Dredging in Seward Ak.

[Lashlander]

Had a job in Seward for the railroad on the cruise ship dock. They have a bigger ship this year and need to dredge this berth to minus 37. Some of it is only minus 30. Heres a few pics.
Break out the Clam bucket and grease her up


Change out the wire rope.


Just put a new deck on the barge. 6 X 12 Douglas Fir


Loadin spuds


Cranes on mats ready to load on the barge. Wait for tide. 3:00 am :Banghead

 

[Lashlander]

3:00 am. Roll half on and wait for the tide to flood a little. Reduces the roll when counterweight comes off the dock.


Snubbed the barge in with the D5



All aboard


Shots of the load.

 

[Lashlander]

Shots of load.




Bringing in spoils barge to prep for material.

 

[RonG]

Wow!!!When I see Lashlanders name on a post WITH attachments I get the shivers.You do not disappoint.Nobody else covers this base but you and it is fascinating stuff to look at.
I am going to ask a question somewhat related since it is in the pics that you posted but how steep is the hill behind your garage and what it it made of that you are comfortable building so close to it?Thanks for the great post and pics,we will be waiting for more from the jobsite.I was also wondering if the boom is left up in the air on the barge while traveling too.Still shivering) Yum.Ron G

 

[Klutz]

Nice pics but I need a bit of education here. What are spuds? I thought that was the term for the barge support legs. However on the picture all I see is a steel pipe. How can that be used as a support leg? How do you fix it to the barge?

 

[EZ TRBO]

Hey Lash, as always, AWESOME. Always bigger and better up in AK. You guys all earn you keep up there. Love the pics and the stories behind them.

Thanks

Trbo :drinkup

 

[bobcat ron]

I didn't think it was really necessary to chain down everything on a barge!

 

[Ray Welsh]

I didn't think it was really necessary to chain down everything on a barge!

You would be unpleasantly surprised by moving stuff when the wind and waves come up. Water is completely different to hard ground as ships move with it...........C ya...........Ray

 

[Lashlander]

Hey Ron, thanks for the kind words. The hill behind the shop is rock with a foot or so of ash and topsoil. The slide area is where they dug into it for material to build the road during WWII. It ust keeps unraveling. We fly the boom where ever we go. If I layed it down it would overhang the end of the barge about 50'. I don't want it plowing into waves when it gets rough. I think it would buckle it.

Klutz, There are all sorts of spuds. Some are square, some are round. Some will raise themselves and some you can apply down pressure to to elevate your barge. Ours are just pipe like you say to hold our barge on station. We have pockets on th side of the barge to set them in. The water was too deep to spud in on this job but I don't leave home without them in case something comes up. Heres a couple picks that show them better.



EZ TRBO, Thanks, I will tell you though that some of this stuff coming out on the discovery channel recently is a little ridiculous. I couldn't even finish the one about the North slope Oilmen.

Bobcat ron, Anything I want when I get to where I'm headed gets chained down. You never know when the weather is going to come up or how fast it can. You can be in calm seas one minute and within a couple hous be in 15 to 20 footers.

 

[Lashlander]

Heres a few more pics.

Pulling ramps off spoils barge.


We had nice weather the whole time!



Here it finally is, Buck Buck number 1.


Had to tighten the Rudimatic a little. She wound up the first bucket. This also shows how you put 6 yards in a four yard clam. Only 19,994 more yards to go.

 

[Lashlander]

Digging. This is Glacial Silt out of the Resurrection river. When it dries out it has the same consistency as cement. I've never seen anything like it. Talk about heavy.





It won't stack on the barge. We need higher side boards.

 

[Lashlander]

Few more!

 

[Lashlander]

We were hoping for around a thousand yards per load but since it won't stack we only get around 700. We only have to take it out to 200' of water to dump it. Thats only a thousand yards to travel so was no big deal.

 

[bobcat ron]

That slop reminds me of my Tour de Ditch, self levelling. I am guessing the slop gets dumped at sea, but does the loader pick it up bucket by bucket, or do they yank an end gate and push off?

 

[John C.]

Thanks for the pics Lashlander. They are always interesting and informative.

The Link-Belt looks like a 518 but I don't remember them with that much counterweight. That's a big machine to run on a barge. How much boom you running on that monster? What engine and is it direct drive or have the torque converter?

I had to change the top bevel gear for travel in one of those machines once and generally lost any desire I had to work on them. The spiders are big and heavy, the shaft is big and heavy and soft and the bevel gears eventually turn into a lot of razor sharp splinters when they die. The thing I liked about them was that they generally worked for twenty years at a time before you had to do a job like that.

Keep the pics coming!

 

[Lashlander]

Bobcat ron, we didn't have a gate to pull so we just dozed it over and picked it up and dumped it over. Kinda chased it all around the barge.
John C, the Linkbelt is a 518 with the ABC counterweight. It has 120" of boom. A little too much for duty cycle but needs the headroom. It has an 855Cummins with a Twin Disc torque converter.
This crane has well over 50,000 hrs on it and I know what you mean about the gears. I've replace the boom hoist bevel gears and all the swing gears and shafts. I still like this crane because of its simplicity. None of that fancy stuff. If it has a problem anyone can repair it. That means a lot when you work as remote as we do at times.

 

[DigDug]

Great pics!! Someone has balls of steel to run that loader on the spoils barge. I am scared just looking at the pics. Is the deck surface of the spoils barge slippery with that mud/muck?? Keep up the good work. :usa

 

[telescooper]

Neat pics, How many yards is the clam?
Telescooper

 

[95zIV]

Neat pics, How many yards is the clam?
Telescooper

Here you go:


https://www.heavyequipmentforums.com/Forum/showpost.php?p=78578&postcount=10
10

 

[John C.]

I agree with you on the longevity and toughness of the machine. You do need a strong back and thick gloves when things break but it don't happen very often.

Keep the pics coming.