This is a pipe fence I'm putting around some areas of the new Weatherford High. If'n you're going down twenty west of Ft Worth and you see this blue streak just off the freeway, well chances are, I'm working.
You're looking down six hundred feet of fence this picture.
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Here's the same line from just a tad off kilter. It isn't perfect. But then few things really are.
I do this all by eye, height and line, just an easy way for an old man to do young man's work and live to tell about it.
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This is the perspective I look at when sighting them in. I see what you're looking at now and then I'm looking for the post in my hand to be one with the rest in the line. I just drop down the eye until it happens.
Then I know it's gonna be fine.
The good thing about doing it like this is you only have to worry about one post at a time. It's sorta like trying to get through a year. If you do it a day at a time before you know it a years done gone.
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And this is where we're gonna go tomorrow.
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I don't know if you noticed but them holes were a touch large. They're a foot plus across and three feet deep.
I told the locals the other day at breakfast that they must have some real mean short fellas around town. I'm building a heckuva fence and it's only twenty inches tall. Their short fellas must really be something.
Here's the way we do it. The mixer takes nine bags of maximizer. That's nine cubic feet. Nine cubic feet gives me enough concrete for four holes. We're not filling them all the way to the top, landscaping. There's thirty five bags to a pallet. So I get less than sixteen holes per pallet. That whole line in the pictures is about thirteen hundred feet. That's about three hundred sacks.
The concrete bucket that fits on the tractor pays for itself on a job like this. To set up the mixing operation I have to have room. So this place they've assigned to me and the stucco contractor is about a quarter of a mile at the closest point to where the posts are. So I put a mixer load into the tractor bucket. Dump the concrete in four holes. Sight them in. Then go back and mix up another load and do it all over again.
Ain't bad. Pays better than what you'd think. You get to see something from start to finish and done well. And while the hands are busy, my oh my, the mind does get to play.
But then you knew that, right?
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Yesterday morning started off like a typical day, different. It got more that way the more day it became.
A crew has been clearing the windrow in front of me. But they had to pull off to regular work for the customer. The last tree was a big old Hackberry.
I had a couple of problems. First I was by myself. Second they had pulled all the shrubs and trees around the Hackberry and then backfilled. Then overnight a nice floater had came in and it was now a mud hole.
There was also the thing with the telephone cable two feet over on the one side and the water line about three feet away on the other.
It was interesting I must say digging a four foot deep trench on on all four sides of the tree but I got it done. It would have been easier on the nervous system with a spotter. The good side on that equasion is panic does make the heart work. Sorta like running.......with a bear on your tail.
Then I pushed it over with the front loader. Actually what happened was I pushed. It started a nice slow fall. Then the front of the tractor fell into the hole where part of the tree once was. Now some things can make your heart just stop for a second or three. Stone gorgeous member of the opposite sex giving you a come hither look is one. Fifteen thousand pound Cat 416C on it's nose is another.
But sheer terror and no blood pressure combined to clear the reaction system so that a little FEL work and I was clear and back on level ground. It's amazine how quick and accurate the reactions can be when they're cleared to do what they're trained to do after the brain freezes.
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Here's another view of just after heart attack and recovery
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One more. If you look closely you will see two front tractor wheel marks on the left side of the hole. I have a matching set of similar marks in my shorts.
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Of course downing the tree is only a small part of the work to be done. There is the thing about removing the tree so that I can start laying out the fence line.
This is Iris doing her best imitation of a log skidder.
And you thought that was a home made back hoe attachment
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Here she is with her forks attached doing a haul log deally do.
Yup, Stihl oh two six with about a twenty inch bar doing triple duty.
Note the last eight feet still attached to the trunk. I took the Stihl around that puppy but there still was a little tree about six inches in diameter we couldn't get. Severe beating, shaking, woggling, and more than a little cussing did what the saw couldn't.
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This is the stump out of the hole.
Now that was fun.
After hooking up a chain and figuring out the front loader was awflu weak in the jeans when it came to lifting it out I tried the back hoe. It also could only grunt when attached to the mass of wood and mud.
I gave up, went in for a break with the old boy and his wife who lives on the property. He's almost ninety but grumpier than if he was a hundred and ten. He did enjoy my defeat. I think it had something to do with what had happened earlier.
I had no sooner started digging along the four inch PVC water main when he came out his skirt in a knot tighter than ugly on some modern art. I'd cut his telephone off.
It took some checking to prove him wrong. After I called in the trouble to the telco and gave him my cell phone in case he needed to make a call. Just before lunch he came out a waving and hollering that I had a call. It was some lady wanting an estimate on a job to be done yesterday. I referred her to others. Tomorrow's full and so's next week. Yesterday doesn't have a chance.
