JCB vs Boulder...pictures attached

[GaryInWA]

I am currently clearing a site for my garage and encountered a rather large boulder. I have moved some pretty good sized rocks with my JCB 1400B but this was the biggest yet. I had to remove it as it was in the way of the concrete slab, I was able to build a ramp and pull it out with the backhoe, boy am I glad I own a fullsize backhoe

I attached some pictures of me attacking the boulder and getting it out of the way.

PS: The rear tire of my backhoe is 4 feet tall and my backhoe bucket is 24" wide to add some perspective

 

[sr160009]

Looks like th JBC won!!!!!

 

[whodat90]

Heck man, if you had the thumb on you could have just picked it up!

 

[MarkV]

That’s a rock alright! Not sure my little Kubota would have made that happen.

MarkV

 

[Richard]

Horsepower sure is fun huh?

I've got a 1550-B

 

[Nat]

Yeah, a thumb and 5 others hoes. I bet that rock weighs 20,000 lbs. Once you get under it they don't move too bad but it sure is a lot of work to get under it in the 1st place. Nice job of removing it. later, Nat

 

[6sunset6]

For sure it's nice to have a full size hoe. I have one also. When I was a kid my father and I used to move rocks , probably not that big but pretty big ,with pinch bars and smaller rocks and it took days when we had nothing else to do. Sort of miss those days.

 

[diyDave]

That'd be a good one to put your mailbox on to keep the vandals away!

 

[john_bud]

Yeah, a thumb and 5 others hoes. I bet that rock weighs 20,000 lbs. Once you get under it they don't move too bad but it sure is a lot of work to get under it in the 1st place. Nice job of removing it. later, Nat

Nat, I read your reply and thought -- Nawwww. Then started thinking. It's about cube 5' on a side. That makes it 125 cu ft of volume. Granite is about 125#/cu ft, so the rough estimate is 15,625#. Hey, that's a BIG rock! And a good estimate by you!

jb

 

[EddieWalker]

Congrats on a getting it out. Now what do you do with it?

I've had stumps in that size range, but never anything as heavy as that boulder. Those stumps are almost as hard to get to the burn pile as getting them out. I don't even want to think what it took to move that thing around.

Thanks for the pics, they are allot of fun.

Eddie

 

[GaryInWA]

Thanks for the responses, I was very worried I wouldnt be able to budge it and would either need to rent a jackhammer or hire someone to blow it apart.

It was one of many boulders I encountered but it was the biggest, my property consists of alot of glacial till (sandy loom soil and many roundish rocks)

I was tempted to move the boulder to a better location on my property but it was just to big to move without making a huge mess plus I have plenty of other boulders throughout my property so I dug a very large and deep hole next to the boulder and pushed it in, which worked out well as I needed the dirt to help level up the garage site.

I had to knock down a few trees as well, the alders were easy to push down but a cedar and a maple put up a little more of a fight....but once again my JCB came out victorious

 

[EastTractor]

Gary,

I did a lot of the same with large, but smaller rocks using a Yanmar 226d with a woods 750 backhoe. A toy compared to yours. Some of the rocks were too heavy to lift out so I made the hole bigger, leaned the rock, and dug under it to sink it. Even though I couldn't get a lot of the huge ones out, I sure enough got them out of view. The ones that were too big to even budge, I drilled holes in then and used Betonomite (I think I spelt it right). Betonomite is a powder that you mix with water and pour into your drilled holes. You let it sit over night and by morning the boulder is split. How many splits depends on how many holes and how large a boulder. There isn't a boulder that you can't destroy. It’s basically silent, non-explosive dynamite.

I had a surface boulder that I removed using it that was at least 6 feet high (it swallowed an entire 5 ft drill bit) and probably 8 to 10 feet long. Who knows what it weighed. I tried a jackhammer and barely scratched it. I drilled quite a few holes and poured in the Betonomite and by morning the boulder was cracked into neat, manageable sized sections that I could tear down with my woods 750. The cracks, before I tore it apart with the backhoe, were wide enough to slide your hand into. If you lacked a backhoe, you could make smaller pieces and carry them off by hand. Amazing stuff!

I can’t wait to use it again when I tackle the other side of my property.

 

[dtd24]

Nice rock!!! Thats one heck of a tool box on that machine as well.