Yair . . . . I started a fourteen pound brisket on the drum early this morning and, and for some time I was busy laying back in the hammock soaking up the morning sun. As often happens my mind wandered back in time and I thought about how things are done “different” these days. It seems to me that jobs that used to be easy are becoming increasingly difficult . . . witness Tradesmans battle with a sewage pond and other posts by folks looking to purchase extreme low ground pressure dozers for boggy conditions. Across the years there have been threads on long and not so long reach excavators getting stuck clearing silt from ponds. Then I see discussions about modifying excavator buckets to have the pins and bushings made to take automatic pressure lubrication with bearings and seals . . . this just to win gravel from thirty feet of water. It has all been done before of course. Thirty odd years ago a dredging outfit on the North Coast spent thousands of dollars modifying an excavator stick and bucket to take oversized floating pins, roller bearings and what we then called “Caterpillar” metal to metal seals. The whole thing was oil lubricated with a twenty gallon tank on the stick . . . the theory was that the head of oil would maintain a positive pressure in the housing and keep the crap out. My boss just shook his head and we continued with the “quick change with the oxy” system described on that thread . . . to take that thought process further he had modified the buckets on his Scoopmobiles to take sections of D9 bushings in the pivots and of course used the D9 pins. In fact just about every pivot he owned used dozer pins and bushes, cheap as chips he reckoned and it only took a few minutes to split them with the gas axe and knock the buggers out. The thing is, as I have mentioned, the rock and dirt remain the same and we choose to move it with ever more complex and fragile machinery . . . witness the discussion about pushing trees with a PAT blade. I have mentioned before (to almost zero response) I reckon there is a machine missing from the arsenal available to contractors today . . . imagine a modern version of a small dragline. There may be a few on here who have seen a small dragline in full flight baling and I put it to you that (say) a twenty five ton excavator equipped with a side folding lattice boom and hydraulic winches would have many applications. And what a joy it would be, some real tractive power and easily adjusted tracks and no drive chains and frictions to contend with. Draglines are not just about mud. I have a thread on here about a contractor I worked for who bid road cuts with a bitser dragline and me ripping, pushing to him, and cutting batters with a D6. He would load hired in road trucks all day and we’d spend half the night on maintenance but it seldom broke down. Cheers.
Funny you should mention how useful a modern dragline crane would be. Here is a link to just such machine. http://www.machinerytrader.com/list...5907/2015-little-giant-c64?ohid=6915907&dlr=1 Rick
I think the long stick tracked excavators can do most of that work today...with draglines really only used in mining type activities. I have seen some unusual types of draglines at large sand pits. Howard
No argument from me. The guys who can't find somebody qualified to run a skid steer might disagree? big grin
Yair . . . Thanks for link boaterri! So they are out there but nobody wants them. Obviously Delmer has nailed part of the problem . . . finding some one to run one. "Back then" dragline operators were among the elite in the equipment world and I believe slightly up the rung from a final trim grader hand. Remember this was in an era ( in Australia anyway) that paid a little extra money if a driver could run two sticks in a Mack. I would point out that the machine shown in that link posted by boaterri could win gravel from thirty feet of water one day, clean out Tradesmans sewerage pond the next, then clean out Shimmy1's stock-ponds and water holes and, and then set about stripping top soil and loading out shot rock on a road job. Cheers.
On another thread I posted a link to an outfit using a large purpose built winch and pulley system to pull a silt scoop across farm dams. These blokes are using the same principle with an old Ruston Bucyrus dragline. http://www.damassist.com.au I can't think of a "modern" machine capable of doing the job as efficiently as this.
And a good operator could throw the bucket quite a ways past the point sheave. Mike
Yair . . . ol'stonebreaker That's exactly right. The bloke I worked for was a classic He would have that bucket hanging out when he came round on the swing and yet his ropes were always tidy on the drum. Cheers.
Did the old time operators get the most distance past the end of the boom by whipping around with the house swing or by having the bucket just above the ground, reeling it in with the drag and letting it swing out on the lift line? Rick
There is a guy around here with an old 1950s Bucyrus with a 2-71 engine in it. He cleans out ponds and not much else I assume because hydraulic machines get the jobs. He can't be all that busy because whenever I see the machine it always sits for weeks after completing a job. That being said I have never met the guy, only looked at the machine.
