How do you dig with the backhoe arm?

I took the new hoe out, even though the hub leak is still dripping (Deere is coming back on Tuesday), and used it to dig up the vegetable garden. I figured digging in soft, previously turned over soil would be a good place to start without damaging anything. Was amazed that the hoe could go down 3 feet like a hot knife through butter. Granted, the first two feet were soft garden soil with no rocks.

Curious how you are supposed to dig? You can manipulate the bucket, the stinger and the arm, all at the same time.

Which parts do you actually do the digging with? Is it OK to break out the soil you want to remove by just moving the bucket control? Or the arm? Or the stinger? Or all three? I have a feeling that you should not dig with the extendahoe. Just set it, and not move in while you are actually moving dirt. But not sure on the rest.

When you are done, should you hose off the bucket to remove the muck? Or let nature take it's course?

And finally, how far away from you should you be digging? With the extendahoe, I can extend the hoe out nearly horizontal, and start scooping by angling the bucket. Is this OK, or should you leave the arm pulled in a bit before grabbing dirt? How does a newbie learn how to do this?

I found that i was sinking the arm end in the dirty by going out too horizontal.

Thanks

I dunno do whatever seems right. You can smooth out and backfill by moving the flat bottom of the bucket side to side against the ground or pushing against a pile of dirt. And then compact by tamping it down against the loose ground.

Don't move big rocks by smacking them with the dipperstick, or the bucket for that matter. No smacking! Ive personally never used an extendahoe but ive read and heard they're fragile so be gentle with the thing.

So yeah, I dunno, just keep doing it until you get used to it and it feels natural.

And then...

I dunno, you can just sink the teeth in and curl up all the way to pull just that chunk out, or curl up halfway and then drag it towards you to make like a smooth bottom trench, or in the case of loosening up a garden bed jusy dig the teeth i about 8 inches to a foot and curl it back and forth a bit to break it up a little and do it all over. Smooth out as necessary without compacting as much as possible. Then i pass a walk behind tiller over it and it comes out pretty nice. My backhoe is my farm tractor so that's how I plow fields.

Anyways just keep playing with the thing until you get used to it. Then you move onto pivoting the tractor around and moving it back and forth with the tail as you work. And then pulling /pushing yourself into and out of difficult situations.

Truth is the tail is the easy part. Getting good with the front bucket spreading out material and leveling and grading in different situations is really the difficult part, from my point of view.

The hard part with the front is you can’t see anything. Can’t see the angle of the bucket, how far it is off the ground and whether anything got into it.

Huge new respect for the cowboys who make these machines sing!!

emmett518 said:

The hard part with the front is you can’t see anything. Can’t see the angle of the bucket, how far it is off the ground and whether anything got into it.

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Yep that's why it takes skill and years of practice to to make it look easy.

If you are just digging downward, you will find the bucket curl has the most power. I am not that great at it, but have found if I put the bucket into the ground and curl it, it will pull itself into the dirt. I curl it about halfway and then stop and use the arm to pull it toward the tractor some, stop and then curl the bucket all the way. You will get a heaping full bucket like that. A guy that knows what he is doing will not stop through each step, but smoothly manipulate both to dig. At the end when the bucket is full you pull the whole thing up with the main boom, swing around and then dump the bucket.

The hard part is trying to get the bottom of your ditch cleaned out and level. You need to manipulate the bucket and the arm at the same time to pull the bucket along level. It's very frustrating when you are first learning, but if you have a job to do, you will find yourself not thinking much about it after a few solid days of using it.

Try to reach out, keeping the bucket above grade, then curl until the floor of the bucket sits flat on the ground. Then bring the bucket to you keeping the floor flat on the ground, then at the end curl and lift. Keep practicing above ground until proficient, then dig 6 inches or so and see what happens.