After I had cancelled the call I handed him the phone. Then I mentioned him closer. He leaned over the fence to me. I kissed him on the cheek. He was shocked and even a little surprised. I explained to him that I always gave the secretary a kiss on the cheek when she gave me the phone for a call.
He doggoned me and called me some very unnice names. I just smiled.
The way he was grinning over my defeat with the stump sent my back up.
I got back on the tractor. First I filled up the front end loader with wet sand. I wanted it as heavy as possible. Then that stump and me danced.
This is her next to the rest of the tree. Once I got her out I tried to push her with the tractor. Uh uh, no way. It had to be moved with the hoe pulling. I'd guess her about five thousand pounds of ugly severely beaten.
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This is the hole I've got to fill this morning. Then I get to do what I do.
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We had to bring power into the new building. We decided to do it via underground. Electric co-op said the trench had to be at least eight inches wide and three feet deep. The perfect job for Iris and her home made back hoe attachment.
Here's she's cleaning out cave in's from the trench being open for a couple of days.
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The trench
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Digging
You gotta love Iris. She is so willing and she doesn't mind get down and getting dirty.
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The power hammer is a Little Giant, fifty pounder, Myers, made in and around about nineteen teens. She is a sweet heart that can hurt you if you cross her.
I don't have a picture of her but I do have one of my favorite little girl impossibly stuck.
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And another view
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I would never have thought that even I could get a four wheel drive tractor impossibly stuck with only one wheel in trouble.
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I don't know if any of you have ever met Miss Lob Lolly. If you have you can understand my situation.
Sunday I moved about a hundred and twenty five yards of surface sand from this area to around the front for for a driveway. As I crossed this swell I'd made I noticed Miss Lob Lolly showing her hand. Just about the time I thought she thought she had me I'd move over a bit and we'd start the dance again in a different place. This was with me driving the fifteen thousand pound Cat 416B.
So yesterday morning I put on the digging bucket that is really too big for Iris and started cleaning the swell. After all Iris weighs just a tad over a third of the Cat and Miss Lob Lolly works on the gravity principle, something very similar to Murphy's law.
As I started to spin a one eighty with a full load in the too big bucket Miss Lob Lolly grabbed the left front wheel and sucked it down faster'n I could drop the bucket. It was kinda sorta a little like doing a one handed hand stand in a bucket of jello.
One tiny bit of a second I was doing a slick one eighty and the next even smaller bit of the very same second I was in a push up position with my hands against the front ROPS of the tractor getting a good look at dirt up close and personal.
Yes. The pucker string was so tight a feather could have severed it with ease. No. My life didn't pass before my eyes. They were closed tight. Probably from the vacuum effect of "OOPS!!"
Motor was still running but the hydraulics weren't powerful enough to disengage from Miss Lob Lolly's squeeze. We had us a situation you might say.
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But only until the Cat became involved
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We're on the downhill side on the fence part of the job I've been on up next to the Red River. Yesterday I laid out and dug forty some holes. I got about half of them set. We started with a hundred and sixty five posts.
The digging here is about as easy as can be found. Usually I can just about screw in the auger and then lift up.
I thought some might enjoy a tour of the process.
I use upside down paint and or a claw hammer to mark my holes. When the dirt is loose the paint ain't worth dating, much less getting involved with. That's when a good framing hammer comes in handy.
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The posts standing up in the background are my my spotters. I do everything by eye. So I need something to sight down, spotters.
The auger is a twelve incher and this is the first withdrawl.
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Second withdrawl and now the account is almost empty. Actually I come back with manual post hole diggers to get any stuff left in the hole. I'm sorta particular about dirt in the hole. When the hole is a tad over three feet deep you can understand why I came up with my backwards diggers for cleaning.
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This is a gate post hole. So I changed over to a sixteen inch auger and when I'm done the hole will be so close to eight feet deep you won't know it isn't, if it isn't.
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I'm sure some have gotten out their scales and did some quick math. They've decided it would be impossible for that auger to go to eight feet without an extension.
They are wrong.
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Check it out.
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That's what you call driving it home.
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Then of course there are always the inspectors looking for bugs.
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Sometimes you get lucky in life. If you're really really lucky you get to radius' that is more like an ellipse.
Of course the hard thing is like all things hard, getting started. Since I do it by myself I try to find the easiest way. For me the easiest way to lay out a large radius if I can't pull it from a center point is with a water hose.
I lay out the water hose where I want the fence holes to be and then I mark it out. That is the easy part.
Here I have the road and it provides me with two challenges. The first of course is the radius isn't a radius as such. Secondly I have the pavement being as irregular as any anarchist.
So I laid out the water hose where it gave me what I thought was a consistant look.
Setting the posts is another challenge. It isn't as easy as just putting them in the middle of the hole and them concreting them in. An inch one way or another on a slow radius like this will not only affect one post, it'll affect about three.
There's nothing uglier than seeing a radius that weaves in and out in a fence line. It says the person who installed it either didn't know or even worse, they didn't care.
