absurd "pro" tips

[northmanlogging]

Once they get old enough the seals ate about useless anyway

 

[Odog]

We finally broke down and bought a track press a couple years ago. We usually wear out a set of rails every 800-900 hrs. Having the press is a lot cheaper in the long run than calling CAT or CESCO all the time when you only have 1 or 2 links to replace.

 

[1270d]

We finally broke down and bought a track press a couple years ago. We usually wear out a set of rails every 800-900 hrs. Having the press is a lot cheaper in the long run than calling CAT or CESCO all the time when you only have 1 or 2 links to replace.

Wow that is some serious wear. What application? I grumble when we get 3000 hrs on the rails.

 

[Odog]

Wow that is some serious wear. What application? I grumble when we get 3000 hrs on the rails.

We run 2 trench tech 2300 rock saws. They each have a set of D6 rails that have 26" wide 2" thick pads with 3" rock cutting teeth. It'll cut 8' deep in solid rock. Basically a big chainsaw on tracks. All that constant grinding in the rock puts a hell of a lot of stress on those rails. Usually start cracking links around 500-600 hrs.

 

[northmanlogging]

Just about the time I wonder if you've been vaporized ya show back up...

 

[Odog]

Just about the time I wonder if you've been vaporized ya show back up...

Meh, I think there's a few folks around here who'd like to see me vaporized, but it hasn't happened yet.

Between getting my daughter's to school, fed and making sure their homework is done, and keeping up with my drilling workload, Its been a busy winter and spring. Now they're out of school and off to Montana for a few weeks so I have a little breathing room again.
How you been?

 

[northmanlogging]

Good stayin mostly busy

Even loosin some luggage on the forward facing rucksack

 

[Odog]

Good stayin mostly busy

Even loosin some luggage on the forward facing rucksack

Now that's always a good thing!
Glad you're staying busy

 

[northmanlogging]

One of the rock breakin outfits around here was hiring a few weeks ago... had to talk muh self out of applying for the job

 

[Odog]

We seem to go through a few guys every year who don't like the hard work part of the job, but really it's probably no harder than what you do now. It's fun, but I'm kinda weird so my opinion may be a little off..... One of the monthly magazines we get from our powder supplier had some pictures of an outfit in Washington hanging a drill and a guy off a crane to create a flat spot so they could start a catch bench on Snoqualmie, looked pretty fun to me, nobody else thought so, but I thought it would be cool

 

[northmanlogging]

Might be the same crew...

I just wanna be around to see the dust clouds and feel the whumps...

Hard work I'm ok with, not big on eating dust all day, but I think most folks use a little water on the drill for that kind of thing.

Its not like every hole needs to be hand drilled anymore... Hell even an air drill isn't so bad with the proper supports in place, just noisy

 

[Odog]

The whumps and seeing the ground raise up in a wave is the cool part. And shooting next to buildings, just knowing you blasted 10' of rock 50' from a house and you didn't even rattle the windows is a good feeling.

I like drilling, and you're right, we run a little water to keep the dust down. In the last couple years I put the dust collectors back on the drills, sucks all the dust up and drops it behind the drill. I used to think I was too "tough" to worry about dust, now I'm a touch smarter.....

We got a couple bigger drills with cabs last year, sure is nice to be in a cab when it's 95 degrees out.

We still use the old sinking hammers every once in awhile when we can't get a track drill into a spot, but not a whole bunch.

 

[northmanlogging]

Mostly I'd like to get some legal and formal training on using modern splosives, what I know is from less then legal sources and hill billy know how... You wan't a car destroyed and some wicked fire balls, I'm yer guy, but the police will show up and there will be lots of questions.

Now that I have the excavator, I get folks wanting me to remove large... like old growth large stumps... a little 120 isn't really up to that, nor would a 300 sized machine have an easy time with it, but a few pounds of the proper splosive that big ole stump is a bunch of tiny peices, and therefore much easier to pick up.

Not to mention the road building aspect of cutting fresh road through solid rock, blasting is about the only effective way through all of that.

 

[Odog]

Oh yeah, we do a bunch of road building, and flattening of old roads. The old practice was to just build over the rock piles, creating a rollercoaster road. Now we get called to go back and blast out a lot of these piles and do backslopes on the cuts. But that's the joy of living in a lava field, plenty of rock to shoot.

I'm still trying to dig up some info on stump blasting techniques for ya, there were quite a few old timers who perfected it without doing much damage to their surrounsings, just got to find the info on what they did