I know its not rocket science...but bucket teeth

I could probably do as good of digging with the bare shanks as what I had been digging with, now I know there have been different opinions as to what the upside is to rock teeth. I know how, I think, I would put them on. Where I bought these teeth, I got 2 different opinions - one being from the service manager, the other from the shop mechanic. This is what I think is top side:

I think you're correct.

The teeth should be angled down to encourage penetration.

You can put them any way you want. When they wear out about half way, turn them over and move the most worn teeth to the middle.

This is what I ended up with. And digging is considerbly different. Leveling with roots and debris is ALOT ! different. Like a fine rake. Its gonna take a little getting used to.


Thaks for the replies.

It looks like your tooth retention system is, or is similar to, the Hensley top loaders. They employ a rolled steel dowell that is hammer driven through the tooth and shank, and is retained by friction. I have used these before and I am some what familiar with the drawbacks of this type of system. The main drawback is that the pin will break, and without much warning. Another drawback (which I have a suggestion for) is that dirt will get packed insisde the roll pin. This prevents the pin from contracting and can make it VERY difficult to remove when replacing/rotating the teeth. There is a very simple way to help prevent the dirt from building up inside the pin. Prior to pin installation fill the center of the pin with silicon, gasket sealer, RTV, or any other flexible cure compound. This will allow the pin to work as designd by fillng the void thus not letting any dirt get packed in there.

Yes sir. The pins gave me a fit getting them out. And some MORON drove a solid piece of steel in 1 of the pins, I finally split the tooth with a grinder, took the bucket off a turned it over on a healthy piece of steel, I was using a 8lb sledge. I first thougt the pin had been welded, but anyway I won in the end. I had to drive the old teeth off and mildly drive the new ones on. I bought 5 each of the teeth an 10 pins, a good thing cause 2 teeth would not drive up. So their goin back(not grinding the shanks)
And I had thought of the silicone, but I was eager to try out, I will probably go back and do so especially now.
Thank you.

Alright. This tooth arangement is different from anything I am used to. Its not supposed to be this hard.
As I said earlier. The smallest amount of debris between the teeth. A vine or twig will completely clog the raking ability. I end up pushing a pile of dirt back and forth and eventually the debris is sifted to the top and discarded. The tooth arrangement looks very aggressive and digs great. This could be it. I have full fledged "digging" teeth. I can scratch and pop a small tree right out, then it takes 4 or 5 times as long to smooth out and seperate everthing.(but it does look good) Maybe part of it is, I didn't mind leaving a small amount of rubbish in the leveling process. Or it could be I have something to work with now and I just have to cross my T's and dot my I's now.
Or is it those dual point teeth mucking things up when I'm leveling.
I can take those off and pop the single point right on if it will make that much of a difference.

I would really like to hear experience with this.

I just have the plain chisel teeth on my hoe, but had troubles smoothing. I grabbed a 24 inch piece of 3x1 rectangular heavywall tube, cut one narrow side off, tacked two short chains to it, slide it over the teeth and spotted two small 1/4 inch holes in the bucket side to clip the chains to. Works pretty well for flattening.

"....digs great. This could be it. I have full fledged "digging" teeth. I can scratch and pop a small tree right out, then it takes 4 or 5 times as long to smooth out and seperate everthing.(but it does look good) Maybe part of it is, I didn't mind leaving a small amount of rubbish in the leveling process. Or it could be I have something to work with now and I just have to cross my T's and dot my I's now.
Or is it those dual point teeth mucking things up when I'm leveling.
I can take those off and pop the single point right on if it will make that much of a difference.

I would really like to hear experience with this"

I'd like to hear about this too. I'm thinking about switching to the dual point teeth on my Kx91, 24" bucket. Been clearing large trees and would like the ability to rip through the roots easier. Comments?

Thanks,

Tony

The two-pointed ones are supposed to go on the outside edges. If you mount single pointed ones there, they won't cut any wider than the edges of the bucket itself, and it can end up binding up against the walls of your trench. (Kinda like the way the teeth on a saw blade are angled outward to create the kerf.) Use single-pointed ones for all the middle teeth.

Ahh, Tiger teeth!
Great for digging anything hard. Main drawback is they wear out fast, but it doesn't matter how long a regular tooth lasts if it wont DIG when you need to.

Like Digger said above, use the twins on the outside only, and the singles in the center. When the outside edge gets worn down, swap sides so you have fresh meat on the edges.

