drop claw shovel

[HerbTx]

Hi guys, I need some help. I need to build a claw shovel (like the kind the kids try to win a suffed animal with) to clean out a well. I have some property that has an old well that is about 24" in diameter. I have done all the cleaning I can with a water eductor and now I need something I can drop in the well with the claw open, and then when I pull it out, it closes capturing material.

Any ideas or links for some simple geometry??

Thanks,

Herb

 

[OKnewguy]

I have no idea about the claw style, but I have seen post hole diggers that were made more like a screw. It was a cylinder that had "screw" type blades in it. This could maybe be made out of some tin horn material. I never used one, but the design seemed like it would leave less lose material in the hole over a standard post hole digger.
Good luck, Dave

 

[JimMorrissey]

How deep is this well? Our wells back East are hundreds of feet deep. My last one was just over one thousand feet....At least in many parts of VT and the surrounding area.

Also wondering how so much garbage got down it.....our wells have large steel caps; nothing can get in it.

 

[KYErik]

What you need to build is a crude version of a sediment sampling device used by biologists called a ponar dredge, or sometimes called a ponar grab (I specialized in limnology back in college).

Here is a pic I found on google: http://www.wildco.com/pctr/1728.jpg

There is a spring loaded central pin which keeps the jaws open until it hits the bottom muck, then as the tension on the pin is removed, the spring pushes the pin out of the the aligned holes in the arms (the pin was keeping the device open). As you pull up on the rope, it takes a bite.

I bet you could make a really crude one by doing some major modifications to a standard clamshell post hole digger head.

 

[HerbTx]

Thanks for the help guys. Not sure how deep the well is, but it had crap stuck in it up to within 6' of the surface. We got some huge rocks and limbs out and then cleaned what we could with an eductor.

Once we were complete with that, we needed a "shovel" that would work in there. We fabbed one up and just made the two opposing clams out of some 1/4 plate we had laying around.

I'll try to post pictures soon.

Right now we are about 9 feet to water, about 5 more to silt, and I can push rebar into the silt about 6 feet with no problem. Time for more cleaning.