Bulldozer 101

[Mike Nuzzo]

The D5 I'm working with has no cab (see interview pic) - so I've got some earplugs and getting some clear wrap around sunglasses.  It is windy and the dust is forever getting in my eyes.  It isn't easy seeing detail from up above - which is why I am trying the clear ones.

Here is my beginner tip for myself - when teetering over a small ridge, use the decelerator to more gently shift my center of gravity - I learned that one the hard way.

Any tips or suggestions?

[Jim Thompson]

Mike,

Regarding eyeware and dust; check out the riding glasses at a motorcycle shop.  Thy work great and come in all shades including clear.  I've got a pair somewhere.  I'll get the brand and post.

Cheers!

JT

[Peter Galea]

Be careful breathing the dust all day long.  A friend of mine ended up in the hospital with an infection in his lungs
from a soil-borne bacteria while working on one site.

[Michael Dugger]

Get a kidney belt!!!!

Other tips........well, it depends on how well you feel you are fairing thus far?

During the 1 yr I worked on two courses, I begged and pleaded to get on a dozer as often as possible.

It's a very rough ride, you get shaken all to hell.  The experienced guys I worked with all claimed that they worked by feel.  They claimed their internal sense of balance told them where they were at in relation to grade.

Take the soil from a low spot, move it to a high one....repeat

If you are getting too dusty, get some water out there!!

 

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mike,
I'm a bulldozer operator, but only at the dinner table  
I do know a few and have seen ski goggles being used on occasion.

[RJ_Daley]

http://www.dhpe.org/infect/valley.html

Mike, what Pete said.  

In Nov-Dec 2002, my wife became rundown, at first mimicing walking pnuemonia.  She was put on anti-biotics.  She was teaching then.  She didn't get better in weeks.  Then, over Christmas break she had a chest x-ray and it showed some shadowing and the anti-biotics were boasted.  She still didn't get better.  They re-exmined the x-ray and found it wasn't really typical of what pnuemonia looked like, more like scarring from TB!  She was then given a CT scan and it showed scarring, again looking more like TB.  She got a stop work order from the County health nurse until blood work and such could determine if she had TB, which they all thought was highly unlikely.  But, they were stumped.  They sent her to the only exotic disease specialist around here.  That MD asked her if she was exposed to picking vegitables or other agriculture or construction in CA or AZ.  At first we laughed.  Then I remembered that we had visited Rustic Canyon during construction, just before seeding for an afternoon with Tommy.  We had kicked up a lot of dust that day, particularly when we got the vehicle stuck in  soft fine sand and had a bit of trouble spinning tires and getting it out. That rental car was full of the fine dust for days.

The MD said the timing of the incubation from when we were at RC was about right.  Valley Fever is what they figured it was.  She was already put on the anti-biotics properly anyway for the misdiagnosis of pnuemonia.  She was already getting better by the time they figured it out almost 2 months later.

Wear a dust mask!

[Bob_Huntley]

Mike,

I think the most essential piece of equipment/clothing is a cap mimicking the make of machine. I never mow my field without my John Deere cap, it gives me a sense of belonging.

Bob

[Mike Nuzzo]

Bob,
that is a grand idea... now choose please.



Pete & RJ - thank you, and don't tell my wife.

JT - I was thinking of the Annie Leibovitz photo of John Belushi in his WWII flying gear.  Thank you.

[RJ_Daley]

And don't show her this!

[Jim Thompson]

Here you Mike-

http://www.bikerneeds.com/motorcycle-glasses/index.shtml



Notice the foam on the inside of the frame.  Keeps the dust out!  These work great.

JT

[Tony Ristola]

Bandana (or mask) over your mouth. You don't want to be inhaling (and then hacking out) any more of that stuff than need be.

Unless you've got someone taking care of your machine for you, be sure to have your grease gun hit all the vital spots in the morning.

Mike, good thing you weren't in a dozer with a cab; and splatted your nose all over the windshield. I know of an experienced operator who cracked the windshield in a moment of amnesia. Forehead, not nose was the weapon. Good thing he had a neck as thick as a tree trunk and only his pride was hurt (as a number of the crew were watching before packing it in for the day.) Those small contours will get ya every time you're not paying attention.

[mike_beene]

Three rules from a city boy:check for snakes,check for snakes,check for snakes.If I were a snake I would sleep in a dozer.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

And don't show her this!

Dick,
Are you sure that isn't the head of our very own Ian Andrew, shortly after checking out the possiblities of doing a course on the border of the rain forest?