Years back as part of being a wrench in a small coal mine I ran a Koehring 405 with a drag to clear a fines pond. Sixty foot of boom and two yard bucket with three to four hours work would keep two highway dump trucks and a wheel loader going for six to seven hours loading out from a drying pad. I don't know to this day of any long stick juice machine with the same horsepower and fuel usage that could come close to that type of production.
Yair . . . boaterri. Letting the bucket swing out on the hoist line was the normal/conventional technique. However, as skills improved and, if it was advantageous or necessary, as I mentioned up thread, a good operator would use the swing motion to get that bucket hanging out there and gain that extra few yards. John C. Thanks for that comment. Apart from the fact that a dragline can easily get to dirt inaccessible to other machines I believe the dirt moved to fuel used ratio ratio equation would be a bit of an eye opener for folks using what is seen these days as "standard methods". The dragline I speak of up thread had a 4LW Gardner probably putting out about forty five horsepower at (say) a thousand revs and, stripping and stockpiling eighteen inches of topsoil on a mile or so of road job it was way more efficient than pushing off with the D6. The biggest problem was the walking and traction system. If only could have been clattered around like a modern day excavator . . . . Cheers.
This is how to run a dragline... The operator is Willie Tedesco on a Northwest 6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8JuJvCezus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip8yo2sh9ts If the links don't work, past them to your browser
Long ago in another life I was flinging a 7500 lb magnet with a Brownhoist locomotive crane. I would let it go on the "catch up" and if required a bit of reel in/let out. 40 minutes to unload a 50' Gondola of pig iron. Occasionally the foreman would come out and point to select scrap way out there. I think he was bored and used me for entertainment.
Yeah I can run two ten hour days on my 22b. I like to swing cast, reeling in and casting takes too long and doesn't quite go as far. Have a look on youtube under son working on farm.
Forgot to say on 50 gallons of fuel,471 Detroit. Also have some videosort under 22b digging sand and 16b working
Found this vid. https://youtu.be/MgY2_8JzyXI Scrub, since you've been around draglines a bit, I have a question. Does he pull the scoop most of the way in before picking it up to minimize leverage on the boom? I have to do the same with my hoe, but for slightly different reasons, first being I don't have enough counterweight to pick a full bucket of muck up out of the hole stretched way out. Second, *if* I could pick it up, all the weigh is out on my "toes" (tracks) and the ground would never hold up for more than a bucket or two. This last pond I dug, I could only get about 4 or 5 buckets and would have to back out, throw a little dry dirt in the holes, and move back in for a few more buckets before I'd have to do it again. Luckily I was able to get each setting done before there was no stability left in that spot. You know it's time to get out when the hoe is sliding down from the motion of the stick moving in.
Yair. . . Gotcha Shimmy1. Good question. Lots of dragline hands here would be in a better position to comment than me but the feller I worked for certainly did not work like that. I worked with him and got some seat time desilting dry dams and he stressed the importance (if possible) of not stirring up the goop. If he could see what he was doing he'd hoist as soon as the bucket filled and that was basically in the length of the bucket. Same thing when stripping topsoil and sod, basically lower bucket, suck it a bucket length or so to fill it, hoist and swing. It's pleasing to see this odd ball thread has created a bit of comment. Cheers.
What about the long reach excavators with cable winch retrieval of the bucket? British machines, I think.
:drinkupCongrats on reaching the three thousand club Scrub Puller, you old chatterbox
Yair . . . 8k bill. (laughing) Good one mate, it just shows I've got lots of time . . . no point in going to the pub it costs money and all they ever talk about is football, cows and golf. Cheers.
Priestman VC range, VC 15, 20, and 25 (not sure if they made a 30), the number refers to the reach in meters. As the bucket comes in, the counterweight slides in on rails. I operated a 20 a few years back, and they're excellent machines. A lot were sold to the US in the 1980's. They were better than a long reach when working off mats, as the balance was better.
Another technique question, Scrubpuller. When your mate could see what he was doing would he work left to right (dig at one distance) and then move in one bucket length or make a trench in and then traverse and make another trench next to the one he had just made?
