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Tractor Brush/Tree Grapple
Hello. I have a Kubota M4700 tractor with a LA1001 front loader. This has been a great tractor and I have used it for many years. As I have many trees on my property, years ago I added a grapple to the bucket to assist with moving larger trees, etc to the burn pile. After that, I added some screw-clamp forks to the bucket to carry larger loads. I would typically stack many limbs on the forks and pinch them with the grapple and take them to the burn pile. I used this setup for years and it was fine.
Then I stumbled onto the Pat's Quick Hitch system for the 3 pt. hitch and added that and it pretty much changed my life in changing implements on the back of the tractor. Then I started thinking about doing something similar to the front loader. After some research, I found that I could remove the bucket, add a skid steer adapter plate and pretty much pick up any skid steer front end accessory available. Wow! I don't know why I didn't do this years ago, but I purchased an adapter plate, installed it and converted my bucket to the skid steer setup.
I then removed the grapple and the forks and decided to make a dedicated Grapple that didn't include the limitations of the Frankenstein version I had used for so long. Here is a picture of the grapple/fork combination mounted to the tractor.
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Here's a picture of the grapple with a piece of tin wired on to catch the smaller branches that would fall through the larger openings.
Attachment 20853
Here's a picture of the grapple holding a large tree on the way to the burn pile!
Attachment 20854
I was happy it could carry this heavy a load without very much reinforcement to the points where the forks meet the vertical frame. I did, however, over stress it by digging the forks too deep into the ground before lifting a different log. I then took it back to the shop and welded some reinforcing angle iron pieces on the top and bottom (front/back?) of the lower corner. I believe this will do the trick for most of what I'm working on...
Hello from wet sunny Florida
Great idea you have there. I have a Long tractor and have been trying to figure out how to do the exact thing. Now it looks like you have sparked the idea for me. Thanks for your post!
Dawhite12
