I have been clearing a building site in CT. I own a large backhoe. I suppose I could get hammer for the backhoe but I don't think I would use it that often. Anyway I have accumulated a pile of boulders about 40 feet long x 12 feet wide x 6 feet tall from clearing maybe 0.25 acres. The rock is hard metamorphic stone. Predominately gneiss and some schist. I would like to use this stone to build a stone house the problem is efficiently breaking it into manageable size chunks. What's the best method? Renting a excavator with a hammer attachment. How much time and money? Thanks
Wait for winter, drill holes in a line, fill with water, come back in the morning to see it split
You may want to dynamite boulders that large
Or if you don't want to wait until winter you could use some expanding grout, like dexpan. https://www.dexpan.com/collections/...an-non-explosive-demolition-agent-dexpan44box Dexpan 44 lb. Box (3 Types) Concrete removal, rock breaking and stone quarrying has never been easier with Dexpan Non-Explosive Expansive Demolition Grout. 44 lb. box for sale discounts. www.dexpan.com
Breaking big rocks into little rocks is a very expensive proposition. Make sure your budget is sufficiently large.
Was the an episode of little house on the prairie where they were drilling rock. Pa was holding the bit and the lad with the beard was swinging the hammer. When I nod my head you hit it
Never used a breaker on a hoe, but I'm betting it will hammer the heck out of the machine. I've used the compactors but that is soft dirt not hard rock.
I carved out a fire pit into the granite ledge in front of my in-laws' camp in Maine. I used a Chinese knock off of a Pionjar hammer called the YN27 and Dexpan. Once I learned the drilling technique, it was fairly easy. It is just a matter of drilling in the desired fault line holes in the recommended pattern, filling with the grout and waiting about 6-12 hours for the cracks to form. This method was a lot cheaper for me than trying to rent a machine and listen to the neighbors bitch about a hydraulic hammer running. The YN27 is not silent but it will bore 1.5" diameter holes fairly quickly. I think that I was averaging 1-1.5 inches per minute if I remember correctly, maybe faster.
I had an extremely large rock, I needed to separate a root ball from and reduce the size of. I used 7 lbs of tannerite that I had cemented into a groove. I hit it with a 5.56 at around 40 yards away. I learned to never do that again. It worked great, a little too great, was picking softball size chunks of granite, out of the gutters. Total respect for that stuff now. I used 12 pounds on a beaver dam last year and at 100 yards, was totally safe but for the falling mud and sticks. Could’t get machine close enough.
The problem with a hammer is it will obliterate The rock but it will not cleave it the way you want it cleft. As said, it's a very expensive proposition and it does take drilling if you want to make a certain size. The most efficient way to make sized Rock is the shot pattern with the dynamite when you're shooting it. It's a science.
Told my nature-loving wife this. Her response ....."Poor beavers." LMAO You may be on her hit list for a day or 2
A stone structure of flatter angular rock can last several hundred years if not a lot longer. A structure with round or broken round boulders is likely to not be very stable unless it's small river rock with mortar against a structure. Post images of the pile. Better to purchase 1/2 man to two man size angular basalt rock, limestone, sandstone, granite etc. Use the round boulders for drainage and landscape decoration.
There's a lot of houses and fence posts made this way out in Kansas, very cheap only need a drill and water
Tell your nature loving wife, that I’m paying taxes on 20 acres of land and the damn beavers have a 1/3 of my property under water, 4 months out of the year. lol
Any pics of the rock?
My woman would be feeding them daily. She already has too many wild animals coming to the house at night because she throws expired food or leftovers over our back fence. If I told her your last statement, she would tell you to buy a houseboat and leave them beavers alone! LOL
All that Kansas limestone was split with drilled holes using feather wedges. The freezing thing is a myth.
No need to break those boulders unless they are over 3 feet in diameter. My grandfather built this (his) retirement home in 1937. I inherited it in 1993. I snapped this photo a couple of years ago. The renter that lives in it is a self-employed landscaper and installed the steps at his own expense. Gramps did not have any lifting equipment. He built wood ramps to get the bigger stones in place.
I've used "Pins and Feathers" too, to break rocks before and it works great. This was breaking 3 man size rocks down to one man size rocks, so I could move them with my mini skidsteer. A bit slow to break them, but it works. I also will lift as high as I can a 3-man size rock and drop it on other rocks to try and get some smaller angular rocks to fit in between the larger rocks. This only works with the type of rock which fractures easily. I even have some hand stone cutting tools by a brand called Trow & Holden from Vermont.
I looked it up a little and it's pretty cool the removal methods, there's probably a museum or two within 20 mins of me that has the tools
Dexpan is an interesting idea. The other idea I had was getting a machine with a hammer.
Yeah neighbors complaining was a concern of mine. Although less in recent years I had a neighbor who used to like to shoot his AR15. My neighbors are not that close but close enough to hear the racket of a hammer or AR15. Another concern is my property is surrounded by roads in three directions although the work site is about 700 feet back if this guy is shooting his AR15 inside the triangle where the heck is he pointing. It's all forest.
Within a 1/2 mile of me there are 3 professional gun ranges, never mind my own. Right now as I type this there are gunshots going off on 2 of them, one is closed on Sunday. If it’s light out and we don’t hear gunshots, something is going on. One place has literally 25 rifle ranges with multiple stations. It is a club that makes so much money on their ranges, they put an RFID card access in. Occasionally, we hear tannerite going off at a couple of the ranges but they only allow a half of a pound at a time.
The Pionjar style drill is not very loud at a distance of a couple hundred feet. It is a rapid percussion drill that exhausts air into the hole to keep the rock dust blown out. It is nowhere near as loud as an excavator hydraulic hammer as the blows are faster and have less energy.