Digging post holes

[wroughtn_harv]

Now this is the big dog you've been lusting for Don and you've never even met her.

This is that one I mentioned my bud had for the 1 5/8 hex shaft for a twelve inch hole.

Check out that pattern. This puppy will take you to the dance and make everyone else so jealous they'll be chewing up nails and spitting out screws.

I believe this one will cost in the neighbor hood of eight hundred to a thousand just for the business end. That's a guess from an experienced guesstimator for what ever that's worth.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

But now I've got good news for you. I dug into my little bucket of goodies. These are all adaptable to whatever for whomever whenever.

Yup, if you look close you will see I not only have the teeth but I have the weld on holders for the teeth. Check out those wide puppies with the blue holders. You will see those on auger trucks when they're kicking butt in clay and soft limestone.

Those little ones with the small rectangular holders are smaller versions of the teeth in head in the above post, we might call them big dog's toofies.

The reason I bought them is to supplement an existing head if I needed to. Say like when a corner is worn down instead of building it back or just tossing the head assembly I can weld on a couple teeth to catch that area. They're also neat where if you wanted to put some bite on a bucket or blade if you're into that kind of thing.

All the flat ones are Pengo or pengo clones. I picked up some holders for them too just in case I found a bit that needed a little extra something or two.

What works like a preacher on Sunday morning when the mortage is past due is that little Pengo with the three sharp points. Thats for limestone and killer clay.

If you look at the flat ones close you will notice one has the three pieces of carbide across the end and the other is neked.

Neked ain't good.

What I have found terrible is most retailers of augers and bits have never seen any of the stuff that's in these posts. What they carry is some rinky dink piece of crap with a touch of hardfacing and they charge you as much if not more than what the good stuff costs.

If you can find a Pengo tip for an auger all they carry is the standard fishtails and teeth which wear out way too soon.

The next post will be about that.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Here are three Pengo fishtails or pilots if you're a vegetarian.

The one on the left is the one you get if you call in and order or if you walk in and just ask. It's neked and will wear out long before it's time.

The middle one is the one you get if you ask for carbide tipped. The problem with it is the carbides on each side is on the same plane across from each other. So you're cutting into the same grove. The metal between the carbides wears out and before long you've got a fishtail that looks like Twiggy after breast augmentation surgery.

Now the one on the right is the only one I know of. It's one I got when I mentioned an idea to the owner of the company in Dallas that carbides thousands of tips for all the distributors and manufacturers.

I asked him how it would work to use some of that fractured carbide matrix like they use on the hole saw appearing augers. He grinned like the only pup in the litter with a tail and dug this thing out. He said he made it on a whim and gave it to me to use and report back how it works.

I suspect it's gonna be like the hose on a firetruck.

 

[centex]

Harv, where do you get your pengo bits with the carbide on the surface? Are these only avialable for the drive in bits or can you get them for the bolt on Pengo bits? I still have some bad holes with solid rock to go through and I am getting awfully tired of having to pound away with a bar for hours at a time. I have not found anyone around here that rents rock augers although I have to admit that I have only looked at four places. My place is pretty far out of any town so at $75 an hour I would have at least $150 in transport time to pay for and that along with several hours of digging would make a sizable dent in the cost of a good rock auger. All of the rock augers I have seen as well as the dealers say I need lots of down pressure for a rock auger. One note in a Belltec brochure said that low pressure on a rock auger dulls the bits quickly. I have looked at the Belltec 3PT boring machine ($4000 + auger = too much for a retired person). It has a special PTO drive that limits torque but it also applies a lot of down pressure. I know the hydraulic drive units also limit torque but they cost a lot too. The rock here is limestone so it is not real hard although that varies rock to rock but I have dug through as much a 15" of it using bars. I am now considering buying a Belltec RAD (rock and dirt) auger that looks like a dirt auger but has the carbide finger bits. I expect that I can apply about $200# of down pressure along with the weight of the auger and boring head (~180# for a total of 350# or so). Do you think this might work?

 

[centex]

Harv, where is Little Beaver located? I would like to check them out. Like you, I prefer to build my own stuff but in this case I am desparate to get my fences in good order so I can stock some cattle so I don't have the time to buy a kit although I will probably do it later. I don't seem to ever be able to have just one of anything - character flaw I guess.