I noticed the guy pulling all the way in also before throwing out the clutch on the drag. On the Koehring you could set it up to lock the drag clutch in and all you had to control manually during the pull was the lift clutch. The drag clutch lever could be bumped slightly to disengage while you put pressure on the brake to hold it and then let it out as you go to let the bucket out of dumping. It appeared to me that the operator had bump the lever hard to stop the drag and then stand on the brake to hold the drag as he picked the bucket up. You can hear the squeal of the brake as he turns and lifts the bucket for the dump cycle. One thing I used to do was use the bucket as a bulldozer a bit when starting the dig process. In dryer material it is easier to drag a bit of a pile up in front of you to force more material into the bucket on the subsequent passes. Casting was OK to do but you get faster cycle times on the closer drag. Casting also beats up the bucket and the jewelry if your machine controls are a bit rough or your operation isn't particularly smooth. The guy in the manure pit looked pretty good to me except for pulling until material goes over the top of the bucket.
Dude loading the manure is a sure enough hand Dragging some dry up to shut the bucket. If you hoisted out the slop would just run out. When you hoist in you get some angle on the bucket and the slop goes in the right place.
Yait . . . boaterri. With a modern excavator based machine I Imagine that is exactly how it would be done that is to say . . . cut a series of trenches in straight lines and then cut the rills as in slot dozing. That old machine was not built for walking though and as much dirt as possible was won in segments of a circle from a fixed position . . . please note I only had about eighteen months with this slightly eccentric character and other operators may have done things different. When I say "I mean it was not built for walking" I mean it was not a simple operation like pressing a couple of pedals. I have forgotten the procedure but there were windy handles and dog clutches to engage and, unless there was a good smooth track it was just as likely to pop a drive chain. I hear what Heavy Metal is saying which is one of the reasons its important to take as much out when desilting while the hardening mud still has some "structure". Once it turned to sloppy goop he would readjust the jewellery to give the bucket more layback and just get into it and bale. Cheers.
You crafty old ba$tard, Scrub. Getting us "young" dirt guys thinking about draglines. I must confess though. I've thought for years it would be fun to jump into an old Bucyrus and see if I could make it dig. Thanks for starting this.
Yair . . . Thanks for comment Shimmy1 (grinning) Seriously though. I do think a lattice stick and hydraulic winches on a modern excavator platform would be a seriously useful tool and not just for shifting goop. As mentioned that bloke used to take on road jobs and load out little hired in single drive Austins and Commers and Maple Leaf dump trucks and make it look simple . . . as has been mentioned up thread the skills to operate a dragline take a while to develop. I became reasonably proficient in general digging and baling but it was a different ball game when it came to loading trucks. . . coming off dozers the biggest problem to me was the fact that unlike a PCU the load has to be transferred (on that machine) from the hand clutch to the foot brake and it seemed to take an inordinate of time to develop the knack. Cheers.
As far as loading trucks goes, I don't see how you could beat the speed or accuracy of using a regular excavator. I have never run a dragline, or a crane for that matter, but I have lifted a lot of different things with a excavator, and, unless you move slow it seems everything just gets to swinging. To my way of thinking trying to line that bucket up over a truck bed would take too long compared to a excavator. Maybe you're thinking over loading bigger trucks like ADT's, but even that, a 65 ton machine is going to be swinging a 4 or 5 yard bucket if its dry enough, are you going to hang anything much bigger than that off a dragline and still have a small enough crane that moves around easily enough? I think a dragline would for areas like what Shimmy1 gets into, but for production truck loading... I just don't see it. And like I said at the start, I've never run one, so I could be way off base
There was a knack to loading, and my uncle spent half of his working life doing it. I'd had a few years on excavators and the first time I stood and watched him, I was amazed at how little swing there was. It's all in the timing. If you compare loading with a dragline to loading with a long reach, the dragline wins hands down due to bucket size on equivalent weight machines. Assuming suitable material, of course. Also, something like a 22RB will take a good size bucket on an 80' stick, an NCK605 will take 90-120', and you need a bloody big long-reach to match that reach with anything like a productive bucket pinned on.
