Panzers: I break rocks thread

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

This is not the time of year for me to start/ continue a cool project for the new board. So instead I’ll start a thread on what I do for a living. I’ll try and make it interesting, informative and ill answer any questions you have.

So I’m a small aggregate producer/mine owner. I have a few sand and gravel pits and one hard rock quarry. I have 2 portable crushing spreads, 2 screen plant spreads and a stationary washplant. Lots and lots of iron.

Today’s post will be about me getting ready to loosen some rock in my hard rock quarry. My quarry is tree covered so first step was to clearcut the area and stump and remove topsoil and overburden. The pit is awesome in that the bedrock is anywhere from 0 to 4’ down. There is not much material to remove. The material we move is getting placed where we need to build a sight berm to meet our conditional use permit.

This is pretty straight forward we use our quad axle dump trucks and a excavator to move the material. Once the ground is stripped down to the solid rock or hard pack granite the driller comes out and plots the pattern. He is planning to use a entire truck full of powder so that will give us 20-22,000/ton of shot rock.

The driller stopped out this afternoon and started to mark the shot. We are drilling 3.5” holes on a 8x8 staggered pattern. Depths range from 24 to 29’. Once the driller left me and dad took the transit out and used it to paint drill depths for the driller to drill to. The driller loves this step as he doesn’t have to guess. It helps create a nice flat floor.

Here are a few pictures of the quarry and the area we have stripped off. Hopefully you guys enjoy this stuff.

 

[spork]

So is it a blow a section at a time thing? Or just one big bang?

 

[Mattafact]

3.5" holes into 30 feet of granite? Damn.

 

[Pt_Ranger_v8]

That's awesome.

Where do you live, and do you hire vets? I wanna blow shit up and get paid for it

 

[Mudslinger99]

That's gonna be one Hell of a Blast,Literally

You should see about getting a Vid of that, if possible. ​​​​

 

[subybaja]

Did you choose Thumbnail to get that gallery?

I'm lazy, I'd rather scroll.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

3.5" holes into 30 feet of granite? Damn.

Yup about 120-150 holes at a time will get shot. It will make a nice pile of work for me lol

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

That's gonna be one Hell of a Blast,Literally

You should see about getting a Vid of that, if possible. ​​​​

So my wife for me a drone for Christmas I should be able to fly it and record the shot. I asked last year If I could fly a drone over and the blasters did not give a fuck. I just need to practice flying a bit lol.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Did you choose Thumbnail to get that gallery?

I'm lazy, I'd rather scroll.

I’m still learning how to post pics. I used the camera button and that is how they turned out, I wanted them bigger but there was no option to do so from my phone. I believe Austin was working on a fix,

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

So is it a blow a section at a time thing? Or just one big bang?

So the max the blasters will shoot is one truck load of powder at a time which in our stone is about 20-22,000 ton. The guys that bring the powder is a company called orca. They have a proprietary system which uses electric caps to set each hole off at the correct time. The electric timing is awesome for getting a high quality blast without a large shock wave fly rock or air burst. It puts the power into breaking and moving the rock vs tossing it around and making a mess.

There will be 120-150 holes and no two will go off at the same time. It’s really cool. Hopefully I’m around the day of the shot so I can take a bunch of photos while helping to load the holes.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

That's awesome.

Where do you live, and do you hire vets? I wanna blow shit up and get paid for it

Im always hiring people who show up and want to work! I only blast 3 times a year or so it’s all I can afford/need to do. This blast will cost me over $30,000 ;(.

 

[not2hye]

So the max the blasters will shoot is one truck load of powder at a time which in our stone is about 20-22,000 ton. The guys that bring the powder is a company called orca. They have a proprietary system which uses electric caps to set each hole off at the correct time. The electric timing is awesome for getting a high quality blast without a large shock wave fly rock or air burst. It puts the power into breaking and moving the rock vs tossing it around and making a mess.

