Clearing Line

I've used a weed eater with the metal tri-blade on briers with success for setup sites.

If you are going to cut entire boundaries, a brush hog would do much better.

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I have thought of it but never have tried. One thing I do use is a pair of chainsaw chaps. Can go through the briars easy and your legs will not look like you tangled with a bobcat.

104 Acres.......

My contract would say that the owner would provide equipment, operator and fuel to clear the sight lines so I could do my work!

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I recently used a Stihl 240 for cutting brush. It is a new model they just introduced. It had a saw blade that did very good on woody type brush up to about 3". The saw blade didn't work well on black berries so I bought a new blade shaped sort of like a Y that is supposed to work better. I'll be using it next week.

> .... The site is full of green briars head high. I was thinking of using a gas powered weed eater with a brush cutting attachment...

Find a subcontractor in your area that has one of these.

I have used one of those Y-shaped attachments on a Stihl weed eater before. They work pretty well on anything under 1/2". The saw blade attachment works well on stuff up to a couple of inches in diameter. The only drawback with these is that honeysuckle just wraps itself around the top of the blade. You have to shut it down and clean it off every few minutes when it is super thick.

I used to use a four wheeler to mow them down when I was still wet behind the ears. I would lean back on the seat and hit the gas with a lath! Worked pretty well for me but scratched the hell out of the ATV.

In the aerial utility business there are multitudes of equipment that make short work brushy cross timber.

We needed to stake a pole line for a highway widening project and the RW looked like a lightning bolt with a PI every 250 feet or so. The crew spent a day out there belly crawling through saw briars and brush. I talked to the clearing foreman and he met us out there the next day with one of these:

One Handy-Dandy Skid Steer

I don't know what you budget is, but we had almost a mile of that crap cleared and staked in about an hour and a half. That contraption could really move. It did have a nasty habit of spitting lethal shards at high speeds though. Best to stand behind it.

Years ago I cut two quarter moon shapes in steel about a foot from tip to tip. Used washers for clearance and put one one each side of the bar of a chain saw about a third of the way back from the tip of the bar.
I did not use it, but others did and reported that it worked well in brush. If I remember correctly it was needed for blackberry overgrowth. they were removed later so the saw could be used in the normal way but those things were kept in the equipment room in case they were needed again.
jud

It never hurts to ask. We mentioned it to one client once and it turned out he had an old (and huge) payloader that was good for tromping down future pond sites etc. and man, could it clear line. We never had it so easy as we did on that job.

The combination of thick brush and steep grades and heat is my biggest deterrent from going solo. We spend almost as much time cutting line as measuring. I would have to decline a lot of jobs. I'm too old to cut brush on a steep hillside all day long. Actually I was too old in 1950, the day I was born.

Can you drive an atv over them and get it done!!!!

Sharpen your machete every morning, it makes a huge difference. I even went and bought a hardened steel one. It's nice but I like my old one that's longer.

One thing I could never find was some leather gloves that had gauntlets on them that cover some of the forearm.

Leather welding gloves?

welder gloves would be too hot. I was always on the look out for the leather gloves from 'Night at the Museum' that Teddy Roosevelt wore

Try the local motorsickle shop. Light and unlined deerskin gauntlet gloves are usually present with a good selection...as long as you don't mind Harley emblems, flames or Grateful Dead skulls with lightning bolts embossed on them.

Clearing Line?

I'm just starting a detailed utility survey for five miles of this; but a weed eater ain't going to move the stuff that's in our way 😀

I have used a Stihl pole saw with great success (cant remember the model number). I have both a chains saw and hedge trimmer head for the unit along with a 1 meter extender. The hedge trimmer does a great job on briers while the saw works great on limps up to about 3". With the extension I can reach out quite a ways. We use it a lot on our railroad projects which seem to always have heavy brush along the fills.

Good luck

LEATHER GAUNTLET GLOVES
I once found a pair on the side of the road. I think they were electric utility linemans gloves. Gauntlets almost to the elbow. Best gloves I have had for clearing line.

Motorcycle shop hadn't thought of that, will give a try. Hope the cost isn't too high with Harley logos, as they are just gonna get trashed by briars. Thanks