Yair . . . ih100. Well explained on your #30 post. I read movindirt's comments last night and came over here just now to comment about the timing and controllable swing . . . you beat me to it. There was no 'lining up' as I remember, every thing was kept tight, smooth swing, lower, dump bucket and maybe in sticky stuff a little shake and jerk. As I have mentioned on here (going way back) I can't help but wonder how effective such a machine would be with hydraulic winches/controls, the ability to easily track and a decent bloody seat. Cheers.
I like the idea of using hydraulic motors but see plenty of problems with it also. First item is line speed especially when throwing the bucket. A clutch machine just lets the drum spool out at any speed it wants while a motor driven drum would be limited to how much oil could get in and out of the motor. Maybe someone could figure out how to put a variable piston motor on the drum and just put it at no stroke when you wanted to free wheel the drum. The second problem comes when you want to stop the drum from turning. Since you don't have a brake like a friction machine you will have to stop the motion with hydraulic power. I ran a 666 Koehring with the closed circuit swing system. When you let the air control go to neutral the swing was free. If you used opposite direction to stop the swing you ended up blowing hydraulic hoses all the time. You were supposed to just ease off the stick to slow the turn down and that eased the pressures through the pump and valving instead of blowing the reliefs with more oil than they could handle. The real problem with all this is cost. I could probably find two dozen used long stick machines right now in the US pretty easy. Last time I saw a line machine in the twenty to thirty ton range get sold was probably 25 years ago and it was over $100K then when you could get a used long stick from the gray market for a little more than half that. So lets negotiate this half way. Lets put the hydraulic drive on the tracks and swing, a good seat in the cab and leave the brakes and frictions for the drums. Drive chains, shafts, drums, brakes and clutches have got to be cheaper than hydraulic motors and will last years longer.
Yair . . . Gotcha John C. Thoughtful comments and as mentioned it is pleasing to see such interest in this thread. Being away from equipment for so long I thought the oil control/freespool problems may have been resolved hydraulically. I don't quite recall the details but we built several seine winches with big bore recirculating bypasses that worked pretty well. Some European trawl winches have clutch packs running in oil between the motor and the drum with another identical pack on the other side for the brake. As you point out it all comes down to cost. In truth I don't remember too many issues with the frictions, brakes and drums and the riveted linings were pretty easy and inexpensive to replace anyone could live with that . . . the main issue was that travel system. Cheers.
In one of the few remaining brickyards in the east of England, about eight miles from where I live, there is a Sennebogen machine digging clay. It's about ten years old, fully hydraulic with a 120' stick. I've watched it from about a quarter mile away, and it isn't any slower than a 38 RB which would be fairly close in size. The operator was casting the bucket, as well, so it's possible. Liebherr also do a dragline option on their lattice cranes.
Yair . . . Thanks ih100. If there are folks here who, Like me had never even heard of Sennebogan there is a nice bit of digging going on here . . . . http://www.sennebogen.com/en/news-p...mit-25-yd3-schleppschaufel-kiesgewinnung.html When this sort of technology is available it is difficult to see why folks would spend big dollars on putting fancy seals on excavator bucket pins and remote lubrication for winning gravel . . . perhaps maybe if it was compacted? As John C. mentions it probably all comes down to cost . . . if you already own the excavator. It is obvious small dragline equipment is out there but, for various reasons such as possibly initial cost and the availability of operators it has not been adopted except for special applications . . . I have seen a few road cuts where I imagine the machine shown in the clip would handy with a fleet of ADT's. It seems folks that once again I have been talking through my hat. (grins) Cheers.
That reminds me of a gravel bed operation the company I worked for used to run in the southern part of New York State. They did it just like that with a Bucyrus Erie crane, for get the model but it had a V12 Cummins in it, believe it was either the 1710 or maybe something a bit older. They would pull the gravel out just like that guy was doing and at the "dry end" of the pile a 988 Cat would load it into trucks to go to the screening plant. They also had a "Ready Mix Concrete" operation at the site and possibly a black-top plant.