 

[centex]

Harv, another question:

What works like a preacher on Sunday morning when the mortage is past
due is that little Pengo with the three sharp points. Thats for limestone
and killer clay.

Did you grind the points or does someone make them? I thought about grinding points on some of my bits but I was not sure if it work. I assume it would but I want to get your opinion. I think I understood from your post that these bits have soldered onto them.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

<font color=blue>Harv, where is Little Beaver located?</font color=blue>


<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.littlebeaver.com/> here I do believe</A>

I've got to take a shower. Heck even the cat is staying away! But I'll be back for your other questions.........

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Don, here's the <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.drillingworld.com/>web page</A> for that company in California with the build it yourselves. (they prefer to sell them complete and ready to use btw)

Voss Parts and Supply, INC in Euless Tx is another place where I was like a kid in a candy store (817 545 8677) They're one of the places the foundation repair guys go to get their stuff done.

I can't find the name and address of the place in Dallas where I got the real good stuff (they sell to Voss and to California).

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Don, try this. They're in Dallas off of Harry Hines but I won't be able to get their name and number until Monday.

The first option I'd look at if I was you would be to talk to belltec about their weld on auger head. Second I'd call Diggerworld in California who claims to make the low down pressure custom rock auger for Belltec at half the price.

I don't believe a couple of hundred pounds of down pressure is going to make much difference.

I assume you have a FEL and you're doing your digger with the three point. I believe water weighs about seven or eight pounds a gallon.

So let's venture out into harv's imagination land. It gets extremely scarey out there let me tell you.

Let's suppose you took two fifty five gallon barrels, the kind with the removable lids and the security strap. You tie those together in your FEL.

You build a rack to hold two more of the same kinds of barrels above and aft of your three point auger attachment.

You fill the ones on the front with water and you take a five gallon bucket with you for grins. The first hole that you hit rock and the bit is just sitting there smoking stop. Using the five gallon bucket transfer say a third of the water in each front barrel to the two barrels on the back. Then try again. If you don't bust a shear pin add more water. Keep doing this until you're breaking shear pins. Then transfer the water back to the front until you're at the point where you've got the maximum down pressure your equipment can take without using the shear pin escape.

Keep in mind that when you move the water barrels aft of the auger motor on your three point the auger is now the fulcrum and your tractor is on one end and say eight hundred pounds is on the other.

If you attach the barrel holding contraption where it's between the auger and the tractor. The tractor now picks up a percentage of the weight you're wanting for down pressure.

I mount a hundred gallon poly container on the roof of my tractor. This gives me about eight hundred pounds more weight but I also use the water for aiding the in the digging process.

The idea of the water transfer is not something I just thought up for you in this instance. Some time ago I knew that there would be time when I'd want to have added weight for down pressure. So I'd come up with the idea of having a twelve volt pump that'd move water from a container on the tractor like I've got the poly tank to another tank that would add to the down pressure. My tractor will only lift about fifteen hundred pounds. If I didn't have the ability to transfer the weight off and on the auger I'd have situations where the weight of the water and the material plus the auger itself would mean I'd have the auger buried and the only way to pull it would be to abandon the ballast.

It's time for my walk down to the shop to feed the chickens and put them in for the night. The goats also want their nightly ration of sweet feed. And our crazy schnauzer is wanting her walk. A man has to do what a man has to do or he's done for.

 

[centex]

Harv, thanks for all the info. This gives me a lot to think about. I am going to look at mounting some water barrels like you suggested and I think I am going to grind some points on a set of pengo teeth just to see how they work.

 

[centex]

I finally bought a bullet tooth rock auger - see attached photo of the business end of this beast. I ground points on the Pengo teeth of one of my dirt augers and had some success with it but after spending 6 hours to drill through 1 foot of rock I decided I had better try something else if I ever wanted to finish this fence.

