Added Some Big Tiger Teeth to my 18" Trenching Bucket

[skbexcavating]

I made up some side cutters and added some Wear Guard on the face of the teeth to cut roots when I am pulling roots. I tried it this weekend and it woked great. Going from 4 small teeth to the three bigger shanks and tigers made a huge difference on the nasty ground I have been working in. They cut great and the wear was not too bad. I would have gone threw at least 4 sets of the 156 teeth that were on there. My welding held up good too. I was concerned about welding the shanks to the T-1 cutting edge and I have never welded the Wear Guard before.

I am thinking of switching my 24" bucket out to the larger teeth when I get some more coin. I figure I'll save money in the long run. The smaller teeth don't last very long around here and they are about $10 each with a pin. The Cat style teeth are about $30 each with pins and keepers. A bigger variety to choose from style wise. Plus I can use less teeth per bucket. This style of pin is a bugger to get in though.

 

[Canadian_digger]

I hope this does not start a debate but your teeth are on upside down.

 

[jrtraderny]

I hope this does not start a debate but your teeth are on upside down.

Looks it doesn't it................
jr

 

[DGODGR]

You may not notice an issue immediately but if you did not weld the shanks on properly the cutting edge will crack eventually. Cutting edges are high carbon abrassive resistant material. To properly weld them they should be pre heated, welded, then slowly cooled. The slow cooling requires special heated blankets or lots of attention with a torch (the torch method can be hard to slow the cool enough). If this process is not done, or not done correctly, the cutting edge is left trying to pull itself apart. This usually results in cracking.

 

[Drc]

We run our teeth that way!

 

[Hendrik]

I hope this does not start a debate but your teeth are on upside down.

He must have got the down under instruction manual with those teeth. Look fine to me but we work our machines upside down from you lot.

 

[skbexcavating]

I thought they went on the other way too, until I looked at them and the word "top" was cast into each of them. I asked the dealer about them and he told me that they will not self sharpen if you install them the other way (up side down). Even with 'Top" cast into them I wanted to put them on up side down just because that is the way it looked like they needed to go. I was told that the wear is on the back side where they contact the ground when you dig or curl while pulling the bottom side towards the machine. That is why the wear plates are on the back side of the bucket and not on the inside. Made sense when it was explaned that way.

I used the bucket last weekend on some nasty ground and I was very impressed. I may switch to single tigers on all three next time.

As for welding to the cutting edge, I have welded several projects with T-1 and AR now without any problems. I pre heat it, watch the overall temp, and don't let it cool too fast. I do not have blankets, but I have several hundred hours on other projects without any issues so far. The welding was not in an area with this much stress though. Time will tell. After talking to the rep at the steel place in the are I am getting ready to build an entire attachment using T-1.

Thanks for all of the advice and comments. There is always something to learn when it comes to this stuff.