There will be 120-150 holes and no two will go off at the same time. It’s really cool. Hopefully I’m around the day of the shot so I can take a bunch of photos while helping to load the holes.

Wait. What. Holdup. How much powder?

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Wait. What. Holdup. How much powder?

20,000lbs or so. A full tandem axle truck worth. The explosive is actually a foaming liquid. They pump it down the holes then plug the hole at a certain height with a plastic plug. The explosive expands to fill all the voids in that hole. I’ll have more photo once the powder truck comes.

 

[TiTRD]

20,000lbs or so. A full tandem axle truck worth. The explosive is actually a foaming liquid. They pump it down the holes then plug the hole at a certain height with a plastic plug. The explosive expands to fill all the voids in that hole. I’ll have more photo once the powder truck comes.

There was an episode of 'The Explosion Show' on Science Channel that shows this process. Worth the watch.

My old employer had mobile crushing equipment. A lot of work was contracted to local towns to make road gravel. Is this something you do also?

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

There was an episode of 'The Explosion Show' on Science Channel that shows this process. Worth the watch.

My old employer had mobile crushing equipment. A lot of work was contracted to local towns to make road gravel. Is this something you do also?

Yeah: I only have 2-3 months of work for 1 spread In my own pits. The rest of the time we go and crush for whoever is yelling the loudest. It’s fun and challenging as each pit presents a different challenge to make in spec material. Just when we get it all figured out it’s time to pack up and head to the next one. I almost prefer working for other people as I get paid for the entire pile a few weeks after we are done. Versus making big piles at home and selling it 20 ton at a clip.

Today project my big spread is at home crushing my dirty gravel into 3/4” dense base. If we didn’t get 3” of rain last Sunday and Monday that guy can put our 5-600tons a hour of that material.

The plant I’m running today we are making 3/4” recycled base. Recycle is tough because of all the foreign material in the pile. All it takes is one stump one 4x4 post a Leicester of angle to ruin your day. Last Friday we found a 3x3x3/8 x 4’ long peice of angle iron. It couldn’t make the bend in the breaker and took my 48” wide belt and turned it into 2 24” wide belts. All my fault because I didn’t see it when I was prepping with the hoe. Now one to blame but myself.

ill get some pictures today of the shit show!

 

[Pt_Ranger_v8]

You still haven't told me where you're located

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

You still haven't told me where you're located

Central Wisconsin

 

[Lurker]

Hell yeah, its like "How it's Made", without the voice that puts me to sleep in 10 minutes.....every fucking time. Thanks for sharing man!

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

This is my small spread I’m working today. Kinda a shit show but it’s to be expected it’s a recycle job.

 

[Johann]

Very cool!

How do you crush to spec? Do you use mill balls and a giant tumbler or is it some other tech?

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Very cool!

How do you crush to spec? Do you use mill balls and a giant tumbler or is it some other tech?

To be honest at this point in my life I can set the machines up using my gut instinct and can get it extremely close on the first try.

I do not own any ball mills (yet). They are not used in a portable or not many aggregate plants. They are used to reduce material into baby powder. Typically found in iron mines places that make ag lime ect.

The big green machine in my picture is what I call a breaker. He is a 1999 158,000# Lippman 30”x42” jaw crusher. His purpose is to take the 30” chunks and bust them up to 3-10” depending on what we are making. He has a 325hp 3406 to run the wheels. This is a huge overkill but when she came from the factory it also had 100hp of hydraulics on it to run discharge and pan feeder. I ripped all that shit off and converted it to electric so it would be semi smart and I could also put a remote on it to start stop and go wide open on feeder. Best mod I have ever made.

The old white girl is a 1996 125,000# eljay 54” RCII Cone crusher. It has a three deck 5’x16’ triple shaft screen on it. This is the gal that makes the money shot. It will crush the 5” and down stone to what ever size screens I have in. This guy recycles the material around until it passes the 7/8” screens I currently have in it.

