapman continued, “you couldn’t put a chainsaw to it because it grew among rocks and dirt. The needles went right through leather gloves. After two weeks of backbreaking labor, when they’d cleaned up less than 1/10 an acre, the finally quit.”
“Using the grapple rake, I was able to pull up the juniper by the roots so it wouldn’t grow back — right from its rocky outcroppings,” says Chapman. “My loader has a push force of about 6,000 lbs, and several times I stalled it pushing on big rocks, but the grapple rake was fine. It’s strong enough to handle whatever you throw at it.”
As AnBo uses a special type of steel that has twice the yield strength (resistance to bending) and a much higher Brinnell hardness rating (resistance to wear) than T1 steel, it satisfied his need for strength. The added strength preserves more lift and payload capacity than similar products, and makes the grapple rake light enough for mini or compact skid steers or tractors.
With the grapple rake, Chapman single-handedly cleared a defensible space around his property. “I ended up taking out 215 cubic yards of slash and debris, and loaded it onto trailers in about 100 hours,” he says. “It’s great at back-raking, grabbing, stacking, piling, whatever you need. Not only did I save over $ 10,000 in labor, but also lowered my insurance from $ 23,000 to $ 4,000 annually. I don’t know how I’d have done the job any other way.”
While coworkers of Tom Hauptmann were dragging trees with a tractor and chain, Tom and his wife spent three days cutting and moving trees just to get from their driveway to the mail box. Hurricane Katrina had hit and the Hauptmann’s lived an hour away from New Orleans. Using a front-end loader with a 4-way clamshell bucket, the inefficiency frustrated him.
“I could pick up logs, but it was always dicey,” explains Hauptmann. “Because the clamshell bucket had no teeth or curvature, I could pinch the logs but not really grip them. The load would slip out when it got imbalanced, so it was slow going and I had to be careful. When a load slipped, it not only took extra time to pick it up, but also to clean up the debris left behind.”
Dissatisfied with the bucket’s inability to rake limbs, leaves and debris from the ground without scooping up dirt, thus causing problems with burning debris. Because the dirt mixed with the debris in the piles to be burned would burn slowly, incompletely, or with too much smoke
Hauptmann turned to a 6-foot, hydraulic AnBo grapple rake with 6-inch tine spacing.
Hauptmann shared, “The grapple rake is strong enough to pick up anything your machine is capable of. “My limit is blowing out the tires on my front end loader.” This grapple rake is strong enough to pick up and carry 40-foot sections of tree to 18-inches in diameter, he estimates also weighing up to 4,000 pounds. Finding it faster and easier than cutting logs into smaller sections, dragging or carrying them separately.
Using the grapple rake, Hauptmann can have the control and grip that he needs to more efficiently clean up and manage his property. He can use the grapple rake to pick up trees, logs, limbs, brush and debris, and is even using it to dig up unwanted stumps and roots.
“Unlike bucket jaws that essentially pinch, the grapple rake wraps around a load,” explains Hauptmann. “Its teeth and curvature are better for grabbing and grasping. It operates like a hand and gives much better control and holding power. You can grab so much more with the grapple rake.”
Hauptmann learned the grapple rakes efficient capacity by inadvertently building a burn pile oftrees and logs under a power line.
Knowing he had to move the pile, Hauptmann says, “With the bucket, such a job would’ve taken me 20 loads to finish.” But, “With the AnBo grapple rake, it took me five loads to move the entire pile. It made a two-hour project into a 20-minute one.”
What can be done for “nuisance trees and brush?” Hauptmann states that the grapple rake is useful for quickly removing these that tend to have shallow roots. “I simply put the teeth down and rip out the roots and all so they don’t grow back.” To gather limbs, He simply slides the grapple rakes teeth along the ground until his load is big enough to move to the debris pile. Adding, “I could never do that with a bucket because things would slip and go every which way.
Hauptmann finds the grapple rakes’ flexibility extends to placing and shifting objects in the burn pile for a cleaner, less smoky and more complete burn. “I can pick up and replace items in the burn pile, shift ashes, whatever necessary to keep it burning properly,” he says.
Whether for logging, national park conservation, fire prevention or forest management, the grapple rake is making traditionally, tedious clean-up tasks faster, safer, and easier with its unique combination of strength, control, and flexibility. Those responsible for such work are finding that substituting its technology for costly, time-consuming labor is a good investment that continues to pay back, year after year.