Any opinions on those "thumbs" that are on excavators?

[speedfunk]

My wife and I are looking at purchasing a kubota kx41-3v.



We have tons of earthwork to do. Our property is 15 acres of wooded steep mountain side. We have to still backfill our home and start on our permaculturish food forest. This involves building hugelcuture beds with trees and cutting terraces in the hill side to retain rains and build more healthy deeper soils. We had kicked around the idea of purchasing a backhoe early on but didnt most b/c of finances. Very glad we didn't. We have been renting an excavator (30hp) and it does the job awesome. The tracks always seem to get tracking and its very small width allows terracing on our challenging terrain. I think a backhoe would have been way to big to safely navigate and b/c we dont have any animals the front loader would be less useful to us then say your standard farm. To make up for not having a front bucket i was going to increase the size of the bucket on the mini. Not perfect but we dont move stuff that far that much. MUCH MORE about digging.

So it costs 27,800. Which is a bit for us, we prob will sell when we are done recouping 18,000 of it. The thumb addition would add 2000-2500 (not sure of exact price yet). There is also what I believe is a non movable thumb on ebay for 700. Any one use one of these compared to the movable ones?


http://compare.ebay.com/like/350356289085?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&va r=sbar

A good amount of trees need to be moved and set for the hugelculture mounds as well as rocks for retaining walls and patios. It seems it would also be nice for general use. I figure we evolved thumbs for a reason right LOL. I kind of want one just not sure if we can justify the price tag

What says you all?

[uncle Will in In.]

Does your hoe have a blade across the front of the tracks. Without something to pinch anything against, it is really hard to make any time working anything other than dirt or loose stone. The stationary thumb would most likely do what you want for a lot less money.

[Oswego]

If ALL you ever used it for was dirt then the thumb is not needed. But if you ever need to pick up rocks or use it to move trash or limbs or stack firewood etc etc then be sure to get the thumb. Think of how limited your hand would be without a thumb.

[ksfarmer]

Originally Posted by Oswego

If ALL you ever used it for was dirt then the thumb is not needed. But if you ever need to pick up rocks or use it to move trash or limbs or stack firewood etc etc then be sure to get the thumb. Think of how limited your hand would be without a thumb.

Ditto this. The thumb is very handy in a lot of situations. You can also get different size buckets.

[sawman65]

the thumbs are great when you are working in the trees as you can move them easy.
but i need to ask... you say steep? how steep is steep? that thing looks like it will flip on its side if taken to steep. i would look at a skid loader there are all kinds of attachments for them and a lot less than a kobota i am sure

[speedfunk]

Thread Source:
http://www.heavyequipmentforums.com/...00-hour-report

"Yeah I have to agree, the only time I want a thumb is when I have a lot of demolition type work and need to grab irregular shaped objects like concrete, timbers, and stumps. I was in Vancouver this past summer and found it amazing so many excavators were equipped with thumbs and yet weren't getting used. Plus all that added weight reduces the ability to use a larger sized bucket when bulking out loose material and it also gets in the way when digging trenches closer into the machine. I think if I was to get a thumb for this size of machine I'd just get a mechanical one that I cant remove easily. What I want when I buy my first machine in a couple years is a tilt bucket, which is far handier than a thumb."

He makes a good point for the mechanical thumb is that its not on all the time increasing your bucket size potential and making it easier to use when digging and the thumb is not needed.

[maverickxxx]

I run a mini excavator most of my time that's the exact machine u want for what u r trying to do. I run with out a thumb an really don't ever wish I had one. I build retaining walls all the time with rock. Move logs etc. As your skills progress on it ull have a 2500 obstruction on the end of the machine. It defintly adds lots of extra weight on the dipper. Also it will cut drastically on size of rocks you can pick up. Don't worry about tipping it over u have to work pretty hard to do that . Don't be afraid of grading with dozed blade agin takes a little practice but when u get hang of it ull love it. I've heard good things on kubota never run one ran other brands bobcat is slow under powered cats are good expensive. I run Komatsu fast an powerful an never had any problems other than wear parts just put new tracks on it. 4000 hrs outta them I was happy with that. I would go with out thumb. I'd push for 18" bucket not to big not to small. If u are bent on getting something else for it maybe a grading bucket. But as that machine comes is going to do everything u need save the 2500. But if u are bent on thumb go with mechanical that u can un bolt by pulling to pins easily.
A

[plowjockey]

If your are planning on digging up tree roots, it seems too small, IMO.

