Bustin' Up Boulders

[RedDirt]

Two years ago I hung on to a HF chipping hammer for almost two days straight chipping out a 8"x16'x2"deep ledge across my garage door opening when I replaced the rolling doors with an overhead model. The concrete was 30 years old and extremely hard...the good stuff. First I scored to depth with a diamond saw on 4" centers then chipped down to the depth scoring. By the time I was done both chipping chisels were just a shaft. Boy did my hands and arms hurt.

One video I wanted to post was when I was blowing out all the residual dust out of the drilled holes. It was pretty cool, but Loretta left her camera at camp. So when she gets it back, I'll post it. I made a long tube for the air gun to get to the bottom of the holes, and when I blew out the dust it looked like a geyser!

You did it right with the tube. At work we deal with structural (epoxy) embeds into concrete. A pull test frequency is set out in the structural specifications. Test frequencies can increased for testing 10% of the embeds to 100% after the first test failure! If there are a hundred epoxied embeds in the project you don't want to go there. We haven't failed a pull test in over fifteen years!

More than one inspector has told me the number one reason for bolt pull out failure is not getting the dust out correctly. In addition to the long nozzle air blast from the bottom up we also use a round brush. Looks like a baby bottle brush but smaller diameter to fit the hole. Various brush diameters and lengths can be found at any good fastener outlet and even box stores now carry a few. The process is blow, brush, blow, brush, blow. oops, didn't mean to get erotic .

 

[scott_vt]

Good Evenin Rob,
Yep thats what I like, real mans work !

Hope you were wearing those safety glasses swingin that 20 lb sledge, 20 lb sledge, biggest I ever swung was 16 lb and it darned near killed me !

 

[plowking]

I used to know a guy who would blast anything for a case of beer. Funny haven't seen him in awhile. plowking

 

[silverdollar6]

I bet it is nice and relaxing to be semi-retired.

 

[3RRL]

I have a few more pictures that show how I drilled that rock to blow the top off like that. You can see the expanding Spanish Brand Bustar compound started cracking the top off like I wanted. I drilled the holes about 3 to 4 inches apart. You can see all the white rock dust all around the work area.



I also promised to upload that video of the dust being blown out of the holes, so here it is below. That makes sure the compound gets down to the bottom where it can do some good. I thought the streams of dust coming out looked pretty cool.

 

[Eagleview]

That was more educational than watching Discovery channel , well done .

 

[tommu56]

Rob
what about video of Bustar doing its thing?

Then again mabe a video of paint drying.

just kidding how long did the Bustar take to set up?

tom

 

[3RRL]

Iron Horse, thank you for the compliment.
Tom, you are nuts ... lol ... was my video that lame?

 

[MtnViewRanch]

I thought that the video was cool, I know it was actually hot, well whatever it was, I liked it.

Rob, you continue to amaze me.

 

[SteelDust]

I do have a question about the video?

After blowing all that dust out of the holes, did you reward yourself by stepping back and taking a nice long drink of that Coke that was sitting on the muffler of the generator???