Scrub, you have me in quite a pickle now. I've wanted a smaller dragline for many years now. I've never operated one but I am infatuated with the old machines. I've seen them come and go but they were out of my price range for a novelty toy. I own/operate a small excavation company and do metal fab and heavy wrenching in my slow months as it's froze here 4+ months of the year. I also do equipment appraisals for a large online auction company. Anyway.... I was at a local farmers place this morning listing some tractors for sale and we got talking construction equipment. He has built a couple large tractors from scratch and a few very interesting pieces of construction/farm equipment. He has an old dragline sitting in his yard that I inquired about. He said that he uses it a couple times a year to keep it loose but nothing else. It's for sale. I told him that I was very interested. It's a small unit with a 5/8yd bucket but I don't know much else about it other than I want it. He just bought the bucket and bits for $1500 and it didn't sound like he wanted much more than that for it. It's been retrofitted with an engine from a combine (gas I assume) so he said it runs a bit fast but just idle it down a bit to make it controllable. I'll be back there in a couple days and I'll get the full scoop on it. I'll try to get some pics whether it comes home with me or not. I've been keeping up on this interesting thread and now found a neat toy that I need. It keeps a guy working I guess.
A small dragline (Unit?) rusting away not far from my house
Well Scrub Puller, This thread has brought back some memories from my early childhood and draglines. My father got a farm through what was known as the Rehab scheme for returned service men after WWII in NZ, the same settup as the soldier settlement scheme in Oz.As in most cases the land was not that good, the prime land was owned by old established families My dads farm was in the south of the South Island in a very wet climate so he considered in order to improve the land drainage was the first priority. Enter Jack Robb and his 10RB. It was the type were you pushed the levers to operate the drag and hoist ropes and the windy thing was the engage one track break or the other and powered with a Ruston engine, 3cyl hand cranked. A 44 gallon drum on the back of his F100 was a weeks fuel. So Dad and Jack would have a look at the job, drive in a couple of steel pickets, rap some rag on the top and that was the job set out.Jack was then left to do the rest. Man that bloke could drive that machine straight and those drain bottoms were one grade from end to end and all the banks battered to the same angle. He had one hell of an eyeometer, none of the fancy stuff today socalled operators require,lasers GPS etc. Jack was the first person I ever saw who wore dentures and as a 5year old was fascinated by them and particularly when he was cutting the batters, left side bank teeth up the right side of his mouth, opposite for the other side and that was upper and lowers. Jack also loved wearing Clogs in the winter reckoned they were the warmest things a human can put on their feet. He moved the dragline around on a side loading trailer towed by a S model Bedford. He would climb over the side and the tracks were as long as the trailer was wide os there was no nead to spin them around and it was never tided down. Things like that were normal in those days before the dogooders started stuffing the world. Years later I had been staying at a High Country station while working on a roading job on a road over the Southern Alps and the owner asked if I could dig a new drain for him as a slip had come down off a mountain and blocked the old one and flooding there only hay paddock. So with a UH07 Hitachi and the memory of Jack the job was setout the same and the result was the same and no tilt bucket, they hadn't been invented. A year or so ago while mucking around with Google Earth i found that drain still runngnig water out of Lake Pearson.
Yair . . . Good one fellers. If nothing else the thread has bought some stories to light and created some interest, thanks to all. Cheers,
Well Scrub, You have me interested as well. A lot of the work I take on could use a dragline, but I am not sure if I could find an operator for one. Add that to the fact that here in Kalifornia, the air Nazis want tier 3 or 4 engines in everything, and retrofitting one onto an old dragline may or may not work well. I am still interested, and the machine linked to above looks good, though I have no budget for one, yet. As for the free spool function with hydraulic winches, I recall seeing some logging gear called a yoder, which is an excavtor with winches to make it also function as a yarder. They seem to have the ability to freespool cable out, as seen by the casting of the lines to reach the next turn to pull. Maybe there is a solution for the winches that don't break the bank. I have heard stories, but not seen, of dragline operators that could load out road trucks in the same time as a hydraulic machine, and not damage them. That would certainly be a skilled operator.
Yair . . . JDOFMEMI. As you and others have mentioned I suppose finding an operator for such machines would be a problem. Also as mentioned up thread a dragline hand was the elite in the earthmoving game and while large draglines are standard in our open cut coalmines I doubt many of those operators trickle down into the area of general contracting. The point of this thread was to mention that in many cases we do jobs "the hard way" and I still have nightmares about two Volvo ADT's and a Komatsu 65 swampy bogged below the tide line . . . it would have been a simple run of the mill job with a dragline. The other point I made of course is the applications are not limited to mud and I once had pictures of an embankment we build in beautiful red cheesy volcanic loam . . . same deal, the dragline lifting it up on top and me feeding him with slots on the D6. On that one we had the farmer spreading up on top and compacting with a sheep's foot behind an HD9. Cheers.
