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Skid Loader-Mounted Tree Shear
Mark Majerus can use his home-built, skid loader-mounted tree shear to easily cut a tree into firewood-sized pieces; reach high to trim large branches; or reach over fences and other obstacles. It can cut up to 22 ft. high and rotates on its side to cut vertically. Rectangular steel tubing is welded to a quick-tach mounting plate that keeps limbs from falling on him.
    “I use it on my Case 1835B skid loader. It’s built heavy and is a piece of equipment that I’ll be able to use for years and years,” says Majerus.
    The tree shear is equipped with 2 fixed blades of 1-in. thick T100 steel. It can cut multiple trees at once or a single tree up to 9 in. in diameter. The blades are sandwiched between two bolted-together, 3/4-in. thick steel plates and pivot on a pair of 1 1/2-in. dia. greaseable bolts. A 5 1/2-in. dia. hydraulic cylinder moves the blades back and forth.
    The back side of the tree shear is bolted to a 5-in. dia. tube that fits inside a 6-in. dia. tube. “The telescoping tubes allow me to reach out another 2 ft. I cut 2 rows of holes in the smaller tube; by pulling a pin I can either extend the smaller tube another 2 ft. or rotate it to cut vertically.
    “The shear is too heavy to rotate the tube by hand so I use the skid loader. I pull the pin from the tube, then put one edge of the shear against a tree and drop the loader arms until the shear is rotated to a vertical position.    
     “I like how it turned out. My friend Dick Johnson helped me cut out the blades using a cutting table that I helped him build.
    “One problem is that the tree shear weighs close to 400 lbs. and is so heavy that I had to add about 640 lbs. of weights on back of the skid loader. I probably used too much steel to support the blades. If I could do it over, I’d use 5/8-in. thick steel instead of 3/4-in. and use heavier weight schedule 80 steel for the tubes. I drilled a pair of large holes in two of the blade support plates so I can attach a nylon strap to lift the shears over my welding table.”
    Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Mark Majerus, 1731 230th St. E., Farmington, Minn. 55024 (ph 651 463-7084; markmajerus46@hotmail.com).



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2017 - Volume #41, Issue #5