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Cut 3 feet deeper in the same time after adjusting my swing angle
I've been running a 12-inch cutterhead on a small project near Mobile Bay for about 6 weeks now. Last Monday I finally took the advice from a old timer at the yard and changed my ladder angle from 45 to 38 degrees. In the same 10 hour shift I went from averaging 18 feet of progress to a solid 21.5 feet. The material was the same sandy clay mix I'd been fighting all month. Has anyone else seen big gains from just tweaking their swing speed or angle?
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tyler_white421mo ago
That 38 degree angle trick worked great for me until I hit a buried stump and bent my ladder arm so bad it looked like a pretzel. Spent the next two days with a torch and a sledgehammer trying to get it straight again, which kind of canceled out the time savings. Guess the old timer at the yard probably should have mentioned that part about checking your swing speed first before you go messing with angles. Then again maybe he did and I just didn't hear him over the engine noise.
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paige_west1mo ago
That pretzel comment hit home. I did the same thing last fall, except my ladder arm ended up more like a corkscrew after I ignored the warning signs and just kept swinging. Spent a whole weekend with a bottle of penetrating oil and a lot of bad language trying to coax it back into something resembling straight. The 38 degree thing is great in theory, but turns out my idea of "checking swing speed" was just flooring it and hoping for the best. Now I keep a spare arm in the truck just so I can laugh at myself when the next one snaps.
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