added cutting edge to 36' excavator bucket

[Land-Tech]

I first put a cutting edge when I got the machine, and it has 1200 Hr mostly on this bucket.The plate is an old cutting edge off a snowplow 5/8" thick welded to the existing teeth You can see where the plate is scalloped and wore more than the teeth.

This plate worked very well even with the open gaps between the teeth. and extended the depth and reach a little bit. You can fill the gaps but it makes it more difficult to remove the pins on the teeth.

Sorry for the bad pic. I added another cutting edge like the previous by just welding to old edge. I thought about cutting the old plate off but that's a lot more work and the wide bucket needs all the strength it can get. I dig a lot of hard ground and these buckets are tough. I expect to get the same amount of time out of this one. The edge is extended beyond teeth about 2". Scott

 

[Tazza]

Do you find it still digs well? I always thought with teeth you really need the points to do the work, but in softer dirt i can see just a cutting edge is all you need, you can then replace it when worn out rather than cutting it out of the front of the bucket!

 

[Land-Tech]

Do you find it still digs well? I always thought with teeth you really need the points to do the work, but in softer dirt i can see just a cutting edge is all you need, you can then replace it when worn out rather than cutting it out of the front of the bucket!

Yeah most of the work I do is with the machine is moving materiel and clean-up. Being able to pull materiel into the blade helps save work on the final cleanup.And a straight edge is needed to do that.
I only have two buckets for this machine, the other one is a 24" so I use that the in the hard or frozen ground or to place boulders. The flat edge makes it a lot safer digging around utilities, or finding buried things like pipe.

These two picks are shots of when I redid the waterline to my house. The trench is 8' deep and this is what the hardpan around here is like. Although it varies from bottomless peat bogs to solid rock on the hillsides When I dug around the well casing ,it seemed to get harder the deeper you went. this is all with the small bucket. About 14' down to the pitless where I could connect the new line.The well is about 220' deep with water at 160'. the well log show that varies between the clay and hardpan and layers of gravel and rock. This not good ground for sewer systems so once a year the tank gets pumped whether I like it or not.

The last shot shows where I finished the trench,the machine is normally level when I dig but as I was getting ready to move off the trench I thought I should get a pic. Had no room so I dug from each end to the middle. If the ground was softer this might be a stupid thing to do.LOL

If I'm in a ritzy neigborhood or I don't want to dump materiel on the street I'll grab it right out of the back of the truck and take it to where it is needed. The cutting edge is much friendlier to my dump bed.
The machine will dig fine with the big bucket and will pull the machine around before it dogs out. It has to be pretty hard before I can't fill the big bucket and it's not tippy loading the truck.
In the above pic the mess is already made but you get the idea. Scott

 

[Land-Tech]

Yeah most of the work I do is with the machine is moving materiel and clean-up. Being able to pull materiel into the blade helps save work on the final cleanup.And a straight edge is needed to do that.
I only have two buckets for this machine, the other one is a 24" so I use that the in the hard or frozen ground or to place boulders. The flat edge makes it a lot safer digging around utilities, or finding buried things like pipe.



These two picks are shots of when I redid the waterline to my house. The trench is 8' deep and this is what the hardpan around here is like. Although it varies from bottomless peat bogs to solid rock on the hillsides When I dug around the well casing ,it seemed to get harder the deeper you went. this is all with the small bucket. About 14' down to the pitless where I could connect the new line.The well is about 220' deep with water at 160'. the well log show that varies between the clay and hardpan and layers of gravel and rock. This not good ground for sewer systems so once a year the tank gets pumped whether I like it or not.



The last shot shows where I finished the trench,the machine is normally level when I dig but as I was getting ready to move off the trench I thought I should get a pic. Had no room so I dug from each end to the middle. If the ground was softer this might be a stupid thing to do.LOL

If I'm in a ritzy neigborhood or I don't want to dump materiel on the street I'll grab it right out of the back of the truck and take it to where it is needed. The cutting edge is much friendlier to my dump bed.
The machine will dig fine with the big bucket and will pull the machine around before it dogs out. It has to be pretty hard before I can't fill the big bucket and it's not tippy loading the truck.
In the above pic the mess is already made but you get the idea. Scott

Spring is here and I got serious with the cutting edge.I took a edge off a bucket and cut it down to size and the left over will go on the 331.I bolted it to the existing edge I put on before.When this side wears I can reverse for another go. Scott

 

[coreya3212]

Spring is here and I got serious with the cutting edge.I took a edge off a bucket and cut it down to size and the left over will go on the 331.I bolted it to the existing edge I put on before.When this side wears I can reverse for another go. Scott

Good pics!! Scott, what part of the world are you in. Those mountains in back of your place look fantastic. That also why you got all the hard rock, and giant boulders from the looks of things.

 

[Land-Tech]

Good pics!! Scott, what part of the world are you in. Those mountains in back of your place look fantastic. That also why you got all the hard rock, and giant boulders from the looks of things.

We are just north of Anchorage, Alaska. We have everything from bottomless peat to lots of rock.I do a lot of rock walls because its cheaper than block or anything else.Although the shot rock I use is about $36 per ton. All the rock you see in the pic came from a single apartment complex.Close to two hundred ton.
The 435 will pick most of the rock but the bigger stuff I load with the Gehl.Thanks for the nice comments, thats one of the joys of this site is to see what people in other places are doing. Scott