At 17HP, it's half of what you are used to.

It's max bucket "breakout force", which is the force that the bucket will dig, is only 3500#. My ancient Ford backhoe has a breakout force of 12,000#, but will still struggle with significant tree roots.

The lifting capacities looks pretty limited also, if you plan on lifting heavy trees or rocks.

Just my two.

http://www.kubota.com/product/KX41/KX41.aspx

[DaleK]

Plan out what you want done ahead. Hire a decent operator with a real excavator. It'll be done and for a lot less than you're planning on putting out for the excavator ($9000) plus fuel plus time plus potential repairs.

[agmantoo]

For the price you are expecting to pay for the mini excavator you can buy a late model real machine. Something like this

YouTube

. A machine like the one in the video will hold its value and is large enough to do large jobs but small enough to haul without permitting. With the varied tasks you mentioned I highly recommend a thumb. A mechanical thumb would be all you need. An excavator is a great tool and if I only had one machine I would want it to be an excavator. With an excavator and and old dump truck you can do most anything you have a mind to do. Here is a current project that I am doing on my place. This was a very large gully that I could not cross nor stop from eroding. I decided I would confine the runoff and reduce the amount of water that dumped through the cut/wash. I am doing the work in stages and will resume my efforts in the Spring. I could not have done this without an excavator since the bottom of the gully is roughly 8 feet deep in unstable soil and will not support a dozer.

[Ross]

A thumb is very handy and helps on resale value but if I had to choose between a thumb or a ditching bucket I'd have the ditching bucket. (since you have a blade to crowd up on!)

[Wayne02]

Don't even entertain the thought of an excavator without a thumb, they are that productive. The extra you spend up front will be forgotten by the end of your first full week of use on the machine. If at all possible buy a machine that has a thumb on it from the get-go, not one that can have a thumb installed after-the-fact.

Just a few of the things we use ours for:
Knock small trees over then sort them out for limbing and bucking.


Dig stumps. Having the thumb allows you to pinch roots between the thumb and the bucket and then curl the bucket up which helps loosen the stump. The bucket curl is the most powerful function on most any excavator, and if something needs removed from the ground the bucket curl is your best bet if you can get a hold of the item.


Takes a lot of digging and 'prying' on roots with the bucket to get the larger stumps out.


Load burn pile from the top. This works better than using the dozer to push the pile up as the dozer method adds some dirt to the pile each time, whereas the excavator places a clean load of fuel where-ever it's needed on the pile.


Holds the log off the ground at waist height for bucking into rounds. Much easier on the back.


When we first started it looked like this.


When we finished the initial clearing it looked like this, due in large part to that little excavator. There is just no substitute for the dozer when something absolutely must be moved, crushed, destroyed, etc. However, the dozer can create a lot of collateral damage, where the excavator treads more lightly and can remove trees/brush with more pin-point accuracy.

Once we had an initial path cleared using the dozer, I was able to walk the excavator down that path and take out a bazzilion smallish trees. I would rotate the house 45 degrees from the tree, open the thumb fully, swing around at full speed and catch the tree(s) at about mid height. Then boom down while continuing to rotate, until the point that the bucket/thumb was at the base of the tree(s). Then close the thumb on the tree(s), and then curl the bucket up which would lift the tree(s) out of the ground with all their roots intact. Now this wad of small trees is clamped in the thumb and it can be taken over to the burn pile with the excavator.


They also make a 'brush rake' that replaces the bucket and works in conjunction with the thumb to rake and remove brush. We just used the bucket/thumb combo but the rake would remove less dirt than the bucket when used in the brush removal process.



Eta: Ross's post reminded me of using the blade and the bucket to transport largish stumps to the burn pile. Smaller stumps could be grasped in the thumb and carried over to the pile. However, a number of stumps were too large, exceeding the excavators ability to grasp in the thumb and even exceeding the excavators weight lifting capacity. In this case I would cradle the stump between the bucket and the blade. I'd pull the stump up tight against the blade, then using bucket curl (the only thing powerful enough get any lift on the big stumps) it would lift most of the stump just barely off the ground and I could back up with the stump wedged in there over to the burn pile.