You keep playing with it and then start thinking about smooth circles. When you see a guy who's really efficient the bucket moves in a nice smooth pattern. You don't curl all the way out to dump it you use stick and most of the curl and then you're circling back. Unless you're worried about utilities and things get after it with the bucket teeth about 45° to the bottom of the ditch and bulk it out. Then do like the poster mentioned up above and clean it up with a flat bottom bucket. If you have a laser a really good exercise is to try and cut some footing quality flat grade. About the umpteenth time you get up and down out of the seat to check grade, your eyeball starts to get calibrated

It's one of those things that takes practice and a bit of adjustment depending on what you're doing too. Soil type, how clean a trench you need, if there's "stuff" down there you'll just scratch with the teeth using the stick and arm, stuff like that.

Also I agree def no whacking on stuff with the extendahoe out or really in for that matter, that's a sure way to tear **** up. Like you sweep some dirt with the side of the bucket but it's not a wrecking ball. I have guys that will try and play rock golf or knock concrete and I always seem to be fixing stuff on their hoes, strange.

When I first got my backhoe, I had a dedicated spot in the backyard where I would dig a hole, cover and dig. I repeated this over and over until I got somewhat comfortable with the controls. Just practice.

If you're trenching and want a clean trench I would recommend just scratching your surface with the teeth to pull the sod off. If you take a big bite to start with, you'll pull up a lot of the surrounding sod and you won't have a clean trench. I also try to keep the teeth parallel to the ground as much as possible. Let the teeth and the edge do the cutting work.

I'm going to agree with the folks above but also reiterate just practice with it. Finding neighbors with old horses has helped me! (Sorry for my dark sense of humor there!) I've spent lots of time digging up honeysuckle, removing dirt/mud from my pond, landscape work (really helps you get better with both ends of the machine, and I agree with whomever and the loader side being trickier to manage), digging up tree roots, etc., but I'm way less experienced than a lot of people here.

I dig with the extendahoe out when needed (though my manual suggests extending all the way and retracting a few inches), it's not a problem and what it's there for, though I do try to keep my swinging side to side to clean/flatten stuff to a minimum, extended. If the dirt is soft and light you still won't have any trouble but when you try to push side to side on big rocks or heavy piles that's when you can mess stuff up, as I understand it. Rereading your post though I think you are saying using the extension to pull your bucket back and forth? Yeah, I don't do that with the bucket engaged in dirt. It's too slow anyway, extend, dig, dump, repeat, unextend as soon as you don't need to be extended.

Figuring out where to place the machine is tricky as well, compared to the hole you are digging. Remember that you will always be cutting a big V in front of you (unless you have one of those hoes that slides side to side), so keep that in mind. You'll need to move over a bit to make square holes. I tend to put the hoe side of the machine probably about 2-3 feet from where I expect the hole to stop, digging towards myself, but there is a sweet spot. Usually, the biggest issue I have there is there hoe doesn't get low enough close enough to the machine to dig. There is probably some genius that can do the math so you could pull up to a spot and dig exactly where you want but that ain't me.

I'm reading above and when I hear "flat bottom bucket" I usually take that to mean, on my bucket at least, the part just below the teeth, where the bucket is straight. It's amazing, if you go dig in your garden and leave it lumpy, how well you can come by and move pretty huge amounts of material to fill in empty space, and it's quite satisfying to do it well! Watch out for your bucket not pushing material or getting hung up on stuff because, again as I understand it, this is a good way to start ovaling pins and bushings and adding lots of slop to the works.

I think I mentioned this elsewhere but in case you didn't see it, go get stuck somewhere, or pretend you are stuck somewhere. At some point you will venture into a wet or soft spot and start getting into trouble. You can learn to maneuver around without having to flip your seat and drive to a new spot. All this involves using the hoe as; a crutch to pick up the big tires and slide them side to side, or an arm to drag or push yourself. At first it's pretty scary.

