JCB vs Boulder...pictures attached

GaryInWA · May 25, 2007

Thanks for the responses, I was very worried I wouldnt be able to budge it and would either need to rent a jackhammer or hire someone to blow it apart.

It was one of many boulders I encountered but it was the biggest, my property consists of alot of glacial till (sandy loom soil and many roundish rocks)

I was tempted to move the boulder to a better location on my property but it was just to big to move without making a huge mess plus I have plenty of other boulders throughout my property so I dug a very large and deep hole next to the boulder and pushed it in, which worked out well as I needed the dirt to help level up the garage site.

I had to knock down a few trees as well, the alders were easy to push down but a cedar and a maple put up a little more of a fight....but once again my JCB came out victorious

EastTractor · Jun 3, 2007

Gary,

I did a lot of the same with large, but smaller rocks using a Yanmar 226d with a woods 750 backhoe. A toy compared to yours. Some of the rocks were too heavy to lift out so I made the hole bigger, leaned the rock, and dug under it to sink it. Even though I couldn't get a lot of the huge ones out, I sure enough got them out of view. The ones that were too big to even budge, I drilled holes in then and used Betonomite (I think I spelt it right). Betonomite is a powder that you mix with water and pour into your drilled holes. You let it sit over night and by morning the boulder is split. How many splits depends on how many holes and how large a boulder. There isn't a boulder that you can't destroy. It’s basically silent, non-explosive dynamite.

I had a surface boulder that I removed using it that was at least 6 feet high (it swallowed an entire 5 ft drill bit) and probably 8 to 10 feet long. Who knows what it weighed. I tried a jackhammer and barely scratched it. I drilled quite a few holes and poured in the Betonomite and by morning the boulder was cracked into neat, manageable sized sections that I could tear down with my woods 750. The cracks, before I tore it apart with the backhoe, were wide enough to slide your hand into. If you lacked a backhoe, you could make smaller pieces and carry them off by hand. Amazing stuff!

I can’t wait to use it again when I tackle the other side of my property.