# efficient "hand-benching?"



## dirtyBob (Jun 1, 2005)

I'm some years into my trail building addiction and a huge determining factor in whether or not I'll build in a certain spot is the amount of benching I'll have to do. I've passed on some pretty sweet spots because a quality ten foot section of hand-benching can take up my whole 3 hour window for the day (a guy has to work). Some benches? Alright. Lots of benching... gotta pass if I want the trail to be shreddable come spring. So, with power tools out of the question (i'm primarily using the 7D Bench Illegal Zion, which is essentially a gnarly, heavy duty hoe with an axe handle) here is my question:
Anyone run into a really efficient way to hand-bench?

Thanks for any insight. Looking forward to recon season when these poison oak leaves drop to a less sinister level.


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## Cotharyus (Jun 21, 2012)

The thing about benching is to bench well (as you understand) you have to (re)move a certain amount of dirt. So what you're asking is, is there a more efficient way to move the dirt. This will always come down to the tools as much as to the application. I carry a tool that I make that can cut a lot of dirt, and I carry a lamberton rake. The combination is pretty good even in rocky soil, but of course, rocky is the worst. When you have tools that work well for you, keep your swings low. That over the head stuff just uses more energy. Keep your edges sharp. When you dig, you're cutting. Cutting with dull tools sucks. Finally, my tool has a long handle on it, so I don't have to lean over as much to dig.

All that said, don't bench any more than you have to. 6 to 10 inches of trail tread is more than enough unless you plan to ride a fat bike on it, then 10-14 inches should get it. Of course, narrow trail is the old school technical, people may not like it.


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## DaveVt (Jun 13, 2005)

Hand benching. No Shortcuts. In the North East it's gnarly work and there's no getting around the slow, labor intensive nature of the work. I would and often do spend a few sessions of hiking and exploring to find alternate routes that are suitable for raked-in trail then hand benching 100 feet. 

When pro trail crews came into existence in Vt, some trails were hand benched. What I like about it is the benching tends to be minimal. Crews were forced to work around certain features and the finished trail, while not as interesting as trail that exists on top of the root bed of the forest, still maintained a primitive feel and fit a natural line in it's surroundings. After we built Kimmers, and were forced to ignore ride quality to a point and keep moving to stay on bid, mechanization happened. 

Now all new trail is excavated, has to be built wide enough for the excavator to ride on, and benched trail has lost all it's connection to a natural path that may have organically come to life out of the landscape. 

Hand-built trail is underbuilt and slowly gets burned in and finished over the first few years of existence where impact dictates more intensive building, and most of the trail stays very primitive.

Mechanically built trail is vastly overbuilt and far more expensive up front, then areas that never needed the extensive excavation regress into grown in trail that feels like single track....of course without any tread features that may remind us we're on an off road vehicle. We end up paying for far more building then we needed for 90 out of every 100 feet of trail.....BUT....they move fast, pay for gas not labor, and the building became cost affective.....so everything is excavated so the builders can make money....and boring trail most of the time....although Sinuosity did a remarkable job underbuilding with machines. The better the operator, the closer you can get to a MTB feel on mechanized trail builds. Still the expense of built trail is shocking to a lot of land managers. 

There's no short cut to hand-benching. Limit it if you don't have a ton of volunteer help. Primative trail is way more interesting to ride, even if some of it is oversteep. Run it until traffic indicates it's time to reroute....and have a benched in option planned. Hopefully you'll never need it.


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## aero901 (Apr 11, 2012)

I primarily use a rogue hoe (FB70H model) for benching, which is similar to the tool you use (maybe a little lighter?). Our soils are not rocky and mostly silt/clay so digging is relatively easy and edges stay sharp. I've found that lighter tools are more efficient at digging and cutting roots. Less weight to move around means less energy consumed and less fatigue. Less weight also means faster swing speed which is better for cutting roots. We have a few rogue hoes with thicker blades (and thus weigh more) and there is a noticeable difference in effort required to dig and grub with those tools. So much so that smaller volunteers have a problem using them.

I suppose digging technique can have an effect on efficiency also but it's probably small. Keep the dirt moving downhill and move it the minimum distance required. Let the weight of the tool do the work. Other than that, build fitness and invite others to help dig.