 

[centex]

To apply down pressure to the rock auger I welded up the attachment for my PHD shown here. It is a 6' length of 1/2" x 3" bar stock with a 2' section of bar stock welded on the end on which I will hang my suitcase weights. This setup should apply double the weight of the suitcase weights to the auger or about 600#. The auger weighs 100# and the PDH gear box weighs 84# so with the weight of the boom and attachment the boring head will have up to 800# on it. I hope that will be enough.

 

[centex]

Another view of the weight attachment. It will hold 8 weights. Since I had a welder out I welded chain hooks to my FEL bucket.

I will test the setup tomorrow.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Doggone it Don I wish I had the time to come over just to see how it all works.

I really like the idea of the suitcase weights.

Take pictures and tell us how the bullet points work.

 

[centex]

I finished three holes in solid rock today - 9"x4'. The weight attachment worked well although I need to make a couple of improvements to it. The first is something I expected to have to do but I did not want to waste more metal until I knew it worked. I will weld a flat bar to the top of the main bar to give it lateral stability and second I think I will add a structural brace to the top so it can carry more weight. Two of the holes I dug today were in a hard limestone formation and more weight was really needed although the machine did manage to bore through 3 feet of the the rock in 2.5 hours for one hole and 2 for the other. The third hole was in a softer limestone formation and the machine bored through this in about 30 minutes. I broke one shear pin as I broke through the bottom of the softer rock. The attached picture shows the machine in use on the first of the holes in hard limestone.

 

[centex]

Another view of the same hole.

 

[centex]

This picture shows the rock formation that I am boring through. This is where an old abandoned highway was cut through through my property. I am actually on the opposite side of the road but the rock formation is the same on this side.

 

[centex]

This final picture shows the rig on the second hole. I must confess to sitting on the weights when they got down to this level to add another 350# of pressure to the auger. These rock augers are VERY noisy. Enough so as to be damaging to your hearing so hearing protection is really necessary. I did not have ear plugs so I put my fingers over my ears until I found a paper towel to stuff in my ears. Since it worked so slow I walked far enough away that the noise was not bad unles I had to be near the tractor for something. I was told that rock augers are slow and that is definitely true but they do work. A lot more down pressure would help but since I not doing this for hire I can afford the time. I did not have to do any work with a digging bar today so the time I spent was not nearly as tiring as before. The three points I ground on the Pengo bits worked too the just are not as durable as the carbide bullet points.

 

[skid mark]

Very nice setup, Don-

I put a long pole on my auger, but didn't rig it for suitcase weights. I'll always have a helper back there pulling down and keeping the auger vertical at the same time.

Do you dig holes all by yourself? My (old) 3ph has enough slop in it that it's best to have somebody back there keeping it vertical. I haven't dug any holes with my new tractor to see how it works yet.

Anyway, looks great. I like the looks of your place. Especially the old (Ford?) truck in one of the pictures!

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Don you did good. I can't thank you enough for the pictures.

I hesitated telling you to put that counterweight out as far as possible to increase the leverage. I'm not an engineer or one of them thinking types. But it seemed to me that farther out you put the weight the more leverage you'd have which in itself means more weight.

Seriously I'm prouder'n if I'd done it myself.

I noticed your post hole diggers. Let me pass on a clue I picked up on some years back. It's almost like that leverage thing on the counterweight. When you're looking to buy a set of diggers check out where the pivot bolt is. Most of them today have the pivot bolt just above the bucket plates. It's a long bolt that goes through right above where the bucket plates are riveted to the handle assembly.

I pass on those unless I don't have a choice. What I look for are those where the pivot bolt is a little shorter and it's higher up closer to the handles. The logic is the farther up the pivot point the wider you can open the bucket plates on the digger. The wider the bite the more you can attempt to pick up. Another advantage is they will wear in faster.

What I mean by wear in faster is there's this point of wear where you can tweak them just a bit as you close them before you bring them up. That tweaking allows the rounded ends of the bucket plates to get closer and so you can lose less on your way up.

All this isn't important to most folks. But when you're on the power end of hand diggers any edge you can get means a bunch by the end of the day. And when you've got powder to pull out or it's sloppy wet the closer those bucket plates get together mean fewer bad words to trip over.

Again, I can't thank you enough for sharing your adventure. Some folks think it's work. It's an adventure. Work is where the only compensation they can or will offer is money.