I was able to get back to the farmer's place with the little dragline but he wasn't around and I'm not one to snoop so not many more details yet. It's a Bucyrus Erie and I'm assuming a 15B or one size larger as I try to compare it to pics on the internet. Repower with a gas engine out of an IH combine. I'll have to go deal with him after harvest wraps up around here. I've been fascinated with draglines since I was a little kid.
I've only sat in the seat once after helping the operator change a cable. Made about two buckets and told him he better take over. What I could tell it's a combination of simultaneous hand to eye and foot to eye coordination. Think of booming up and hoisting down or visa versa simultaneously on a crane w/ a load on the hook. Mike
Sadly, the man you need to talk to died recently. A good friend was a wealth of information on Bucyrus Erie cable shovels, and cranes. He had two, with the dragline rig laying on blocks. Another example was bought new in 1965? by Carthusian monks here. They were left in a rich man's will most of a mountain. They used it to build a monastery. Rented a played out gravel pit along a railroad track to take delivery of hundreds of rail cars of granite blocks. These blocks were then transported in dump trucks over the top of Equinox Mountain, where they were unloaded waiting for the crane to be moved. After they finished their monastery, they put on the drag line, and dug a lake. It's all very secret up there, and only a select few non monks have seen it. The county Sherriff retired, and bought it. Still in very nice condition he planned to find a niche market with it, and a few new machines. It had crane, shovel, and drag line. Was just getting started when cancer was diagnosed. Since his wife didn't know what to do with it all, it sat around a few years. Willie
Scrub, along the same lines, im pretty sure a smaller cable shovel would be the bees knees for loading out in a quarry. Our operation ran a northwest 180D 4yd shovel into the early 90s when the engine and torque were lost after rebuild in a shop fire. The cat rep said he didn't have anything that could match the cycle times, and I believe it. It was a very quick machine.
The gravel pit truck loading speed of the Bucyrus Erie I've seen operate is remarkable. An operation requiring a highly skilled operator, I'd bet less fuel, greater speed, and maybe less wear with the shovel. If you don't believe me ask Mike Mulligan. Willie
While still on the subject of draglines, has anyone come across a Garwood rubber tired machine that was made for the US military in the 60's. It had a 6cyl Willies engine over tourque converter drive, 12mph road speed. It also came with an A frame so it could be flat towed behind a truck inclueding airbrake and light connections and was air portable in a C130. I spent many hours trying to get the hang of that machine and gave up in disgust, figured it was me not the machine but I never saw anybody else use it either. I have often though it would have made a great yard crane
Do you have a picture. I have seen Garwood 3 axle truck cranes of Korean War Vintage but they weighed 58,400 according to the tag on the machine. Not sure if they flew them about or not.
No OIH, I parted company with that thing in 72 when my time was up. Now I wish I had taken a pic or 2.
Yair . . . I have noticed over the years that in that era Garwood put out a small generic crane that was fitted to different carriers. We once took one off an ex air force Thornycroft wrecker and fitted it to a barge. I seem to remember it functioned with worm drive gearboxes that needed to be powered in or out and relied on the worms to hold the load and lock the swing. Cheers.
Hey Scrub, some of those air force wreckers had a Coles electric crane on them as well. The Trornycroft was a hand full to drive, physical fitness was your friend ;-) Every truck I have seen that towed a folding gooseneck trailer used a Garwood winch, the same as you discribed The Garwood dragline the Army had didn't have any cabin(house) on it, just an engine cover.
Yair . . . Gotcha Tones. You are not wrong there. What an engine though. The tank transporter we had in PNG had two plugs per cylinder, magneto ignition, a couple of very fancy carbs (that on a good day would give about 3MPG) gear drive fan and the tappet covers and inspection plates were held on by lots of 1/4" fine thread bolts. Cheers.
Rolls Royce engine. Note to self; Tones must learn to edit posts as in Thornycroft not TrornyCroft:Banghead