I have done this lots of times. Used 7018, and self shielded wire too, what ever I was welding with at the time.
I don’t think the plate is going to be much help in not snagging the under ground pipes tho.

 

An excavator or TLB is the best tool known to man for finding underground utilities whether looking for them or not.

 

My old boss would disagree - he thought my shovel was a combination shovel/cable cutter...

Hey, it felt like a root when I jumped on the shovel

...got shocked a lot on that job...

 

They just need to be better operators, and pothole to find the other utilities first. Most guys I see digging in old trenches have the teeth coming toward them when digging. This is an easy dig, so leave the teeth pointing back, that way the other lines won't get snagged. I am an amateur operator at best, but worked around it in the gas industry for years. Saw some of the best operators, and I never saw them damage anything.

 

A hydrovac should be your operator's best friend.

 

We used a piece of cutting edge vs mild steel on the ones we had. I'm pretty sure all we used was 7018 to make them, but it's been more than 15 years since we made one.

The edge was nice when you wanted to grade with the bucket, or when you dug in something like sand, but wasn't much help in rock. One thing to keep in mind this worked great on the old 555B Ford bucket that used roll pins drive into the shanks to hold the edge on, but won't work on the bucket we had for our excavator with the teeth that twist on.

 

Yep that's done all the time.. Either exposing just an inch or so of the teeth or sometimes no teeth exposed

 

Do it all the time at work. Someone on here made one that slipped over the teeth and chained into the back of the bucket

 

Just make sure the retainers for the teeth don't have rubber or it will melt if you weld with the teeth in place. Welded a cutting edge on teeth is done all the time. 7018 and a little preheat should do the trick but you need to weld it on all the teeth. A backhoe has a lot of digging force and could easily bend or rip the plate off if it's only welded on 2 teeth. Some guys make sockets that fit over the teeth where you might not need to weld all of them.

 

Two words of advice: Dig Safe. Start with dig safe. If I know a pipe or wire is in the ground, and approximately where it is, and its direction, dig parallel to it a safe distance away. Dig deeper than it is, using a shovel or pickaxe, dig a vertical narrow groove in the vertical side of the ditch. If I don't find it first try, widen the vertical wall of the ditch and repeat. This takes advantage of gravity to expose the conduit without damage.

As for welding to teeth, I believe most of the basic ones are of high manganese steel. It can be easily welded with a variety of procedures including SMAW & 7018.

Home soil is boulders, some variety of granite. Bucket teeth don't last long. I used old grader blade chunks to refresh worn out teeth on a John Deere 410, and a Case 580K. The same teeth fit both machines. I think it was the Miller Matic 252 with basic 70 series .035 solid wire. Welds didn't fail, but I had added perhaps 5" length to the teeth. It was too much leverage. Each eventually broke, but not in the weld. I preheated to maybe 500 F with a big weed burner torch.

 

Thanks for all the feedback. Don't know if this will help my guys or not but if there's a chance that it might I'll give it a shot.

 

I did this a month ago. Welded a piece of flat bar on a small excavator buckets teeth. The guy was doing septic field work and wanted to be able to get close to a house/basement to remove dirt from the wall. I believe it was 1/2" thick heavy flat bar. I used 7018 and it help up with no issues.