cool tool!

[L. Wakefield]

   So- this will be old hat to most of you- but I finally got my backside into the seat of- and my hand on the controls of- a dozer with a 6-way blade!! What a treat! My husband had brought home a Cat D4H to muddle around at a potential duck pond.  Now I'm not TOO pushy- it was 3-4 days before I suggested that, uh, maybe the keys were around and, uh, if he showed me the basics I could perhaps do a bit to help out (nudge, nudge)..

   Oh, my word, what a cadillac of a unit..a truly beastly tool. I can't say I provided much more than comic relief- I am much slower than he is- but that thing is so SWEET!

   What's the smallest real unit with a 6-way blade? I know the excavators I was looking at prior to 9/11 don't have em. I still want something with backhoe on trax, but...  lw

[SawBilly]

Glad you got to have some fun! It is always nice to use something that was designed for the job your doing. We just got a forklift, now I dont have to use a 4 wheeler and chain to move my logs around.

[Ed_K]

My wife always liked the J D 850 w / petal steering and tilt blade, she
 pretty good with a self loading earthmover too. we're happy to hear you
 got your hands on the 6 way.
As for moveing logs we have a taylor skidder,massy w / loader and forks
 and still use the 4 wheeler to move logs over to the mill bunks.

HAPPY DIGGING
 Ed K

[Frank_Pender]

Well done, LW.  They are lots of fun, that is for sure.  I always need the slightes excuse to start of my D5.  It is also a fun challenge to see how much you can really push once in a while.  I am using mne to "walk In" some 3" minus rock for some of my main forest roads this Fall.  I do hope you enjoy all the "pushing" with you new toy.  Be carfull though, it can become real addictive in rearranging the landscape.   8)

[L. Wakefield]

   Mike is still looking for 'the perfect tool' to move the granite boulders around here. I WOULD go and buy a place which is infested with the things (there is a REASON for all those stone walls in New England, but those are just the baby ones. I have a nest of the grownups. I think the glacier left them all here just for us..)

   It being kind of a 'guy thing' to find the biggest possible THEORETICALLY moveable object (ie 'rock') to push up against (hey, don't tell ME- I have seen my bull in action- 'push' is absolutely his favorite game), I am actually pleased that he hasn't tackled any of the ones that are 10-12ft in diameter. The most recent failure was one in the garden- I probably wrote about it- turned out to be 6-8ft in diameter but he didn't know that til he had half the garden displaced. Eh well, he gave up and re-buried it- I retilled and fertilized -had a great time planting in subsoil in places- and the corn didn't suffer for it..and he can dig it back up and try again when he has the next bigger tool and has that urge come over him again..

   Dozer works for a pretty big rock on the flat. Backhoe works for 'some' in holes. Backhoe with a 'thumb'- we just started seeing thumbs round here- now that has some hope to it- but to do an 8ft rock, you really need an excavator.

   He finally came up with the duck pond idea and voila (or as it is said, 'wa-la')- all the displaced subsoil can be used to fill up and level out the hoes he makes when he moves the rocks.

   You get to wonder what is the starting point-end point..

   I'll let you know if he starts construction on a Stonehenge thing here..or a stone house..   lw

[Jeff]

How about some pictures of those biguns? Those are some big rocks even by our standards, and we got some big ones around here.

This next one should be in funny stories. We got a local fellow that bought an old septic tak delivery truck. He has a vacant lot at one end of harrison. He put up a sigh that said " Rocks-R-Us" Landscape boulders for sale. then rocks started arriving. Nothing less then 4 foot across, most larger. I thought pretty cool, good idea. I would even like one of those great big ones on my place.

About 6 weeks later he built a chain link fence around the rocks to keep em in. Like somebody is going to walk off with one. :D

[Tom]

Fences keep stuff in, Jeff.  That's why they put them around cows. You wouldn't want those rocks wandering allover your yard at night would you? :D

LW, please post some pictures.  I relate to Mike's dilemma.  My 555 Ford, rubber tired backhoe, gets lonely.  I have to go out there every once in a while and dig a hole as deep as it will reach.  Of course I cover it back up because, who wants a hole in there yard?  It's amazing some of the things I uncover.  Once upon a time, this land was covered by ocean and then by marsh.  layers of fossilized marsh grasses and shell like I've never seen before lay at various depths.  It makes me want to dig twice as deep as I can reach now. Great fun.
   ARGH_H_H_H :D

[Oregon_Rob]

It's amazing how the view changes from up on a dozer. All these things that you never gave a second thought to, (trees, rocks, piles of logs...) suddenly need to be moved. Kind of like having a big chains saw in your hands. Just moments before, you were totally unaware that the trees in the front yard needed to be felled. But all of a sudden things seem so obvious.  ;D ;D ;D

[L. Wakefield]

   ok, ok... I have tomorrow off, and I'm mending (I hope) from the most nasty bout of asthmatic bronchitis I have ever had- gave me Meniere's syndrome or something weird with my inner ear so one afternoon after night shift I tried to get up and literally had to CRAWL for half an hour hoping I wouldn't fall OFF the floor- (If you gonna do that, you should have knee pads. The dogs were ecstatic- they thought I had come to live with THEM. I kept swearing 'this isn't FUNNY' and pushing them away as I was stuck halfway between laughing and hurling- you had to be there but be glad you weren't)- so if I can navigate OK I will try to download or delete some of those images plugging up the dig/cam and go out into the woods where the wild things are- rocks that is- if I can get Mike to go with me for scale- those li'l buggers are HUGE. Not bad for a hunting stand.

   The very largest, of course, are outright ledges. we call one 'the little rock' and it is about 30ft diameter. That's opposed to 'the big rock' that may meander on for about 300ft- I'm guessing- it could be more like 1000ft- I never paced it out. That one you can tell is where they quarried out the granite blox for the house foundation.

   It's interesting when you do get down around the edges. Like I was planting trees in the orchard and I knew I was down hill from the 'little rock'- but I didn't know how shallow 'bedrock' was. I barely had a reasonable depth (to me) for my baby nut bush. Of course, the gigunda oak and maple that were standing in earth far shallower (uphill from me) were giving me to understand that it would be OK- just give the little feller a hole to start in and he'd do alright.

   Like I say, if Mike ever goes to tackle one of the big ones, I will have to get out the restraints or at least try to reason with him- like using the little 3-letter word... WHY? (as we all know, the answer to that one is 'because it's there..)  lw