Grappling with Inefficient Fire Prevention and Forest Management
The hydraulic grapple rake, a versatile new loader/tractor/skid steer attachment, is speeding forest management tasks with a unique combination of strength, control, and flexibility.
Too many forest management tasks are still done the old fashion way, from logging and national part conservation to property habitat and fire protection. Even when equipment is used to pick up, move, or stack trees, logs, brush or other fire hazards with shovel, chainsaw, and backbreaking sweat, there are drawbacks whenever these tasks require control and efficiency.
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.
In Steamboat, Colorado, Bob Chapman was faced with the enormous task of removing 300 trees because of beetle kill on his 70-acre property. Bob hired a commercial timber company to do the work due to the enormity of the un-welcomed task.
“It looked like a war zone with logs, branches, and stumps everywhere,” says Chapman. “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.”
The timber company used the hydraulic grapple rake manufactured by Anbo Manufacturing, based in Colville, Washington. Anbo specializes in high quality designed products for tractors, loaders, and skid steers. The grapple rake operates like a bucket because it can be raised and lowered, and rolled forward and backward, but it has a third function that makes it unique. It open and closes its jaws.
Bob Chapman decided to buy a grapple rake for his multi-terrain loader. By doing this he could handle the ongoing beetle kill and fire preventions tasks on his acreage. Anbo built the grapple rake to fit on Chapman’s loader. It was a 6-foot grapple rake with 6-inc tine spacing. This was to allow dirt, but not brush or debris to sift through the rake’s tines.
In the past, Chapman used a 4WD tractor with bucket attachment to get rid of the debris. This had unsatisfactory 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 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.”
On his own now, Chapman used the grapple rake. He adds, “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.” “My loader has a push force of about 6,000 lbs, and several times stalled it pushing on big rocks, but the grapple rake was fine. It’s strong enough to handle whatever you throw at it.”
To satisfy the need for strength, 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. This makes the grapple rake light enough for mini or compact skid steers or tractors and also adding strength preserves that give more lift and payload capacity than similar products.
Chapman single-handedly cleared a defensible space around his acreage, by using the grapple rake. “I ended up taking out 215 cubic yard of slash and debris, and loaded in onto trailers in about 100 hours,” adding, “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.”
With thousands of trees toppled when Hurricane Katrina hit on Tom Hauptmann’s property about 60 miles from New Orleans, it took him and his wife three days to make it to their mailbox from their driveway. Cutting and moving downed trees. While others were dragging trees with a tractor and chain, Hauptmann used a front-end loader with a 4-way clamshell bucket to accomplish the task. The inefficiency still 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.”
He was also dissatisfied with the bucket’s inability to rake limbs, leaves, and debris from the ground without scooping up dirt. Because the dirt mixed with debris in piles to be burned for disposal, the piles burned slowly, incompletely, or with too much smoke.
Hauptmann turned to a 6-foot, hydraulic AnBo grapple rake with 6-inch tine spacing.
“The grapple rake is strong enough to pick up anything your machine is capable of,” says Hauptmann. “My limit is blowing out the tires on my front end loader.” Hauptmann’s grapple rake was strong enough to pick up and carry 40-foot sections of tree up to 18-inches in diameter, which he estimates weighed up to 4,000 lbs. This, he found, was much faster and easier than cutting logs into smaller sections, then dragging or carrying them separately.
Because his control and grip are better with the grapple rake, he’s now more efficiently cleaning up and managing his property. He’s using it to pick up trees, logs, limbs, brush and debris, and even uses it to dig up stumps and roots.
Explaining what Hauptmann likes he states, “unlike bucket jaws that essentially pinch,the grapple rake wraps around a load. Its teeth and curvature are better for grabbing and grasping. It operates like a hand and give much better control and holding power. You can grab so much more with the grapple rake.”
Accidently Hauptmann built a burn pile of trees and logs for disposal under a power line. learning about the grapple rake’s efficient capacity.
He realized he had to move them. “With the bucket, such a job would’ve taken me 20 loads to finish,” he says. “With the AnBo grapple rake, it took me just five loads to move the entire pile. It made a two-hour project into a 20-minute one.”
Hauptmann finds the grapple rake is useful in removing “nuisance trees and brush,” quickly. “I simply put the teeth down and rip out the roots and all so they don’t grow back,” This works great on shallow roots. He simply slides the grapple rakes’ teeth along the ground until there’s a big enough load to carry to the debris pile. “I could never do that with a bucket because things would slip and go every which way.” he says.
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.
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