Earth to Don (centex) are you out there?

[wroughtn_harv]

I need you to post a picture or two of your Belltec auger you've been using.

I've got about two hundred and fifty holes to dig in limestone. I dug about thirty five or so the other day and found out a couple of things. The most important was this monster of a bit that I'd assumed would kick butt is all show and no go.

It's a pengo brand with carbide teeth in a staircase pattern. It didn't dig an better if not as good as my pengo auger with carbide teeth instead of the clay teeth.

So I went to Jiffy products in Dallas and had a sit down with Rob. I've heard Belltec wants in the neighborhood of two grand for their twelve inch DP auger. Diggerworld wants twelve hundred allegedly for the same thing.

After some serious phone calling and rock kicking with Rob I ordered two twelve inch DP heads. One with an ANSI pipe flange and the other blank. The ANSI one is for a company that I sub from occassionally that's losing money every hole on a job in rock.

The blank one is for me. I got the blank with all the teeth (seventeen of them carbide puppies) for less than six and I get to make my own auger too. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

If I recall correctly you had your set up where you could leave the tractor and just let it do it's thing. I can do the same thing with Iris when I have it on high flow.

Here's my plan. I'm going to use your concept of the boom with weights. I have a couple of considerations though. One is Iris can only pick up about seventeen fifty before she goes for a nose dive. To get the maximum affect out of the weight on the boom I need to move it out like you did. But out there Iris won't be able to lift it up much less pull the auger out of the hole.

So I'm thinking a couple of thoughts and I'd like your input please.

One, have the boom out about six feet with a shiv and cable to allow the weight to rest on the ground while the auger is pulled up. Then have a second cable to pull the weight close to the tractor to minimize the weight as much as possible.

The weight is my anvil stand, a chunk of steel that weighs a paltry nine hundred seventeen pounds or real close thereabouts.

Two, place the weight on a three wheel cart for moving from hole to hole. When the weight is required I place the weight below the boom and then using a cable jack or come along I apply down pressure as required by lifting the weight.

Three, I borrow a bud's little Case skid steer and use it or my truck for the weight when I'm in a situation where I can get the truck into position. Before this little storm blew in using the truck would have been first choice. But now, well, I'd have to have a crawler to move Lucy from hole to hole. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

What I've got in mind for the boom is a three arm pipe affair with a quick connect system like they use on some of the attachments. I curl it on and off and let gravity be the lock in place while in use.

BTW I dug the holes Thursday relatively quick and easy. Almost all of them are down three feet and the most shallow one is still over two feet deep. We're talking thirty some holes in an afternoon.

But I believe with the new system I should be able to cut that by at least a third. I've also got some gate posts I want to have down at least five feet into the rock. And this terrain here runs from crumbly to almost granite. When I hit the hard stuff I'd like to have a fighting chance.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

"One must be flexible" I tell myself often. "Ya gotta roll with the flow."

Third hole today caught a four inch water main. The first two holes I went down real easy because there was a chance the water might be down there. The third one was in a safe place, I thought. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Two hours later while they (the water company people) were finishing up I started at the other end of the line. Third hole, notice the pattern here?, I caught the same four inch water main, again, even. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Some are diamonds, some are rocks, but they're all days.

Since the water guys couldn't give us a locate, water line was put in 1967 one gold guy said. We agreed to move the fence line in ten feet from the property line.

The rock turned hard from eighteen to thirty inches down, no rhyme or reason to it either. A bud came over with his Ford 445 with a hay fork on the FEL. He put an eight foot piece of two foot concrete culvert on the fork for ballast and gave me some added down pressure. Part of the time he had his front wheels off the ground and my auger still kept on keeping on.

We took the gate posts holes into the rock until we were four to almost six feet deep. Deeper hole for bigger gate.

I still need some down pressure. I borrowed four hundred pounds worth of front tractor weights from a bud. I'm going to pick up a twenty foot stick of half by six inch steel in the morning. Between a little southern engineering (if a yankee had it they'd think of it as ingenuity) and basic logic I think I can come up with an extra thousand pounds of down pressure. Won't be as much as the 445 and bud with the culvert, but better than just wearing a hole into the ground. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[centex]

Harv,

I am sorry it took me so long to reply. I have been busy and haven't logged on for a couple of weeks. I have attached a picture of my Beltec auger. As you can see it has 8 or so round press carbide teeth and hard surface welds on the bottom 1' or so of flighting. This one cost $850 so I would expect a 12" auger to cost maybe $1200. $2000 sounds too high to me.

