Owner-Operator Costs of Forestry Mulching: Cutter Tools

want to make a quick video to put out some information for owner/operator type costs on the cutter teeth for the forestry mulcher so this is kind of geared for people who are already owner-operators forestry mulching machines or people who are looking to get into a forestry mulching so this is just kind of based on my experience I've been using this forestry mulcher for about two and a half years I've run this for about 2,500 hours and I know that when I was looking to get into this business there was just a lot of a lack of information out there to figure out owner/operator cost so there goes with a little bit of details so these are the cutter teeth this is one of the biggest expenses with running a forestry mulcher I use a forestry mulch that comes with bobcats and I use a bobcat t7 70 it's a 92 horsepower machine it's high flow and you definitely need high flow to run a forestry mulcher as far as bobcats machines they consider high flow to be twenty eight to thirty nine gallons per minute I've had my machine tested in everything so I'm running 39 gallons per minute so RPMs on this thing are very important for cutting so the higher the flow and having the power to push it is what gives it its efficiency so cutter teeth I've been getting about 300 hours on a set of teeth these are not all new teeth thirty of them one tooth I get mine from Bobcat and this particular model that fits this you can get it in two different ways you can get just the cutting tool that's what they call it and that's about 89 dollars but these are held in by two half inch hex head cap bolts so if you buy them by the kit which is the cutter and the two bolts and washers it's a hundred and twenty nine dollars but what I do is I just buy the cutting tool for $89 and then I go to a local shop that sells specialized bolts or they carry carry these size bolts and there's a short bolt and a long bolt so together they cost about $3 apiece so I'm basically paying $89 and plus the $3 so about $92 a tooth times a 30 teeth is it roughly $2,800 and what that works out too since I'm getting about 300 hours per tooth at $2,800 that comes out to about a little over $9 for cutting our so and I'm not a mechanic but I am pretty proficient at changing these out and it to change out all 30 of these and I'm a little particular about cleaning things up when I have it apart it took me about six and a half hours to change out thirty of these I'll give you a look at well one thing to talk about quick is I know some people run blades or things called samurai blades it really depends on what kind of material you're in located in central Tennessee out of Clarksville Tennessee which is about 40 miles northwest of Nashville so the kind of soil we have here is anything from you know good soil to dirty soil or kind of clay type soils do occasionally see some limestone but not very much the biggest problems I have with running into things that damage teeth or just debris that it's kind of hidden in the woods or in the brush things like tires tire rims I ran into a 73 Camaro bumper one time that wrapped around here things like that will damage teeth limestone when you get into hard rock limestone will grind these edges off within seconds but getting into any of the softer not call them softer rocks but the turdy or clay type of rocks these will kind of pulverize so when I say clay type of rocks I mean I've I've run over things like bricks and cinder blocks and it just kind of pulverized as those things and the dust without doing any damage or any kind of excessive wear just as a technique that I do is this is a full set of 30 I put on so I'll run these for about 300 hours and what kind of happens is you have a tendency to use more of your Center teeth more so they'll have more wear on them than the end teeth maybe the last row or two on each side so what I'll do is replace depending on their condition sometimes throughout the year I'll replace fifteen or twenty of the center teeth and leave the outside in place so they can get more wear on them so I can still keep up the efficiency of the cutter and get the most bang for the buck out of these things since they're so expensive but this is the first time and two and a half three years that I've replaced all 30 of them I usually kind of rotate them in and out like that so that's just my technique so I'll give you a close-up of what the teeth look like this is the actual parts that I use from Bobcat there's the part number these are the bolts that they're secured with this is a four inch 4 inch long two half inch bolt with 20 threads per inch so it's a fine thread for a bolt this size and these are hex head cap screws and this is a three inch bolt so there's a 3 and a 4 inch bolt so as far as the teeth this is a new tooth this is a 300 hour tooth so just looking at it you can kind of see the kind of where should have kind of they're not sharp sharp edges but there are well-defined edges that come to a point you can see on these teeth they're rounded in this direction but the biggest thing is the profile of it and I'll get this set up here so you can kind of see the profile of it so this top edge is really the cutting edge so you can see on this side how it how it rounds over and this is the actual carbide inserts and these blocks are some type of Steel so you can see the where and again this was new 300 hours ago and you could see the where that it has nice to find edge on the front and these are rounded edges when you're using it as an operator you can kind of feel when it's just kind of pound in the wood instead of cutting it still cuts but just like a chainsaw blade a sharp chainsaw blade will go through a log like butter and give you good chips and when a chainsaw break gets a a little worn it's harder to go through the wood and it starts coming out more like a like a powder but what this does is it starts tearing the tree into bigger bigger chunks instead of really chipping it as it's cutting it so this will have a better a better cut a better finer mulching action when they start wearing down you'll notice it'll be a little harder going through the trees and you'll start shredding the tree and the bigger chunks so I guess that's really about all I had to say about this just to give you some idea of costs and operator costs which are important for figure out your owner operator cost again the Bobcat t7 70 high-flow it's got 92 horsepower plenty of power this size machine has plenty of power to push push that mulching head a couple things that you definitely want if you're ever using a mulching head as you can see this fun glass it's three quarters of an inch you can see the layers in it it's polycarbonate is definitely bulletproof and I definitely recommend I would not operate a mulching head without this polycarbonate window on it at least Bobcat has a forestry kit which includes the door some safety features pops following object protection system and some covers they keep debris out of your engine compartment but some people even if you have the standard glass definitely will not recommend that because any kind of debris even sticks or parts of trees or rocks will definitely ricochet up and hit your window and I've got some Nick's on my window but I try to be careful and this is my second machine after three years so this is a newer windshield but but that's it I hope this information was good for you and useful this is my business Clevenger for services you can look me up on Facebook under that name I also have youtubes that I try to post I'm not a filmmaker and I try to do this just for kind of informational purposes but if you're watching a YouTube now please if this was good for you and please like like it and subscribe to my page and I'd give more videos up and that's it good luck to y'all out there and hope you enjoyed it thanks

Channel: Clevinger Forest Services, LLC

Views: 467,472

Keywords: Clevinger Forest Services, Forestry Mulching, Tree and brush clearing, land clearing, owner operator costs of forestry mulching, forestry mulching business, cost of forestry mulching, cost of a bobcat, land clearing in clarksville, how to clear heavy brush, wood chipper, bobcat of clarksville, bobcat of nashville, coleman tractor company, kubota, john deere, thompson machinery in clarksville, co op in clarksville, UT extension, dave clevinger

Id: JD1uLH_64Qc

Length: 13min 4sec (784 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 05 2017