Switched to a different cutterhead after a job in Galveston went south

Was running a standard basket cutter on a sandbar in Galveston Bay and kept burning through bearings every 3 hours. Swapped to a straight edge with tungsten tips from a guy on the dock and finished the whole 40-foot channel without a single hiccup. Anyone else found a weird cutterhead setup that just worked where nothing else would?

3 comments

3 Comments

brooke_murray8d ago

idk man that Louisiana story is wild, I had a straight edge save my butt on a rocky stretch in Delaware once.

coleman.hannah8d ago

I read about a guy in Louisiana who rigged up a cutterhead with carbide teeth from an old asphalt planer and ran it in the muddy Mississippi for a whole week without a changeout. That's crazy how a straight edge with tungsten tips can handle the sandbar grit way better than a basket cutter. The bearings on those standard baskets just can't take the fine sand getting in there, but a solid edge seems to push through it instead of grinding it into the seals. Was the guy you swapped with someone local who knew the bay conditions or just a random dock trader?

johnson.eva8d ago

Man, that Louisiana story is wild. Reminds me of the time I tried to swap out a cutterhead on a rental barge and ended up with a bent shaft because I forgot to check the tide tables. @coleman.hannah, to answer your question, the guy was definitely a local rig hand who knew the mud like the back of his hand, not some random dock trader. From what I can gather, a lot of those guys learned the hard way that a straight edge can handle the gritty stuff better than a basket cutter that just grinds fine sand into every seal. Take my story with a grain of salt though, I'm the guy who probably got his boot stuck in the mud while trying to watch.