That week in April where the cutterhead clogged 8 times in 5 days was honestly the worst stretch I've ever had on the Mississippi.

We were pulling mostly clay and debris from that old levee repair site near Baton Rouge, and every time I thought we had it clear, another chunk would jam up the suction side - has anyone else had trouble with clay seams doing that in older river channels?

3 comments

3 Comments

ruby_rivera761mo ago

Clay seams are like nature's version of chewing gum for a dredge. Had a job up near Cairo, Illinois a few years back where we hit these weird sticky clay layers that would peel off in sheets and then just ball up inside the cutterhead. You'd get it clear, start swinging, and then another sheet would peel off and wrap around everything. The worst part is those seams are always inconsistent - you never know when they're gonna show up so you cant adjust your cutter speed or swing rate ahead of time. Ended up having to put a guy on with a 20 foot pole just to keep poking at the intake every few minutes. That Suwanee clay is no joke.

willow4071mo ago

Read something a while back about how some clays have these microscopic plate-like particles that just lock together when they get wet... makes 'em act almost like rubber instead of dirt. Sounds exactly like what you ran into up in Cairo. That sheet peeling thing you described reminds me of a paper I skimmed about how certain glacial clays form in layers that never really bond together strong, so they just slide off in big chunks. You ever try running a different cutterhead tooth pattern when you know those seams are coming? I heard some guys swap to a spiral pattern to keep stuff from balling up so bad.

sage_dixon7d ago

Never thought much about that clay science, but this totally flipped my take on it.