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Now comes the hard part

C

crooked rows

Member
After the wet fall we had we decided to have some tile installed in one of our fields. this big old rock has been sticking out of the fence row for ever and when the guy doing the tiling saw it he wanted to know if he could have it. Well he got it dug out...now comes the hard part...loading it and moving it to his house.
cvphoto111343.jpg
 
Any guess on the weight. The biggest Ive picked out was 5-6 ton. Scratched it out with a CASE 310 and 1270. Your gem looks about twice as big.

Pa cracked one that size with TNT then dragged three pieces off with the 310 and a 2-70 on the stone boat.
 
On the edge of our old property we had one that was the size of a pick up truck. They rolled it out when they put in a road. I was just a kid then. Maybe it has shrunk since then. I should stop and check it out again someday.
 
I'm hoping he takes it over the scales when he gets it loaded.....there is one out south of town that I have been told weighed 50 ton
 
That would look good in my yard.
When my Uncle Carlton built his house in 1960, he had the guy that dug his basement clear a big garden spot.
Most rocks I have ever seen in one place.
One rock in the middle of the garden could not be moved or dug out.
It is still poking up there to this day.

About 100 feet in front of our house, there are rocks even with the top of the ground that are at least as big as the one you got.
Have no idea how big they are underground.
Richard in NW SC
 
Quite a rock alright, based on the background in you photo makes a person wonder a lot of things. How did it get there, why there, how long has it been there
 
Glacial till most likely. Once in a great while you see a lone rock like that around here. One farmer years ago knew he had a big one but then it needed to be dealt with in order to lay tile in the field. At one point a trencher grabbed it good and hard before they had a true idea as to the size.
 
This end of the farm is loaded with rocks.....go a quarter mile south to the other end of the farm and you cant find a rock.
 
A few yeas back a friend asked me to come and run dozer to make the pad for there new composting barn . He rented a New John Deere 750 J . The pad was to be around 350 long and 300 wide and at the one end due to ground slope would be around 12 foot deep with a fill on the east end of around the same . he had bids from excavators upwards of 14 K to do this and they all went on and on how many pieces of equipment and man power needed . Vernon asked me what all was needed to do this and i told him one dozer and me . Not much different then the oil field locations i built back in the mid seventys into the early eightys . I was down around 7 feet on the west side pushen east when we hit something , HUMMMMM ROCK . It's got to go , i started digging around it and found a Bright PINK rock the more i dug the bigger it got and the more the shape of the rock came into view it was a perfect hart shape and was bigger then the 750 and went down below final grade by three feet . To get it out it took Vernon's 2255 oil all over the 1950, the 1855, his brothers 1066 , my 806 and a 706 plus the 750 and that was after i cut a ramp. we had just got it out of the way and setting off the work area when his vet came in to check the cows and he went all gooooofffffy over this PINK Heat shaped rock and asked if he could have it . Vernon told him knock your socks off if you can move it it is yours N/C . HE footed the bill for the fifty ton crane and it was really all it wanted and they set it on a fifty ton lowboy and put A good sag in the beams and made the tires sag. When they pulled out the lane onto the hyway they had a sight hill to go up and that 425hp Mack had all it wanted . Good thing was they only had two and a half mile to go. , The next big rock i found was baqck in the early 70's while running a Cat 992 loader stripping coal , This little pebble once uncovered was twice as large as the 992 and just as tall . It was setting about thirty feet away from the old cut and it had to go . with the 992 , 2 D9's 1 D 8 and a 988 loader and half a day to move it and roll it into the old cut . Dug two out the size of a new holland LX665 couple years aqo
 
I believe this would be a good example of a 'GLACIAL ERRATIC' ..... see the link below which describes it ....

Good thing the Earth is flat or it would roll right off the surface (LOL) !!!
Untitled URL Link
 
Now that's a big rock! Hopefully the tile guy is going to give you a big discount on you final bill. Providing they figure out how to move it.
 
Good grief! You could sell that to a zoo and some artist could paint that thing up to look like a turtle that they would have by their entrance.
 
That would be pretty easy to load. Lift one side so the trailer is under that side then just lift the other side on as you slide it or twist it. Then just finish positioning for width.
 
My brother was telling me about one on one of his places the old guy that owned it a couple owners back dug down like 9 feet and finally after not being able to remove it just dug some more out from one side so it would settle deeper and left it.
On one place I used to rent there was a stone that stuck up about 2 feet looked like it would roll out with the Cat fairly easyto dad. It had been plowed around for decades had broken plow points and all around it. Dad got to digging ad finally got it out was all he could do with the no#6 Traxcavator (D-6 with a loader). It sets in the fence row beside the field was about 4-5 feet high and about 6-8 feet across. Usually only see one about 2-3 feet across and can put in loader bucket to lift on to a deck to haul off.
 
This one is behind the sugar house.
cvphoto111367.jpg
and this one was dug out of the garden, it was a PIA tilling and working around it, I am glad to finally get it out of there after 20 yrs putting up with it.

cvphoto111369.jpg
 
When I worked for Hi-Ball Crane, I got sent out to load, move, and unload a rock similar to that one. It was found in a housing development near Bath, MI. They said it took (3) model 200 Komatsu excavators to get it out of the hole. It had been out in the open and a slab weighing 4000LBS had split off of one edge. The main piece weighed 27 ton. Got it loaded with no problems. When we got to its destination, the owner of the rock wanted it turned about half a turn. That have been good to know when we were in the big open field with a dozer available. Now were in the back yard, no room, and no dozer. Someone suggested rolling it off the edge of the lowboy that hauled it. I convinced everyone that plan would most likely damage the trailer. We were finally able to balance the rock on edge and push it over with a skid steer loader. Our biggest fear was shock loading the crane if we just tried to flop it. Once it was turned correctly, we set it in a small fish pond. I ran into the owner of the lowboy a few weeks later. He thanked me for not attempting to roll it of the trailer.
 
That's a little bigger than the politically incorrect hard head the UW Madison moved off Observatory Hill last summer . They appropriated $50k for the job and moved it 15 miles to a research station.
 
The landscapers in my area get hundreds of dollars for big rocks. One that size could easily bring big money in my area. I guess it just depends what part of the country you live in.
 
Years ago when dynamite could be bought out of the hardware store rocks like that one or maybe smaller were cracked into pieces with a good charge packed in mud on top of the rock. Today with machinery big enough to handle these rocks they are valuable. Years ago no one would spend big money to have a rock moved anyway here in the midwest. Nobody had that kind of money. Dad broke up fairly big rocks with dynamite years ago until a guy he knew got killed by late ignition. After that dad didn't touch the stuff.

This post was edited by fixerupper on 12/19/2021 at 06:01 pm.
 
Missouri is known by to names. The show me state and the cave state. Back when I first moved here my dad was a guide at a show cave in the area and he got me hooked up to the Lake of the Ozarks Grotto which was a group of cave explorers. I was part of the group that found new passageways in Bridal Cave where he worked. To this day I can take the tour for free but haven't done so in years
 
By the way there are places on my land where you can see rocks that where once part of the bluff but at some time due to who knows what broke away from the bluff. One is big enough that a full size 10 wheel dump truck would not be likely to be able to haul it
 

cvphoto111496.jpg

This is a half of one sticking out of side hill with an Allis HD30 behind it, we can't call them erratics here on the south-western shore of Georgian Bay because they are more alot more common house's. My grandparents bush has a couple that could be hollowed out for two car garage.
 
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