Almost every time I dig with the hoe my loader bucket is in the ground to help anchor the machine and the stabilizers are down. In that position you dig like you want to then to get unstuck or to move a bit you'll want to raise your loader bucket and stabilizers a bit, maybe 6-8 inches, boom/stick in some (I think I'm usually about halfway depending on the situation), curl your bucket so you can put pressure on it going straight through the metal rather than flexing it a bunch (like using the teeth) and SLOWLY boom down with the bucket straight ahead of you. I repeat, it'll be scary. You'll feel the entire machine lift up like @NH575E avatar picture (except his has the loader bucket down too, making it difficult to move) and likely rock a bit. From there SLOWLY boom sideways and you'll feel and see the machine pivot. You can also use the hoe to drag/push yourself around (just make sure the e-brake is off!) which is much faster and easier than switching to the driver's position. Once you get comfy lifting/moving the hoe side of the machine with the hoe you can unstick from a lot and move yourself around your holes pretty easily.

I've been belly deep, literally sitting on the pan, in very soft, wet mud next to the creek and had to extract myself from the mess. It took a fair amount of lifting to get my tires back on top, then a fair amount of dragging myself away from the pit I made. It was my first go at getting unstuck and it probably took me an hour and a half of white knuckling. Take a break and a breath! Go slow! Wear your seatbelt!

The last horse I buried I got good and stuck as my tires just filled with mud, 4x4 wasn't helping and I realized quickly that it wasn't getting better (knowing this is very helpful!). In that kind of situation I had the space to boom and stick out as far as I could, bucket uncurled, then used the curl and a bit of boom up to drag myself back to more solid ground. Again, for the love of Christmas, go slow. There is a trick to doing this and it's really easy to be a couple feet up in the air before you know it. You'll feel the machine tipping like crazy and feeling quite unstable (stabilizers just a few inches off the ground!) and that's when you slowly boom in to lower the cab. When you've got it right you are curling and booming in at a nice slow tempo together and you feel the joy of the wheels rolling toward the hoe. You often will want the bucket pretty deep in the ground to get good purchase and hopefully it's not also too wet or soft but don't be surprised if you end up digging a hole there too to drag yourself out of something. There really is something magical about pulling yourself free! Also remember that when the situation looks dire you can use a comealong attached to your bucket and a healthy tree or something solid as the support to pull yourself out. I've never had to go that route and you want to be dang sure you don't pull the tree down onto yourself, making that a less desirable method.

Lots of words! Have fun! Burn some diesel! Go play around! I also watched some backhoe olympics which helped me learn the capabilities of the machine and found that what I was doing wasn't far into the realm of what hydraulic power can handle. Granted, I try to keep my machine relatively planted but they can manage a lot!

I think the main thing with a hoe is always to try and do 2 functions at once. Pull in stick while curling bucket etc. 1 at a time will seem too fast and be jerky. I find swinging back to exact spot the hardest thing to master. The rest just takes practice.

Thanks for all the advice. I keep telling myself to be patient, and that it will come with experience. One thing I am finding useful is doing everything slowly, and thinking first. I figure slow will prevent most underwear changing experiences.

Have someone post a video of you operating it.

A little off topic, but keep your front bucket down on the ground (flat bottom down in most cases) while you are digging with the tail. It will steady the machine and keep it from tipping from side to side if you inadvertently lift up the back end i the air while digging. If the bucket is up, the front axle wants to pivot from side to side whenever you bounce the ass end and it can be... Stressful.

Nail the front blade down in if you're pulling yourself forward undesirably while digging, say downhill in wet dirt. But, don't try to pivot the machine with the tail if the bucket is nailed in, as that leverages it and can crack metal. When the bucket is flat bottom against the ground you can pivot side to side all day lifting yourself up with the tail.

Regarding (what I've heard called) "crabbing" where you use the hoe to reposition yourself a bit....

I do that "all the time" (not really but you'll do it enough)

One thing I've learned for my situation is when I do that, if I raise the loader bucket, the machine will pivot easier since it's resting on the front wheels which will move rather than the harder to rotate on the ground, front bucket.

Make sure you don't do that with your (backhoe) bucket buried in your trench.... you want it on flat ground and (in my case since I don't know your situation) I always do it with the bucket closer to the machine rather than extended further out.

Leave your e stick sucked up till you learn what your doing it's an extension of reach the farther you slide it out the less power you have it increases the grounds leverage against your machine and the stick takes that abuse that said deeres l models have a good e stick they just need a better pad design