Circling back to the original question how do I make in spec products is I basically have in this current config 3 options. The closed side setting of the jaw the closed side setting it the cone and the screen sizes. With combinations of these three things I can hit just about any gravel spec. Now if we were making clear stones or breaker stones or asphalt gravels I would add more machines to achieve the proper outcome.

here is a picture of my base stock for today’s gravel. My job is to pick out big stuff, garbage, blend wet and dry stuff together and to make a blend so all the feed loader operator has to do is load the stuff I pick out for him.

 

[BUCKLAND]

Love this shit, post up more pics.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Love this shit, post up more pics.

Be careful what you asked for. You might get a picture of a fat guy stuck in a confined space cleaning out a stuck lol. I’m glad you enjoy it I can write a novel about this shit. I really enjoy talking about it. I also want to do my part to educate people on the aggregate industry to hopefully help convince some NIMBYS that we are not bad people.

Ask more questions, ask about anything you see in any of my pictures and I’m sure I’ll have a stupid story to tell about it or I’ll have to jabber on about random shit. We need some good content here so I’ll pledge to make some.

 

[Sterlingfire]

Be careful what you asked for. You might get a picture of a fat guy stuck in a confined space cleaning out a stuck lol. I’m glad you enjoy it I can write a novel about this shit. I really enjoy talking about it. I also want to do my part to educate people on the aggregate industry to hopefully help convince some NIMBYS that we are not bad people.

Ask more questions, ask about anything you see in any of my pictures and I’m sure I’ll have a stupid story to tell about it or I’ll have to jabber on about random shit. We need some good content here so I’ll pledge to make some.

Smart peeps already know you're not bad. Trying to convince morons otherwise is a losing prospect. Especially if they rely on Facebook for their information and news.

Playing with trucks and construction equipment all day in the sand, gravel, and dirt seems like a dream job!

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Smart peeps already know you're not bad. Trying to convince morons otherwise is a losing prospect. Especially if they rely on Facebook for their information and news.

Playing with trucks and construction equipment all day in the sand, gravel, and dirt seems like a dream job!

It honestly is a dream job. I have never worked a day in my life. My wife calls me spoiled and don’t know how the real world works. She is the head hr person for a 150 person machine shop. She deals in stupidity all day and when she gets home is just exhausted.

i went to school and got a mechanical engineering degree and said fuck working in a cube farm. So I continued working with my father excavating and a opportunity arose to buy an existing sand and gravel pit and I jumped on it. And here I am in the middle of nowhere Laona wi making recycled gravel lol.

 

[billybob_81067]

Nice! We have a couple gravel pits on our properties. A local company comes in and sets up for runs of gravel pretty much yearly. It's always cool to see them come in and move a shit load of dirt around.

 

[WaterH]

Interesting. You are going to update your other projects here, right? I'm kind of hoping to only go back to Pirate a few times a year to see subscribed threads. After a bit, not at alol.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Interesting. You are going to update your other projects here, right? I'm kind of hoping to only go back to Pirate a few times a year to see subscribed threads. After a bit, not at alol.

I’ll bring them all over. Not sure if I have the time to copy it all I’ll prolly just do some cliffs and continue on!! It will have to wait a bit this is my busy season ;(

 

[95stepside]

My uncle has a semi active quarry on his farm, and an abanondoned one. We could have had an abaondoned one too, but dad didnt want it when he bought the farm it was on. We did get a gravel pile that was on our side of the property line though, so we got that going for us

 

[ConwayMuddy]

Im always hiring people who show up and want to work! I only blast 3 times a year or so it’s all I can afford/need to do. This blast will cost me over $30,000 ;(.

where do I send my resume? I have experience with a dilapidated track loader, manual grease guns because I'm not lazy, but I am poor, plus I'm always down for vehicular shenanigans.

any of your finished product sitting at the place south of Rothschild?