A guy on the Ohio River last season told me my bucket teeth were spaced wrong for the clay layer. He was right.

3 comments

3 Comments

Clay will flat out tell you when your teeth are wrong. That spacing is everything for a clean dig. Too close and it packs solid, too far and you just skim. Had to learn that the hard way on a job near the riverbank. Sometimes you need a wider gap to let that heavy stuff fall through.

faithwalker1mo agoMost Upvoted

That riverbank clay is a whole different animal than most.

logan7051mo ago

My uncle ran an excavator for thirty years on the Mississippi silt and swore by tight teeth spacing, even in clay. He said the whole "let it fall through" idea just leaves half the bucket load behind. You get a cleaner cut and more material moved per pass with them close together. That riverbank clay sticks to itself anyway, so a wide gap just makes a mess. I've seen his way work on pipeline jobs where a thin, full bucket was better than a skimmed heavy one.