weird build

[MercuryMac]

I went and got oxygen today and fabricated a little more. It always takes me longer to do the work than my dream estimated. Oh well, tomorrow.

 

[MercuryMac]

Well, Guys, I think the digger contraption is done. Here it is chained to the bottom of a log.

Today I went out to the beaver dam behind the shop and took some pictures. I had dug out a bunch of the north end of this dam with the tractor and then the county back-hoe guy reached a bit further and went deeper so the next spring water will flow nicely now. The dam is about six feet high and about fifty feet long. You can see on one picture that the ice was six inches deep about half way up the dam when we broke it. The forth picture is taken from the back side of the dam showing more of the ends of the sticks. The fifth and sixth pics are just a beaver chewed stump of a big poplar tree. It would be about a foot in diameter.

 

[Bamamav]

Dems been some busy beavers![ddd

 

[MercuryMac]

Well, today we tried out this clawing sled. Both pictures are of the sled at the east end of the culvert at the very beginning of the adventure. First the tractor is at the closest it can be to the culvert and the contraption is twenty five feet from the end of it's journey. So we had to chain another log onto that log to get enough reach. The tractor is sitting on a slanty creek bank that's snowy and slippery. In the second picture you'll notice that the hole in the dam at the top of the culvert is fairly small; smaller than I thought. The log and the sled are about a foot thick and the hole is eight inches. We powersawed the log narrower and re chained it to the sled and tried again. This time I broke the dry log. Sometime along there I slid into the creek and had to unhook the tractor from the log and jig around quite a bit to get out. Needless to say, my hollow bragging has come back to haunt me; Flaming Optimism isn't always enough to get you out of a jam. So anyhow my report is inconclusive.

 

[Torchie]

That's not a beaver dam, mac. That's a bomb shelter left over from the cold war. [ddd
[P [P [P
Torchie

 

[MercuryMac]

Torchie, you've just given me an idea. A bomb. This beaverdam is frozen solid and really hard to rip apart. I wonder if a wee bit of dynamite might soften it up.

 

[dutch]

kewl...
video..please... [P[P[P

 

[Dr Crankenstein]

Torchie, you've just given me an idea. A bomb. This beaverdam is frozen solid and really hard to rip apart. I wonder if a wee bit of dynamite might soften it up.

DNR will love you long time.

.

 

[smallfoot]

I thought you were trying to get the culvert to work again

 

[BillM]

Yes, video please! Not to hijack your thread MM, but we have those pesky buggers here, they cant dam the river, but they seem to like corn. Our tenant finally took his corn off the river flats, what was left of it anyway! I walked the flats yesterday and found 5 different slides where they had been in and out of the river. Looks like several acres of corn along the bank had been chewed off and stripped.

 

[MercuryMac]

Wow, Bill I bet your farmer hates beavers as much as I do. I never thought about them liking corn that much.
My determination is mounting so I don't care whether the culvert or anyone else likes me afterwards or not.
Anyhow, I had another thought last night, so I changed plans a wee bit. I mounted my gin-pole on the front end loader bucket and positioned myself cross-ways on the county road. I had taken the log out of the sled and fastened a logging chain to each end of sled. I then hooked the east-bound chain [the working direction] to the end of the gin-pole and drove forward, pulling the sled through. As I was down in the culvert unhooking the chain I heard the tractor falter and die. I had run out of fuel. There I was with the tractor cross-ways in the road dead and darkness setting in. After I had brought a couple of jerry cans of fuel up from the tank and got the tractor started again, [mostly on ether], I put things away and went in for supper.

 

[DozerII]

And they say beavers are determined, I'm thinking you are showing them whose got real determination. [P[P

 

[MercuryMac]

My determination was rivaling the beavers there for a while. They only ease off working after there's a 30-30 report. I hope I'll stop sooner than that.
I broke a chain and the gin-pole twice today, so tomorrow I'll get my contraption out of the culvert and call it quits. Next summer some time, I'll be back. Here's some beaver eye views of the contraption at work.

 

[dutch]

wow , the mess in there.... holymoly
I would look into getting some kind of work experience summercamp with heavily underpaid spoiled kids or something to fix that...

 

[Old Iron]

That really is a helluva mess

 

[MercuryMac]

There's a little thin covering of dried dirt on top, but this mess is packed mud, then frozen. My aggressive machine doesn't usually dig into it and when it does I can't pull it. Next summer when the water goes down in the creek, I'll try again. I welded up the gin-pole yesterday and fixed some chain. Here's a picture of me starting to pull the sled out of the culvert. I took everything to the shop. I'm done.

 

[dutch]

wow... an excavator and a new pipe seem to be really cost effective... [S

 

[MercuryMac]

Dutch, whose cost are you worrying about, mine or the local county's. This fall, the county came with an excavator and a new culvert and changed the one just north of this one, [see picture, the shiny culvert in the background]. That culvert was plugged right off, so it got changed, but they must have not looked in this culvert, [because it's at least 2 meters away ---and there were only three extra guys standing around watching the back-hoe]. [ddd

 

[Old Iron]

[cl[cl[cl
[ddd[ddd[ddd

 

[dutch]

haha well some things are global.... I think it may be an actual job...watching the back hoe...