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That Tuesday when our 12 inch cutterhead clogged 3 times before lunch on the Mississippi job
We were pulling silt and clay out of a 200 foot stretch near mile marker 14 and the cutterhead clogged 3 times before noon, which never happens on that stretch. First clog took 40 minutes to clear, second one was worse and we had to pull the whole ladder up, and by the third time the swing winch started slipping on us too. Turns out the culprit was a busted screen on our suction intake letting in sticks and roots the size of your arm. We lost about 5 hours of production and the owner was on the radio asking for numbers every 20 minutes. Anyone else run into screen failures mid-job, and do you keep a spare welded up on the barge or just patch it with what you got?
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kelly.robin26d ago
Been there with the clogged cutterhead nightmare and it makes for a long awful day. Three times before lunch is brutal, and pulling the ladder is the worst part because you lose so much time just getting back to work. Having the owner on the radio every 20 minutes asking for numbers while you're up to your elbows in mud does not help one bit, that pressure just makes everything go slower.
That busted screen sounds like the real kicker here. Sticks and roots the size of your arm getting through will jam you up every single time and there's no way around it. We keep a spare screen welded up on the barge now after getting burned once, plus a patch kit with some scrap that will get us through a shift if we need it.
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