I think any of your ideas would work but unless you plan to do a lot of digging in rock, I would just rent a tractor and the Beltec machine since it can apply up to the weight of the tractor in down pressure. That is a lot more than you can ever hope to apply with a setup like mine. I have watched these units in use around here and they dig holes in rock about as fast as I can do it in dirt. I had a lot time to spare so 4 hours on a hole did not cost me much more than 4 minutes but if I were trying to make money I would not even think about using my method.

I spent a lot of time looking at one of the Beltec machines and it would not be very hard to build one if you have access to the steel and a welder which I know you do. You could definitely build a close copy for a lot less than the $4000 it costs.

To leave my unit running while I left the tractor I just defeated the seat interlock on the tractor. The danger here and is that many times when the auger gets close to breaking through a layer of rock, it hangs up and breaks a shear pin. If you are not near the tractor when this happens you run the risk of the shaft and coupling welding themselves together and creating a big problem.

Good luck. I am going to have get back to fence building soon. I have just finished spending almost a year getting a bridge repaired so it is time to do some cross fencing and start building a workshop and house.

I was just thinking about a period of madness I went through in November when I was thinking about buying a portable rig for drilling my own water wells. I found that you can buy the rotary drill heads like they use for drilling oil wells for a fairly reasonable price and I don't think they require nearly as much down pressure to work as the Beltec augers do. I don't know if you can use them without air or water though. You could call the guys at Mid-Western Machinery Co, in Joplin, Mo, 800-693-7455, http://www.portadrillmini.com.

 

[SPIKER]

CENTEX:

that is a nice setup at that site, I'm bookmarking it for future ref.!

too bad about the water line lol.

Out here we have lots of amish farmer (all horse drawn & hand powered.!!)

anyhow the local phone repair guy was called because everyone lost their phones down the road, he went out the local amish guy was putting in a new fence. yep, the phone cable slowed him down a bit but not much. so he had to fix all the phne wires and left. the next day he got about 15 more calls and didn't pay much attencion becasue he fixed them all yesterday. well anyhow after some people called back he went back out and yes the amish guy was at his next hole. hand digging away.
so anyhow after the 3rd time of getting calls he finally got the amish guy to move his fence back a few feet! lol. He siad he had to convince him it would be easier digging if he didn't hit them wires every hole!


Mark M /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Thanks Don,

I was wondering if your auger was a bullet tooth from Belltec. One of my buds has one and loves it.

The DP bit system was designed exclusively for low down pressure augers. The twelve inch I'm getting has seventeen bits in a three wing pattern. They are designed not to fracture and pry rock like the bullet and conventional rock teeth do. But to mill or grind if you will, each bit shaving a small path on it's own.

If you looked at the hole you would see a spiral staircase pattern. Each level a half of an inch wide on it's own plane. The concept again, is shaving instead of ripping and tearing.

In our caliche--limestone-- white rock I believe the shaving might be much more efficient for a machine my size.

Now for the update on my taking your concept to a new low.

Here's a view of the landscape after thirty six to forty two inch by twelve inch holes.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Here's the tractor with it's new attachment for it's attachment.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Here's a view of the weights and their hanger.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Here's a view of the break down point in the arm.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

There are no bolts, pins, or other such things to get lost twix bumping and grinding and transporting plus storing. The double piece next to the auger motor fits over a sleeve and is held in place by resting against an existing bracket. It's held in place by gravity and friction, two of the retainers available.

The single arm uses almost exactly the same pattern and configuration to fit into the double piece. Again, no pins, keys, bolts, etc are necessary as gravity and friction do quite well on their own.

I haven't figured out the actual weight added for down pressure. But it is enough that I'm right on the edge of the tractor's capacity. It seems I'm always either on the front two wheels or stalling the hydraulics.

If anyone wanted to figure it out the arms go out eighty six inches from the top of the auger motor and the weight is four hundred pounds plus the weight of the three quarter inch by five bar stock.

What this does for the digging process is unbelievable. Holes that yesterday would have been just sitting there wearing my way in just went down throwing out chunks of rock.

The auger motor is from Lowe and is designed for a thirty gallon per minute source. They recommend it for backhoes etc. My high flow auxillary port puts out almost twenty nine so I have the power to spin the auger.

I'm currently using a pengo style head with carbide rock bits on the inside and some meaner'n a junkyard dawg three point pengo tips on the outer pockets. The fish tail is pengo with serious carbide pieces enhancement..

I'd say a safe estimate on time savings with the auxillary weight system is fifty percent plus. It's a getter.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

This morning as I sat there waiting for my steel supplier to open so I could get the three quarter by five bar stock I couldn't help taking a picture of their gate I made some years ago.