[Ross]

Is that an old Gasser 4600 david brown Wayne?

[speedfunk]

----. I had responses all typed out and lost them b/c of hitting wrong button:hammer

Maverick: What hp is your machine. When you move rocks and trees I assume you just pinch it against the arm? Your post was very helpful

plowjockey: To be honest I did want the machine one level up (27hp). THEN i got the price. The price of this machine is the highest I can go. The perk of this machine is that its footprint is small. Allowing me to create trails/berms/swales on steeper grades . It will also be easier on the soil by not compacting it as much. Will create paths that are smaller. The plan is in 5 years to sell it and from then on out I will only use handcarts/maybe a garden tractor.

I have not run a machine this small (17hp) BUT the rentals that were bigger (27hp) were fine. Not only were they fine but in the beginning when I was learning how to use them I ran them on the lowest throttle. After running them for a while I found that I my only used the full throttles when I was using the blade and pushing dirt. The dirt here is a clay the smallish rock mix. There really are no boulders which has surprised me.

The lifting weight at 1000 pounds should be enough for me all though prob at the minimum i would go . If a tree is to big I got a chainsaw to chunk it.

Dale K: I dont really think they could do it cheaper. I spent 3000 when I had the original earthwork done for my berm house (3 days w/big excavator and dozer). Money goes quick at 120/hr per machine (big machines). What I want done is so custom that to explain it to someone to get them to do it right would cause me more work then just doing it my self. I feel like am a good operator, quick/effecient/gentle. I have also paid professionals and watch them waste my money moving dirt back and forth. When a big machine leaves it also leaves a bigger mess behind. Meaning I cannot easily clean things up by hand. Costing me additional time and labor correcting things.

I also really want a machine that will be sitting there so anytime I want something I just jump in and do it.

agmantoo: that machine is just way to big for me. I also vowed not to get any old junk i have to fix. I dont know enough and have had enough fun fixing junk vehicles through the years to know its not me. The scale of the smaller machines fits my site and having new means only routine maintenance and reliability.

I know a lot of you guys use big equipment and could consider this is a toy. However I have moved in the neighborhood of 70-80 tons of rocks/gravel/sand by shovel and wheel barrel so far on this build. So for my scale this thing would be very helpful and save me a lot of physical labor. The size also allows me to move it easily to another piece of property i have. The size also wont bankrupt me maintaining it. I am a small tool dude!
Anyone else use similar sized machines, was it capable of what u wanted it to do? Appreciate the responses greatly!

[maverickxxx]

I have to check on hp don't rember where u located in upstate. I can give u number to my sales rep. U can pm me if u want u I'll answer your ?s like I said I use a mini most of time it's the one machine I use the most.

[Lizza]

Hubby says you are under powered with that machine. He said try and check around for a nice used one, go two more sizes up, it will be worth it. He also said don't buy it without the thumb. Good Luck!

[Lizza]

Originally Posted by speedfunk

Anyone else use similar sized machines, was it capable of what u wanted it to do? Appreciate the responses greatly!

Hubby: small brush, digging trenches, grading small areas, ect. Also it's not going to be very good on hillsides because of it's small footprint and lower power. We used that sized for digging plumbing, trimming out swimming pool holes, and getting into tight spaces.

[Wayne02]

Originally Posted by Ross

Is that an old Gasser 4600 david brown Wayne?

It's a david brown but it is diesel. It's quite the workhorse with the front end loader and hydraulic splitter or other attachment hanging off the 3-point.

[davel745]

Originally Posted by morningstar

Hubby says you are under powered with that machine. He said try and check around for a nice used one, go two more sizes up, it will be worth it. He also said don't buy it without the thumb. Good Luck!

I agree get as big a machine as you can afford and get the thumb.

[fantasymaker]

I have a LS 2800 linkbelt its nearly a 50,000 lb machine.
LOL ITS NOT BIG ENOUGH!
there are times when busting out a big tree or such i would like o go up a size ...or 10!
But the weight does not compact the soil any more than a small machine, in fact often I can go places they cant. I can drive the trackhoe across places I cant walk easily.
As for the thumb I can pinch most things against the digging arm with the bucket.

I HAVE thought about adding some teeth to the sides of Dig arm in the area the bucket pinches.
One thing to keep in mind when using a thumb is they are known or twisting Dig arm.