Trimming stumps nearly flush with a chainsaw

[Bigsnowdog]

I am doing a lot of thinning in a reforestation project of mine on 15 acres. Because I do some mowing, I like to trim the stumps as low as possible. The problem is that the chain is dulled quickly by contact with soil, and it takes very little to do so.

Are there any neat tricks you might know of to make this an easier task, and not require so many chain changes?

Thank you....

 

[John in MA]

Skid steer with chain or:
Bucket loader or:
Big stump grinder or:
Cordless drill and pyrodex.

 

[Ryan Willock]

like to make a little noise now don't we John???LOL if you have a 4x4 then leave the stump about 4' high so you can get leverage on it and chain it to your truck and pull it out:alien:

 

[John in MA]

Say what!? You'll have to speak up!

 

[Ryan Willock]

John, i find that works very well when you have a large tree trunk to split HUH???

 

[Bill G]

I assume the ground is not accesible for full stump removal by pulling them. I can tell you from experience the pulling stumps is hard on both you and equipment. I would not reccomend it especially when there are much better alternatives. If you do not have many to do then you could rent a handheld stump grider. I Husqvarns makes one that I believe is coupled to a 372Xp saw. I have never ran one but I would imagine they are very slow and tough on the operator. I have quite a bit of experience in what you are doind so I will tell you how I do it. The first thing you need to decide is just how low are you actually going to mow. I assume you are wanting to mow with a bush hog. although you can scrub the ground with them generally mowing at 4 inches is the lowest you would want to go. I cut all the stumps off as close to the ground as possible without touching the ground. In most cases this leaves a stump that is no more than 1 inch above the ground. It is extremely are to ever hit one of the stumps with the mower. The key thing to do is use Tordon. As soon as possible spray the stump with Tordon. It is the best stump killer made. It is best to work with a partner. One guy on the saw and one guy right behind him sparaying. If you get as far as 10 feet away from the stump many times it is hard to find it if the partner is not right behind you. Most of the time the trees taht are removed are fast growing soft trees. In my are ait is Locust. They great thing about them is they die fast. If you spray the stump this winter by next winter you will be very surprised how rotten they are. You can kick the top off them and they will fall apart. Of course if are removing large oaks or maple over 12 inches the stumps will not rot fast. In that case you just have to fluch them as close as possible. I have been doing it this way for a long time and rarely hit a stump with the mower.

Bill

 

[ricksvar]

If your saw has a adjustable oiler max it out.Because the saw is at ground level watch the chips,don't let them pile up under the saw and up around the sprocket causing the chain to jam.Every now and them you might pull the saw out of the cut and kick the chips away from the area where the powerhead is laying.These are tough cuts and tend to overheat a saw.I let my saw idle a short time after a stump cut to cool down.Because you're still going to end up with dulled chain,I tend to save these cuts for the last of the day.

Keep On

 

[eyolf]

I have had better luck with semi-chisel chain cutting extremely dirty wood, which seems to be about as close as you can get to stumping. Carlton makes, or at least used to make an "S" chain in both 3/8 and .404 which would be hard to tell from the old chipper style chain. It won't cut as fast as more modern stuff, but seems to really take the abuse. Probably want to run the stuff on a hardnose bar

A dealer turned me on to this stuff several years ago when I agreed to salvage a fair amount of timber that had been blown down in a tornado, then shoved aside by a big cat in order to gain access to a resort...the stuff was literally laying in the mud, and the first day I probably filed as much as I cut. The old-style chain would at least last through a tank or two of gas.

 

[Tim Gardner]

That’s easy. Buy a bush ax. Hold it like a shovel and walk around the stump shearing off the bark at the level you want to cut. That gets the dirt and bark with dirt in it out of the way. A lot of people don’t know the value of a bush ax on the job any more.

 

[murphy4trees]

I also find that cutting though minerals is easier on the chain when the wood is wet.. after a rain or a little hosing off. However, generally I will remove the bark.
God Bless All,
Daniel

 

[bwalker]

I have had to deal with stumps like this in the past. I just removed all the dirt around the stump and used my saw with RM chain to cut it below ground level. I then gave the stumps a good treatment of herbacide and burried with topsoil a week later.

 

[dbabcock]

Man, I can't even imagine what it must be like to pull a stump out by wrapping a chain or whatever around the base and pulling it out with a truck, tractor, jeep or whatever. My Woods 9000 backhoe, at admitedly a puny 6000 lbs. of breakout force, does an OK job at excavating stumps, but it's amazing just how strong those roots are. A 30" base diameter stump can take me as long as an hour and a half to excavate and pull, leaving a hole that's 3-4 feet deep and 10 feet around. I can see how leaving a stub maybe a foot or so high after you cut the tree would help with the pulling leverage, but even a 12" stump could do some serious damage to your frame/bumper if you got a running start to snap it out.

 

[NeTree]

Maybe a carbide chain?

Love the Pyrodex idea, John. Would you recomend the 3f or the 4f?

 

[Ryan Willock]

when i have pulled stumps out in the past they were pine and none over 8'' i always used FFg

 

[Marky Mark]

stumped

I cleared about 2 acres at my house in NJ I tried the method Doug talked about and it was taking me forever. I went out an rented a stump grinder that did the trick. It worked out so well that I had sometime left on the rent that I ran the grinder to my barn to hook up a gas line. I own a 1972 Toyota land cruiser with a chvy 350 and a pto winch those stumps wouldn’t budge. I did pamper the truck so I didn’t go balls to the walls with it. Rent the grinder when you get it all cleared, if it took me 15 mins a stump it was a lot, I also didn’t grind the hell out of them just the tops to get them lower than the earth.

 

[confused]

Though I would to use John's method (kaboom) I have had the distinct pleasure of using a Hitachi 450 (i think around 80,000 lb) excavator with a Hydraulic thumb to rip out 10 stumps on a job. Most where about 24-30" dia, did not take long at all 5-10 minutes a stump. Only draw back is you leave BIG footprints.

 

[spreaderman]

shovel method

I you are going to cut them off at ground level or just under ground level I shovel out around the cicumference and scrape the dirt off the stump then for the dirt, you might take a broom and sweep it away , a weedeater works good too.... just remove all the dirt that you can from around it digging down to grade level and cut as low as you can.....this is the cheapest way I have found

 

[Keener]

If you know how to vent the stump with a saw you can burn them below grade. This works well with conifers as they usually have enough flammable pitch in them. For hardwoods a good soaking of deisel perhaps.
The key is cutting the vents in to let the fire travel downward, by the way this is not a good practice when things are hot and dry, winter only.
To burn a 6 foot dia. Douglas fir stump out I cut 8 slots starting at the bark and angling down at approx. 30% boring toward the center of the stump, then plunge the center in three or four spots to try and intersect your angled cuts, build your campfire over the center and start it up (deisel optional).
Took two days but the owner was happy to keep an eye on it and probably your stumps would take a lot less as they are probably smaller.
This was not a forest setting by the way it was a 75 unit townhouse complex.