On Sun, 07 May 2006 00:09:39 GMT, Bruce L. Bergman
wrote:

On Sat, 06 May 2006 22:15:53 GMT, Gunner
wrote:
On Sat, 06 May 2006 10:59:13 -0700, JR North
wrote:

God, I'm tired of manually scraping 1-2" of tree junk off my driveway.
What I need is a gas powered push type reel-mower type thing with a
rotating bristle brush up front to blast the junk ahead of it. Called
the local rental place: "$40 for 4 hours (sucker)". As Chris Rock would
say: "Good Lowd, that's alota money". Checked HF; no go. I suppose I
could whip something up- another project on the long list.
Ideas? source for a drum shaped bristle brush?

Got a snow blower? Im sure Tom Gardner could whip you up some brush
rollers

That's what I was thinking, too - but snow throwers and blowers are
designed to break the snow up, and rake it toward the center of the
machine. Blowers pass it to an impeller which tosses the snow out the
chute. and throwers get the snow moving at high speed up and around
the drum and pass it to a set of turning vanes to steer it to one
side... Either way, leaves and needles are going to clog up the works
in about ten seconds.

A walk-behind single-stage snow *thrower* might work with the
impeller removed and a big brush attached, but only if you reverse the
motor so it pushes the debris forward. And for every action there is
an equal and opposite reaction - it's going to be fighting with you
every foot of the way.

On top of that, there's no easy way to adjust for brush clearance as
it wears, you have to allow for several inches of change or throw out
the brushes way too often.

You need one of those powered wire-brush drums that mounts to the
front of a Bobcat skid-steer or a small Kubota-style tractor. Now the
bare brush drum for /that/ Tom might be able to make, but the mounting
and drive mechanism is going to be your problem.

The ones I've seen being used by paving, sewer and pipeline
contractors have a hydraulic motor turning the brush drum *against*
the forward direction of travel (at roughly 40 to 90 RPM) to push the
crap forward like a push broom, and the brush can be angled either way
(with a pivot and double-acting cylinder) to push the debris toward
the curb or shoulder.

And they usually plop a molded poly water tank on top of the tractor
safety cage and rig a water spray pipe in the brush region to cut down
on the (considerable) dust thrown up in the process.

-- Bruce --


Mere Details.

Shrug

Gunner
G
"I think this is because of your belief in biological Marxism.
As a genetic communist you feel that noticing behavioural
patterns relating to race would cause a conflict with your belief
in biological Marxism." Big Pete, famous Usenet Racist