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Why does nobody talk about how bad a plugged cutterhead sucks in the middle of a job
Was working a creek cleanup near the old mill pond last Thursday, hit a hidden cable that wrapped around the cutterhead so bad it took me 4 hours to cut free with a torch. Has anyone else dealt with surprise underwater junk that stops everything cold?
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the_christopher26d ago
Have you tried using a hydraulic diver or a grapple attachment before starting the job? I feel your pain, man. I had a similar thing happen a few years back when a submerged piece of rebar locked up my cutterhead tight. Took me the better part of a day to dig it out with a come-along and some cold chisels. It's one of those things that makes you wish you had a backup machine handy. The worst part is you can never really plan for it, especially in old industrial areas where junk just gets left behind.
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casey68226d ago
Four hours with a torch? That's practically a lunch break at that point. You know it's bad when you start naming the cable like it's an old friend. "Come here, Rusty Bob, hold still while I burn you apart." I still have a scar on my knuckle from a time I was cussing out a chunk of rebar that did the same thing. The real kicker is the junk always hides in the muddiest, darkest spot where you'd swear nobody would ever drop anything. So much for "just a quick cleanup job," right?
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susan_wright3426d ago
Oh yeah, I named that one cable "Satan's spaghetti" after about the third hour of fighting it. The torch slipped and I burned a perfect little circle into my glove, right on the thumb. That glove became my lucky glove after that, like it earned its keep by taking the hit for me. And of course the stuff is always buried deep in the nastiest muck, like the ground itself is hoarding it for a rainy day. You ever try to coax a rusty bolt out of pure mud with one hand while holding your torch in the other? It's like the universe decided you needed a lesson in patience. How do you avoid that burnout when every job turns into a full excavation?
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