I dont' know about you but I see a very close resemblence!

Nice to see Mike getting his hands dirty as well as his lungs!

[Ian Andrew]

The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

 

[ed_getka]

Mike,
  Go with the orange one. BTW, there is no better combination than Sir Bob in his R&A sweater with his John Deere cap. Gotta love a guy who is comfortable in his own skin.
   A few photos or comments about the course would be great. I'm sure you are super busy and are giving the project your all, but a few morsels for the peanut gallery would be appreciated.

[TEPaul]

I generally have something to say on most any thread (or I think I do) but "Re: Bulldozer 101" I don't have a dollop of advice to add because I know nothing whatsoever about either bulldozers or golf course architecture construction techniques with them. All I can say is some of the shapers and bulldozer operators I've seen on a good many construction sites general look to me to be real artists.

So, I have nothing at all to offer Mike, other than maybe to remember to always keep your seat belt fastened.

[Ian Andrew]

You want to learn, bring in a great shaper and become his "bulk fill" guy. He'll teach you how to shape and you can teach him about architecture. You'll enjoy each others company.

[Tom_Doak]

Exactly.  I got a crash course from Jim Urbina in 1984, and it went a long way.

[TEPaul]

Tom Doak and Ian Andrew:

How would you rank yourselves on a scale of 1-10 as to being adept on bulldozers? Have either of you ever tried to operate a D-8?

Did either of you see the recent movie "North Country"? There was some material carrier in that movie operated by Francis McDormond that had tires on it the size of a medium sized building.

That's what I want to operate---just once. And if I ever get the chance I'm going to totally floor it to see if I can do a wheel stand, or a wheely or at least lay some ultra serious rubber.

[Gary_Mahanay]

Tom Doak or anybody,

Is a D-5 the perfect size dozer for shaping of greens and other features?  It looked like from the pictures at Ballyneal the dozers were a little bigger?  And is the coring out of a green site for the rootzone mix done with a dozer or some other machine?

Gary

[Tom_Doak]

Gary:

I think we had a D-5 and a D-6 at Ballyneal.  The D-6 was for doing larger fairway work, but some of my associates are just more comfortable on the bigger machine and they can still do the little stuff on the greens with it.

As to the greens, we build the cored-out shape right away, instead of building the green at grade and then coring it out later.  We feel like we are good enough to visualize how the tie-ins are all going to work, but nobody's perfect -- we're all better in sand where you are building the finished surface with the shaping machine, as we could do at Ballyneal.  Those aren't USGA greens, they are native sand.

Personally, I've never gotten much done with anything bigger than a D-5.  I learned on a D-4 and I got used to feeling what I was doing by whether the machine was slowing down a bit from carrying too much dirt on the blade, or because I was going uphill.  On these new, powerful, enclosed-cab machine I can't really feel what I'm doing and I'm not very good.  In golf parlance, I'm about a 10-handicap bulldozer operator.  If I made time to do it more myself I think I could get back down to a 4, but I'm not really motivated to do so when I can call the shots for a pro instead.

[Bill_McBride]

Tom Paul, that is probably a Euclid, biggest dump trucks on the globe.  When I was a very little kid, my dad was a Corps of Engineers project manager on a breakwater in Crescent City CA, and those Euc's drove by our house all day hauling rock out onto the breakwater as it was extended out in the ocean.  They almost shake the earth there is so much weight in them.

[RT]

Whilst the bulldozer still seems popular in the USA I think?, over here in the UK the tracked excavator with a six-way bucket, in the hands of an experienced eye and the mind of a professional snooker player, can go a long way to making super fine detail work and easier to work one's way out of an area.  A versatile machine that can also dig drainage ditches too, load material, etc.

This combined with 6 ton Terex dumpers with wide low-pressure ty(i)res can do alot of magic, and the Terex ty(i)res can practically smooth out the the work of the excavator as they are working out of a spot.

For my money, and in the time when I was on a machine, it was the Case 450.

RT

[Tom_Doak]

Russell:  We build more and more with trackhoes now -- all of the bunkering and a fair amount of whatever contouring we do in the fairways.  As you hint, the trackhoe is the ideal piece of equipment for the soils' sake.  

Urbina wants to do a whole course with just trackhoes, but I still like to do the greens with the dozer, just so I can feel like I could still do them myself.  (I have never tried to operate the trackhoe myself because I would be starting way behind several other guys.)

[RJ_Daley]

Tom, do your guys ever sit around and drink a few brews and brainstorm the engineering and design of an ideal piece of golf course construction equipment?