I like these in rock, because the tips will find the narrowest of gaps and break it out.
Once I had a guy digging with a 330 with standard teeth, and he couldn't go any farther digging out a hard bank. The owner was ready to drill and shoot, and even had the holes in already. I said I could dig it with Tiger teeth and got laughed at. Well, 1 set of tiger teeth later the whole thing was dug out to grade with no problem. Owner could not believe the difference, and the cost savings over blasting.

JDOFMEMI said:

Ahh, Tiger teeth!
Great for digging anything hard. Main drawback is they wear out fast, but it doesn't matter how long a regular tooth lasts if it wont DIG when you need to.

Like Digger said above, use the twins on the outside only, and the singles in the center. When the outside edge gets worn down, swap sides so you have fresh meat on the edges.

I like these in rock, because the tips will find the narrowest of gaps and break it out.
Once I had a guy digging with a 330 with standard teeth, and he couldn't go any farther digging out a hard bank. The owner was ready to drill and shoot, and even had the holes in already. I said I could dig it with Tiger teeth and got laughed at. Well, 1 set of tiger teeth later the whole thing was dug out to grade with no problem. Owner could not believe the difference, and the cost savings over blasting.

Click to expand...

Drilling those holes isn't cheap. Who was going to have to pay to re-drill if your experiment failed? I wll have to agree that they can make a huge difference in rock. I usually put the twins on the outside and one in the center. The singles make up the rest. I have also found them better to make grade with while digging in heavy clay.

The holes are cheap enough when its your own drill rig, and besides, it was a pretty small area. It had maybe 20 holes in it, so I could have redrilled them myself in a couple of hours. That said, if it wasn't working, I would not have kept destroying more holes, so there would have been only a couple to drill, 30 minutes max.

I didn't feel like it was much risk, since I had enough experience with similar material to know I could dig it after watching the other lever puller try it and fail.

Tony_F said:

"....digs great. This could be it. I have full fledged "digging" teeth. I can scratch and pop a small tree right out, then it takes 4 or 5 times as long to smooth out and seperate everthing.(but it does look good) Maybe part of it is, I didn't mind leaving a small amount of rubbish in the leveling process. Or it could be I have something to work with now and I just have to cross my T's and dot my I's now.
Or is it those dual point teeth mucking things up when I'm leveling.
I can take those off and pop the single point right on if it will make that much of a difference.

I would really like to hear experience with this"

I'd like to hear about this too. I'm thinking about switching to the dual point teeth on my Kx91, 24" bucket. Been clearing large trees and would like the ability to rip through the roots easier. Comments?

Thanks,

Tony

Click to expand...

May sound like a silly question but have you tried using a narrower bucket with teeth on when pulling out roots?

In theory the teeth on the narrower bucket will have more force applied through them, therefore cutting through the tap roots easier and applying more pressure to the main root plus there is less chance of twisting a narrower bucket when levering/pulling roots.

strott said:

May sound like a silly question but have you tried using a narrower bucket with teeth on when pulling out roots?

In theory the teeth on the narrower bucket will have more force applied through them, therefore cutting through the tap roots easier and applying more pressure to the main root plus there is less chance of twisting a narrower bucket when levering/pulling roots.

Click to expand...

I would if I had another bucket, a new bucket is around 600, while new teeth are only 85. Its an investment I'll have to make at some point.

Awhile back I was having problems digging in some stuff that looked like natures cement. Clay and small round rock in viens through the ground. Next to it was a supper hard red clay that came out in big chunks or fine powder depending on if I could find a crack in it.

The smallest bucket I have is 18 inches. I went to the equipment shop and found some bigger shanks that fit my cutting edge, went from four teeth to three, and used tigers. Twins on the outside and a single. When I put the new shanks on I put enough angle on the outer ones that I could get away with singles if I wanted to try. Not enough that it messes up using twins though. All of my buckets are tapered enough that I do not need much tooth over the edge to keep them from binding in the trench.

Going witht he bigger shanks (about the size they use on a 200) gave me plenty of material to wear but still have the benefit of the tigers. When they wore down after the nasty hard ground I was in, I hit them with the welder and put a little material back on them.

I made some side cutters for the same bucket with a few teeth faced with WearGuard to cut roots. This combo works well enough that I am going to switch my 24 inch over to it.

Since the teeth are so much longer they do rake well. If I am in easy ground I just weld a piece of flat steel across the teeth to shorten them up. When I am done I just blow the welds off and they are back to normal.

(Please ignore the messy shop. I was one of those weeks) (I put the teeth on with the word "top" that was cast into the teeth up)

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