weird build

[MercuryMac]

While I've been waiting for parts to come in, I have been doing winter yard work. Beavers have had a field day in the creek behind our house, so I started taking out beaver-dams. The third dam is yet to be removed. It is inside a 30" culvert across the county road just north of my driveway. The County spent many hours with three quarters of a million dollars worth of equipment and five guys and got a washbasin full of dirt out of this culvert. I'm just arrogant enough to think that I should be able to take a lot of that dirt out of the culvert in a short time, with one eye shut and an old tree.
Well, I was wrong, time has been ticking away and I used both eyes. I have been making a steel re-enforcement for under the tree with retractable claws on the steel channel iron. There is also a retractable scoop at one end of this channel. I hope to chain the channel-iron to the bottom of the log and push it into the culvert with most of the claws and scoop folding back. One claw will still be rigid so it will rip a little bit of the frozen dirt and sticks up, on the push westwards. When I pull the log and re-enforcement eastwards, the claws and scoop should flop down and work to rip and pull a shovel-full of beaver dam out of the culvert.

 

[DozerII]

There ya go imangineering again MM, [cl[cl hope the plan works out . [P[P

 

[dutch]

Looks great Mac! The fun you can have with beavers...

 

[DozerII]

Looks great Mac! The fun you can have with beavers...

And here I thought this was a family friendly site [ddd[ddd

 

[dutch]

And here I thought this was a family friendly site [ddd[ddd

oops...
you can always count on me to spoil a perfectly harmless thread... sorry...

Mac please make a video... I`d love to see how it works out [cl

 

[Torchie]

[P [P [P [P [P [P
Torchie

 

[BillM]

Good luck with the beavers MM, and I'm with Dutch - please make us a video!

 

[bob w]

Hard to beat a beaver.

 

[zzrodder]

Kinda gives you faith in the idea that nature will triumph in the end when we are gone
Couple of fur bearin' critters can challenge everything thrown at them, now that's determination! [cl
Homegrown solutions like yours are often the best way to go. Good luck on the beaver war...

 

[Old Iron]

[P[P[P

 

[smallfoot]

I'm seeing it...

 

[MercuryMac]

I forgot to say that this contraption is lying on it's side, but you guys seemed to figure that out. Also some of you might recognize my scoop as an old 'no-good' wheel.
Dutch, I don't blame you for drifting side-ways, but it has put a blip in my imagineering. The next modification may look ------- unique.
Here's one of the cuprits.

 

[dutch]

he`s cool! Looks to be laughing at you too...

 

[bruno]

Doesn't look like any beaver that i have ever seen.

 

[Bamamav]

So, what happens when you get it stuck in the culvert?[S

 

[MercuryMac]

Bama, Mrs. Mac grumbles that I'm a flaming optimist, and frankly, I've never thought about getting it stuck in there. I'm going to be at the east end of the culvert pushing the collapsed machine westward. When I pull it back out eastward the claws and shovel should come down and pull dirt east. If it gets stuck, I may have to go around the west side, crawl in, hook a chain on it, and pull it out the west side.
Yesterday I ran out of oxygen so I couldn't cut the last intricate piece. Boxing Day, in Covid season, on a weekend; three strikes and you're out, right? So I cut this piece of 1/2" plate into shapes with my zip-cut grinder and it is now welded on the scoop.
The neighbour, whose yard gets flooded out in the spring when the beaver have good luck, came over today. He loved the contraption and suggested that he could put a Herman Nelson heater in the end of the culvert and thaw out the dam in there. That should make it even easier.
Oh and the beaver picture is not quite right. I had snuck up on him to get a close picture and scared the poop out of him.[proof of that just this side of him, in the grass]. He whirled around so fast that his tail rolled up and looks like a martins tail, but it is wide, flat and hairless. That's probably why you don't recognize it.

 

[Sam_Fear]

Doesn't look like any beaver that i have ever seen.

Scrolled past this without a thought. About 5 minutes later while I'm looking at another thread.... Ohhhh I get it. haha [cl

 

[Neto]

I don't know what sort of access you have to the exit end of the culvert, or the inside diameter, and have also never tried to tear out a beaver dam, but wondering if a sort of side-ways well auger would work. We drilled a well down around 85 feet by hand down in Brazil, so thinking about something along those lines. We used an auger made of 3 pieces of semi leaf spring sections welded to a section of heavy wall pipe. That was connected to 1 1/4" steel pipe, through which we pumped water, while turning it at the same time. The idea is that the auger cuts the dirt loose, and the water washes everything out. (With a well, you mix in clay when you get down to the water-bearing strata. This temporarily clogs up the sand, so that the cuttings keep coming up and out of the hole. But you wouldn't need that in this case.) Like I said, I've never messed with a beaver dam, so maybe there are so many sticks & branches mixed into this mess that this idea would not work at all.

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank you Neto, I have been giving your idea a lot of thought. One of the downsides to squash your idea, is I didn't think of it, so I made something a way different. We should have checked this culvert out in the fall before the mud was frozen and, back then there would have been a good supply of water still around. I probably can still find some big truck springs around here so I could make the auger. It might have to be more aggressive to chew through the sticks, do-able though. Beaver dams are just dang annoying, especially the ones inside a culvert. You almost have to take them apart in the reverse of the way they were built, by hand.
Anyhow, I got a little bit of fabricating done today and my shovel gizmo is almost ready.

 

[Old Iron]

[P[P[P