Cutting a road in a hill.

I'm looking forward to the replies to this thread - thanks for asking this BAC!

Yeah, I hope there are people with input.

On my way to asking my questions, I seemed to write a story that I figured may be interesting to some people. hehe.

I try to look for videos on people using a dozer to take on a hill, but I swear that most everyone has the flattest land that could be or their hills are not much taller than their dozer.

Hi, BigAgCat.
One way of getting started on something like cutting a terrace on the side of a hill is to start by working down the hill first to cut yourself a flat area to work from. It only needs to be maybe 2 or 3 dozer lengths long, just to give you a start at cutting the rest of the terrace. Start at the point where you want the top of your cut slope to be and push down and out to make a flat bench to start from.

It doesn't matter if you don't get right down to the desired grade with this bench. It's just a starting point to work from.

"Kwestyun": Does your straight blade have a working screw tilt brace on it that would allow you to tilt the blade one way or the tother? Or have they been thoughtfully welded up by some resourceful soul before you acquired it?

Just my 0.02.

Hi, BigAgCat.
One way of getting started on something like cutting a terrace on the side of a hill is to start by working down the hill first to cut yourself a flat area to work from. It only needs to be maybe 2 or 3 dozer lengths long, just to give you a start at cutting the rest of the terrace. Start at the point where you want the top of your cut slope to be and push down and out to make a flat bench to start from.

It doesn't matter if you don't get right down to the desired grade with this bench. It's just a starting point to work from.

"Kwestyun": Does your straight blade have a working screw tilt brace on it that would allow you to tilt the blade one way or the tother? Or have they been thoughtfully welded up by some resourceful soul before you acquired it?

Just my 0.02.

Once you get your flat areas made you should consider making them a little high as you go out from the hill, then cut a ditch along the hill side and run the water some where it will do no harm. That way rain water will not wash your flat area down the hill.

Yeah, I was thinking a sort of back slope to, perhaps, collect the rain water. A rain water collection and storage system is one of the things on my list of things to do. Being one of the reasons I want to get a road cut to the bottom of my other hill. The ravine is such that I could pretty much just build a dam at the bottom of the hill and throw down some pond liner or something to have a pond or lake for water storage. Minimal digging and all the rain water would flow down into it.

But, I may just be dreaming thinking I'll get much water by collecting rain.

Yeah, I was thinking a sort of back slope to, perhaps, collect the rain water. A rain water collection and storage system is one of the things on my list of things to do. Being one of the reasons I want to get a road cut to the bottom of my other hill. The ravine is such that I could pretty much just build a dam at the bottom of the hill and throw down some pond liner or something to have a pond or lake for water storage. Minimal digging and all the rain water would flow down into it.

But, I may just be dreaming thinking I'll get much water by collecting rain.

[quote="BigAgCat"]Yeah, I was thinking a sort of back slope to, perhaps, collect the rain water. A rain water collection and storage system is one of the things on my list of things to do. Being one of the reasons I want to get a road cut to the bottom of my other hill. The ravine is such that I could pretty much just build a dam at the bottom of the hill and throw down some pond liner or something to have a pond or lake for water storage. Minimal digging and all the rain water would flow down into it.

But, I may just be dreaming thinking I'll get much water by collecting rain.[/quote]

- i think you're on the right track with the ravine idea....that's the perfect start for a pond...a lot of the work is already done and of course it's going to catch Spring thaw runoff, rain, etc..

-i've got a couple small ravines on my property, that's my plan of attack:rain::rain:

Using a fixed straight blade to side cut is very difficult for the most experienced operator, getting set up and keeping a berm on the outside to back the outside track onto to tilt the inside corner tip down into the hillside, invariably there is enough slop in a blade that it will eventually get away from you if you are not diligent in maintaining/keeping the outside high. 60 degree and higher you are into serious side cutting territory with very high batters, I suggest you get the turn braces fixed so that you can tilt the blade, will make life so much easier and save a lot of time and fuel as well as you will not get near as frustrated with things. I spent 15 years side cutting a 30km road for a few months each winter, highest side cut was 76 feet to get a road width of 24 feet.

Happy side cutting.

Wombat