A bit of Australian earthmoving history related to Hancock bowled scrapers 40 years ago. Back in the early '80s when cotton irrigation development was in full swing in Australia, particularly north west NSW, elevating scrapers were king. 222 wabco's, 110-15, 210H Michigans then Clark with odd old C@t J621's floating around. Land levelling the black soil plains for furrow irrigation, 1:1500 down & 1:3000 crossfall (30 metre pegged grid survey, lasers were in their infancy & unreliable) was the general rule of thumb. Water storages (5:1 inside batter, 4metre top & 1 1/2:1 outside batter, 4-5 metres high) were more often built with elevating scrapers as the dirt would finer & compact better than the raw slabs dropped in with open bowlers or dozers.
Machines with the Hancock bowl were the most preferred as the elevator flytes went out nearly to the edge of the bowl, with minimal loss (when working fine dry dirt) whilst travelling to a fill area. They could dump short which was ideal for landlevelling & storage wall work.
Cutting tail water returns (TWR) channels, the Hancock bowl could "dive in" one side (with the aide of a batter tyne on the wheel track) to cut the 1 1/2 batter with ease.
On the major cotton farm development I worked on for nearly 2 years, my boss upgraded his fleet of old Michigan110-15's to 8 new Clark Equipment 110-15B's, with consecuitive #. The main upgrade was a vastly improved elevator frame & top axle. They retained the tried & true loader diff with planitaries, with sprocket to dive the elevator chains. A Sunstrand pump ran hydraulic drive onto the diff. A much better set up than any other elevator drive I've seen since.
Can't locate any photos, my remote hard drive crashed & I'm having trouble finding them on the new one.
