Boring Unit

[MarkV]

Thought you Build-it-yourself people might have some thoughts on this idea. Yesterday there was a crew installing an in ground irrigation system at the house across the street. They used a Case trenching unit to cut trenches for the PVC pipe going in the ground. (this is new construction with out grass) When it came time to go under the drive, they hooked up two 10’ rods to a PTO take off on the front of the trencher. I could not see what the bit was. With the PTO turning the trencher provided forward movement pushing the rods through the ground. The drilling rod was flexible enough to allow a helper to keep a foot on it at the entry area directing the bore in a horizontal direction. I would guess this is the reason for a longer section of rod than needed for the width of the drive.

Besides the obvious use for water or conduit pipe under paved areas, I also thought this could be handy to clear clogged culvert pipes.

Although I have absolutely no need for such a thing, it got me thinking that this could be done with the PTO on a tractor. I was thinking that the universal joints on a PTO shaft would allow one to start at a more horizontal angle if a bracket could be made to contain the movement of the PTO shaft. Any thoughts on what would be the proper material for the drill rod and extensions? How about a bit? What do you all think?

MarkV

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Come by the shop. I have a ton of used bore rod with the universals and some bits. I got them from my bud with the construction company.

The bore rod is special steel. It isn't solid but it's close as the hole is less than a half an inch. The machine you watched do the work is a Case mini or maxi sneaker. Most of them have shaker boxes for plowing in but some of them also have trenchers.

Little Beaver makes a bore unit.

Plumbers sometimes carry a bore unit that works off of big old Milwaulkee drill motor. And they use standard pipe for making the bore.

I have a piece of pipe with a hose connection that I use sometimes to go under a driveway in the installation of automatic gates. I have it set up where I have slide hammer apparatus on it in case I hit some hard pack.

One of the more interesting boring techniques I've been exposed to is a torpedo looking thingy. It's hooked up to a one eighty five compressor. The operator sights it in and then turns on the air. It operates on the hammering in it's internals. You can feel is shaking the ground for quite a distance. Of course if it hits something and deflects down then you might have to abandon it in place or go get the backhoe. I know it's name like my own but old timers has set in I guess.

But it just hammers away and if you've done it right and you haven't hit anything it'll come out the other side right where you aimed it.

The way the directional rigs work is the head has a side with an angled edge. It also has a transmitter. The operator on the carriage knows the position of the angled edge. The monitor with the receiver knows the depth.

When they want to go deeper the operator stops turning the bore stem. He sets the angled edge so when he pushes it forces the head down. When he gets to the dept the he wants he flattens out the trajectory. Then he starts it spinning again.

When they first came out for utility construction a bud hauled me over to watch them go under a river. It was really something. They picked up water about halfway across. So they pulled back clear of the river, angled down a couple of more feet and rock and rolled to the other side.

They did an eight hundred foot bore and installed the conduit under the river in a day. Just stop and think about what the cost would have been if they'd used conventional trenching methods.

 

[Soundguy]

What you saw was a smaller version of a standard jack and bore setup. Those smaller ones are used to make small runs like you saw, under a driveway, or to shoot telephone / cable tv under a small residential road, etc. Larger versions of that machine can be seen on roadsides when companies are adding to existing underground utilities. Usually there will be a rack holding about 100+ foot of drill sections.

Ever see sections of flexible pipe in the 2-3" range obscenely sticking out of the ground in areas? These were jack and bored in place. Many times these are just laid as chase pipes.

When I built my house, all our utilities were underground, and the cable tv and telephone were sopposed to show up before the driveway went in, well, telephone made it, but tv was late, so my concrete man buried a 2" section of pipe as a chase under the slab for the tv people. It helped quite a bit. Plus, If I ever need to run a driveway or gate sensor out to the end of the drive, I can use the chase pipe to make it to the other side.
For cleaning out culverts, we have used a high pressure water head mounted on a flexible hose. The head has most of the water jets to the rear, so it 'pushes' itself along, and it usually has one head in front to clear its way. Have a couple of guys holding the hose, and back drag it often to keep clearing the material.. works nicely. Some sewer trucks use this method.

Soundguy

 

[MarkV]

Harv & Chris,
Sounds like you are both familiar with the Case unit I saw. This one had a trencher on the front, like Ditch Witch units, and what I guess was a shaker unit on the back although they did not use it.

So do you see any reason one could not do the same thing with a tractor PTO if you were using the proper bore rod?

MarkV

 

[Anonymous Poster]

I did it by mounting a Core drilling head on a commercial overhead door opening track. For drill rod, I used 1/2" pipe. The drill bit I used was a 1 3/16 tip for a pneumatic drill.
This setup went thru 18" of rock, I also made up a back reamer from round stock and brazed in carbide inserts so I could get 1 1/2 pipe thru the rock.
Doing it with a tractor PTO would be possible, but you wouldn't have the advantage of being able to pump flushing water thru the drill. It would definitely be best on a hydrostatic tractor so you could control boring force and minimize the possibility of turning the drill rod into a pretzel.
You can also push a steel pipe a long way with a pressure washer hooked to the back end and a straight nozzle on the front.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

<font color=blue>So do you see any reason one could not do the same thing with a tractor PTO if you were using the proper bore rod?</font color=blue>

The Case machines have a creep feature. That allows the drive wheels to be engaged for a set rate for constant pressure. It can either be for the trencher, plow, or boring unit.

The problem I'd see with the pto unit would be you judging how much pressure to put on the boring stem. Too much or a slip of the clutch and you could have some real fun, not fun fun but fun fun if you know what I mean.

Garland Steel has about five hundred ten foot pieces of bore stem. Randy the manager there over the scrap has quoted me five bucks each for them. There has been the temptation to buy the lot and try to resell them to the owners of Maxi or Mini Sneakers. You see the new stems run over fifty bucks each going through conventional dealers.

But there is a reason these perfectly fine looking pieces of stem are sitting there in the scrap yard. All it would take would be some thousandths off on either the male or female end anddddddd ole harv has some steel toothpicks. Of course it could be just the factory dumping excess inventory but..........don't have enough teeth left as it is and steel toothpicks....

You could rig up your pto boring rig. The question is would it be worth it. If it's for fun and just cause you want to (my most strong motivation) then I say go for it. If you're doing it to save money, I doubt it unless you can get the pieces all free and your time is worth less.

I'll try to take some pictures of the stem and it's componets today at the shop if you like.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Here's a picture of the bore stem. You can see the universal joints, the male and female ends, and in there is a three pointed carbide boring tip.

These rods are held together by square shouldered looking staples. Losing one under a drive could be expensive and irritating.