So when you are offered the opportunity to do something difficult that should require skill and dedication you are lucky. Yesterday I got lucky.
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Here's a shot of a section completed the other day. Right by the telephone pedestal is where I cut the water main. Man, that was fun.
I know it appears the line is staggered. But that's okay in this instance.
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I like work. I think we were made for work and are happiest when doing it. It's what we're genetically engineered to do.
One of the things I like about the kind of work I get to do is the challenges. I'm not talking about Everest or rocket science. I'm talking those things that come up sorta like acne to make you grow as a person and worker.
This job is a good example. Conventional construction of an ornamental fence wasn't appropriate. The cinder block wall with it's grout cap meant plates weren't a solution. It also meant coring would present finishing issues. Attaching to the outside of the wall would look about as good as a tutu on Vice President Cheney.
I suggested offset posts. Customer bought the idea and Payne Metal Works made the panels and posts custom for the job.
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Did you notice that alternate use for shrink wrap?
Twenty one of those bushes danced on me like I was an off colored step child that stuttered and had a horrible limp.
I had two hands on the post hole diggers, hand dug every hole. Two hands holding one bush over for clearance and then the last pair of hands holding back the bush on the other side of the hole. It was heck on a holiday wanting to party.
After about an hour of such fun and pleasure I started trying to free up some hands by tying the bushes back. That's when frustration grabbed common sense for a minute by the throat and choked us all. Just short of aphixiation a vision of shrink wrap appeared. Home Depot was only minutes away, so was lunch, two birds one trip alive and well.
It's those simple successes that make work so wonderful. One minute it's coming over the bow and the next it's cutting the waves like a big dawg.
There is this glitch on the highway to happy days though. First there has to be the challenge. That's the part that is often misunderstood and unloved. There cannot be the thrill of victory without the threat of disaster and defeat.
I'm not sure which is worse, management trying to eliminate challenges, sabotaging for goodness sake. Or the individual that hasn't learned that the challenge is just as important as the success. You can't the one without the other.
Here's another shot.
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I really enjoyed this job.
Of course I'm easily entertained. It doesn't take much. Getting to get in, do work, finish, and then have it looked like what you've done has been there forever, now that's fun.
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Another view
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Thanks guys, I'm not good, just lucky.
Here's a fun project I'm on now.
Five foot high schedule forty galvanized pipe fence, welded joints, two by four non climb horse wire, five foot high.
Here's some of the posts standing at ease waiting for captain concrete to show up so they can stand at attention
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Here's a close up of a line post. I notch them before I set them.
One of the fun moments during a hard day is when someone comes by and comments about me not using a string setting posts or digging holes. Most folks just don't get it that the eye is the best tool we have for lining things up. I set for line and grade by eye, get lucky most times.
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I had twenty yards of remix (concrete sand and three quarter rock remixed) dropped in place for the job.
Yup, I'm the one that gets to put all that into the mixer, one shovel at a time.
I told you I was lucky.
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Here's the fit before welding.
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They punched in about two thousand feet of t posts in the bottoms. The clay down there is a bugger bear. Just imagine a clingy personality that's stubborn and generally uncooperative.
I've found out that a gallon of water properly placed works wonders. That's why you see the hundred gallon propylene tank full of water cinched down on top. When that clay gets all icky poo sticky doo I shoot in about a gallon of water and it's like a divorce decree. We go our separate ways.
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A six foot hole is three times better than a four foot one, you have my personal guarantee.
Fella asked the other day why we were digging the holes so deep down there in the bottoms. I pointed out that the four foot ones someone had set some years back hadn't done so well. Besides that, we could, republican side of me, darn.
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I generally place the concrete in eight to twelve posts at a time. Then I go back and pull them up for height and align them in a straight line.
Keep in mind I get four posts to a nine cubic foot mixer load. That comes out to about twelve posts to a cubic yard. My holes are usually at least thirty nine inches to three and a half feet deep and twelve inches across.
Even using schedule forty two inch pipe (2 3/8" O.D.) like I am on this latest job there is no problem with the concrete supporting the post after you've aligned it while it hardens.
I don't know what you call many. A chainlink fence crew that's good will lay out, dig, and set to grade anything from six hundred to a thousand feet of fence in a day's work. That's two foot deep holes by six inches wide and mixing the concrete in the wheelbarrow as they go.
Back in the old days four of us, two foreman and two helpers, laid out and set a half a mile of six foot chainlink fence in one day. One crew started at one end and the other at the other end. When we were done you couldn't tell who did what or where we met. It was a good day.
Every now and then you will find an old boy who will have worked with a mason or a framer who worked by eye. They will confirm that the eye is better than just about anything else for making things true.
You might find this interesting. http://www.worldfencenews.com/articles/lucci0103.pdf
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