Root Pulling Crane

I build this root pulling crane to help me clean up old bushes and small trees in my garden. The construction is very simple yet strong. The crane is built from 2x4, and uses a cheap pulley that lifts 1 ton. I took up 4 bushes and two small trees by now, and it actually works better than I had hoped for. I do support the pulling with a spade so it's not taking away all the hard work. It's funny how you can hear the roots cracking under the ground when you pull another couple of centimeters. This is a prototype for a projects I've thought about for a while, and I thought I would share the idea.

I found some scrap sheets of melamine, and 40x56 mm boards and constructed a strong head with lots of screws. Turns out the melamine was a bad choise of course, because it is outside in the rain. But anyway this is a temporary project to assist in cleaning up my garden, so no big deal. I bought this cheap pulley that lifts 1 tonne. Inside the crane head, there is a 2x4 with a hole all the way through. The 2x4 is sandwiched between the melamine sheets and attached with lots of screws.

You can just twist the chain and hook around smapp trees and see it it fetches. But in this case I has to use a smaller rope to get hold of alot of smaller spaghetti plants. Another approach I took at a later time taking up a small tree was to screw some metal band directly into the tree. That worked well. Unfortunately there is not picture of this.

Here are some images that shows what I have harvested with the crane. The image in the introduction shows pulling a small tree.

This brick was pushed into the ground, so in later pulls I used a bigger foot.

... they love the smell of fresh soil and quickly harvest worms and ants