PHPaul
Well-known member
Equipment
B2650, Pronovost snow blower, Landpride rotary mower, Howard tiller, box blade
Perfect! I won't be picking up bolders, mostly basketball-sized and under, but there's a crapload of them.saw a recent messicks video on them. looks like they have a 48" version that weighs 210 lbs... $700
Here's the link:
New Equipment Sales: Browse By Brand & Category | Messick's
Messick's has a wide variety of new equipment, from row crop tractors and excavators to handheld power equipment. Browse by brand and category.www.messicks.com
That’s a great fit and weight for your tractor and sounds like it will work out well for your described use.When it comes in and I get a chance to test drive it, I'll post back to this thread with pix and test results.
I have a rock bucket similar to yours. I bought mine a few years ago from here. https://bxattachments.com/product/rock-bucket/
Rock bucket arrived at the FedEx terminal yesterday, I went and picked it up this morning. Dang fast shipping, it only went out Monday from Pennsylvania!
Quality and construction look good. Everything is square, all the welds are solid, joints are tight. Powder coat is pretty crude, but I don't expect it to last under it's intended use anyway.
This was my first test area. It was a chicken yard up until this year. It was full of potholes from chickens digging their dust baths and when I tilled it up to level it (and work in the chicken poo) I turned up a crapload of rocks.
In addition to rocks, it will also pick up root masses which is okay. It does a good job of filtering out the dirt, especially as dry as it's been lately. If the soil was wet, I could see where there might be issues. Verdict: It's not the "magic bullet" I was hoping for, but it surely beats picking them by hand.
I actually bought it for cleaning up an area next to a drainage ditch so I can mow it. I knocked the top off it with the dozer blade on a borrowed excavator and, once again, turned up a treasure trove of rocks. Also a lot of woody root masses from what we call "hardtack brush". Again, it did a pretty good job of sifting out the dirt.
I'm pleased with how much it will pick up. Never had any indication that the hydraulics were straining.
Incidental Note: I found out that you can't run a B2650 out of fuel! I got careless and didn't realize how many hours I put on it since last filling it up, didn't check the gauge. Just as I lined up for my first pass in the test area, it quit like I'd turned the key off.
Apparently, it has a low fuel sensor or something that shuts it down before it sucks air. I just topped off the tank and, while it took a few seconds, it started right back up and went to work.
She sure does grow some nice rocks!I have a rock bucket similar to yours. I bought mine a few years ago from here. https://bxattachments.com/product/rock-bucket/
It took me awhile to learn how to use it properly. There is a certain technique to digging rocks out of the ground and shaking the dirt off so you are only hauling away the rocks and not the soil. Once I learned the technique that worked for me I was able to haul full loads without any trouble. Here is a picture of one of the loads I dug up recently when I was expanding my wife's garden.
View attachment 47220
Oh no, you ain't seen nothing yet. Check out these rocks. I dug all of them out using the BX1860. These are just a small sample of what I have in my yard.She sure does grow some nice rocks!
I see that you are in West Central Florida, I am in Washington State. It is only about 3700 miles, give or take. If you come here I will give to you for free any and all of the rocks that you want. I will even use my tractor to load them for you, except the ones like what is in my front yard. That one had to be pulled with my pickup truck (Chevy Silverado K2500 with Duramax engine) after we got it out of the ground. I have some that are at least 5 times as big as that one. I could not get them out of the ground so I covered them back up. I did not know how big they were until I started to dig them up. That was a couple wasted weeks.I could use some of those down here. I need a rock wall to keep the people from driving out the backside of the cul-de-sac.
What I do is tilt the bucket to about a 60 - 75 degree angle and lower the bucket until the front tires are off the ground. Then I tilt the bucket back and forth to get the bucket teeth digging into the ground. After I get the bucket dug in a few inches I tilt the bucket to pry the rocks out of the ground. I do this until I have pried enough rocks out of the ground to make more than a full bucket load of rocks. Then I back drag the rocks into a pile that I can get the bucket under. I approach the pile with the tractor in low range with the engine at about 2000 RPM. I make sure that the bucket is at about a 15 degree angle and scoop the rocks into the bucket as I am driving slowly into the pile. This has worked well for me as long as the rocks are the size that you can see in the picture I attached previously. If I am working with much larger rocks I use the regular bucket with the piranha bar to dig and pry them out, and then switch to the rock bucket to scoop them up and transport. What method do you use?@armylifer - would you care to describe your technique?