Sod cutter attachment

[Ironmule]

Has anyone attempted to build a sod cutting attachment with any success? I would like to remove some grass from my field behind my house and transplant it to my yard. I was thinking some 4" flat bar sharpened and detachable to my bucket as to lightly scrape about 2" below the surface and roll it up by hand and move it. Building it is no problem but am I wasting my time?

 

[Tazza]

I can't see that you would be wasting your time.
I just feel that you would get a better cut if the cuts were only say a foot or two wide. This way you can exert more force on a smaller area so it should cut.
As i have a 4 in 1 bucket, i would have made something i could open the bucket up and grab. I would then drag it backwards to slice through the grass. I can't see why forward wouldn't work too if you could bolt it to your bucket.
Will the tyres damage it too much? will you get enough pushing power? its all an experiment.
Pretty sure the real ones that the use on turf farms uses a knife like you were talking about making, but they slide from side to side to cut it? From the one i saw, that's how i understood that they worked.

 

[TriHonu]

I can't see that you would be wasting your time.
I just feel that you would get a better cut if the cuts were only say a foot or two wide. This way you can exert more force on a smaller area so it should cut.
As i have a 4 in 1 bucket, i would have made something i could open the bucket up and grab. I would then drag it backwards to slice through the grass. I can't see why forward wouldn't work too if you could bolt it to your bucket.
Will the tyres damage it too much? will you get enough pushing power? its all an experiment.
Pretty sure the real ones that the use on turf farms uses a knife like you were talking about making, but they slide from side to side to cut it? From the one i saw, that's how i understood that they worked.

I have seen a homemade attachment similar to a sod cutter.
It was built by a small attachment manufacturer for his own use. It was a frame with a section of double bevel cutting edge that had one foot on each end heated and bent upward at a 90 degree angle.
The cutting edge was then attached to the frame. The frame prevented it from going more than one foot deep.
He used it to keep the brush (wild shrubs) from growing back. He had been mowing the brush down and it just kept growing back. He built the attachment to sever the roots below the surface. The double bevel cutting edge allowed him to use it in both forward and reverse.
I have no doubt that he could have added a couple vertical pieces of cutting edge to cut three strips and limited the depth of cut to 2-3 inches.
You will want to run it in reverse and offset it to one side or make it wider than the loader. If you are traveling forward over the cut sod you will tear the cut sod if the wheels spin.