Studies of new Equipment for Soil Scarification mounted on a Grapple Loader
Sammanfattning / Abstract
In this report a new small-scale equipment for soil scarification is being evaluated. It is an  attachment consisting of two steel pipes with harrow pins that are bolt onto a conven-tional log grapple. Scarification is done by opening the grapple, placing it to the ground, closing it, lifting and dropping the vegetation and humus layer beside the patch. A simple attachment for mechanical sowing was also tested.

Time consumption per patch was 11.4 seconds. Time consumption was about 2.5 seconds higher per patch when sowing was included. Nearly 90% of production time was used to manouver the grapple loader. Productivity was 320 patches per hour when only scarifica-tion was done and 262 patches per hour when also sowing was included. The average patch size was about 70 dm2. The thin harrow pins loosed the mineral soil but didn’t digg. The equipment was relatively insensitive to stones and stumps because of the dri-vers possibilities to place the patches as well as the elasticity of the pins. The patches consisted mostly of mineral soil mixed with some remaining humus. Very little mineral soil was removed from the patch.The scarification cost was estimated to be lower than for conventional large scale equipment when the regeneration area is less than one hectar thanks to lower moving and starting costs.