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## 127.0.0.1 (Nov 19, 2013)

hoe with 8 foot handle, break off handle so only 2 feet remain, bend over and use it

2, 6 foot wrecking bars for everything else the hoe won't take care of
efficient to me means those heavy solid 6 footers do a great job busting stuff up

basic knowledge of caveman physics


lots of water and gatorade, gloves
----
possibly the best piece of my best work 

2.5-3 feet high 'the Fish Ladder' into 'Bozo Filter'

one broken hoe, one prybar, and gloves


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## DaveVt (Jun 13, 2005)

127.0.0.1 said:


> hoe with 8 foot handle, break off handle so only 2 feet remain, bend over and use it
> 
> 2, 6 foot wrecking bars for everything else the hoe won't take care of
> efficient to me means those heavy solid 6 footers do a great job busting stuff up
> ...


Turnpiking is a cool technique. You don't see it enough. I did some a few years back in Waitsfield. 2 rock bars, 2 shovels, and a ball cart. We moves some stones up to 800 pounds with 2 guys.....though a swamp. Tough work but it makes for cool trail. Generated the crushed rock on site by hand and ditched the uphill side and filled the tread with the material. 2 guys, 2weeks.


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## indytrekracer (Feb 13, 2004)

Embrace the bench cutting!

We put the trail in the best location, which often means hard bench cutting.

We would rather have less miles of really awesome trail, then a bunch of rake and ride.

If you look at benching as a bad think its really going to limit what you can build.


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## ki5ka (Dec 17, 2006)

Love that second pic indy  not that the first one isn't awesome... lol


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## Raleighguy29 (Jan 7, 2014)

indytrekracer said:


> Embrace the bench cutting!
> 
> We put the trail in the best location, which often means hard bench cutting.
> 
> ...


Looks like aynes in the top pic and definetly schooner on the bottom. 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## DaveVt (Jun 13, 2005)

indytrekracer said:


> Embrace the bench cutting!
> 
> We put the trail in the best location, which often means hard bench cutting.
> 
> ...


Rake and ride makes the best trail. As long as you can cherry-pick the landscape and you're not trying to sell it or overuse it.


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## leeboh (Aug 5, 2011)

Many hands make light work? Will work for iced coffee, pizza and cold brews at the end of work/ride day. Lots of walking/flagging/ pin flagging. Really look at your options. Do some soil checks for rocks? Done right, good trail will last a long time, water issues taken care of.


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## Harryman (Jun 14, 2011)

I always figure I'm building a 100 year trail. A proper bench requires a lot of time, there's no way around it on a side slope, which means either a lot of time for you, or a little time for a lot of people.

I prefer a two step process, I use a 2.5lb pick mattock to work my way down a section, systematically breaking up a layer like a pan of bownies and then follow with a rogue hoe to remove the dirt, shape the tread and backslope. It depends on the soil you have to work with, but that's what I like for rocky Colorado.


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## indytrekracer (Feb 13, 2004)

I look at it this way. The more tools you have in you tool box, the more options you have. We don't look at benching vs rake and ride as good or bad, we looked at them as options at our disposal to build trails. There are times that rake and ride is the way to go, and times that we need to bench. Same with hand built vs machine building. We do both.

Being open to all the ways to build trails provides more options when laying out the trails. We are willing to go deep into ravines that require lots of bench cutting.










The key is to take advantage of what the land gives you and be willing to use the tools and methods needed to make the most of your canvas. The worst thing to do is to do less than your best because its too hard to do it the right way.

If you chose to rake and ride because its the best way to build the trail style you want and it fits the building a sustainable trail in your area, then great. But if you rake and ride where you should be benching because benching is too hard, then that's not good. If you cut corners, you will end up closing trails our spending too much time fixing them to build new ones.

We have rolling hills and are typically dealing with side slopes between 20% and 100%. While we typically have rocks to work with, the ground is mostly clay. The side slopes typically don't allow rake and ride.

We also use the bench cut to make our harder trails. If you put a rock feature on a flatter trail, then riders will just go around it. But when you have a steep side slope riders have to stay on the trail. This means that if they can ride the feature they will have to walk or go back.










While we work hard to find key rock features along the route, we often move rocks to the trail to build rock features on our harder trails.

Since we have a large inventory of beginner and intermediate trails we don't built optional easy lines on our advanced trails.


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## dirtyBob (Jun 1, 2005)

Harryman said:


> I prefer a two step process, I use a 2.5lb pick mattock to work my way down a section, systematically breaking up a layer like a pan of bownies and then follow with a rogue hoe to remove the dirt, shape the tread and backslope. It depends on the soil you have to work with, but that's what I like for rocky Colorado.


Thanks for this. Something that really answers the question I posed. I'm working in clay soil mostly so it's like brick and dust until the first rain. Then, if it rains a lot, it's 15 lbs of clay stuck to the tool on each swing, so the optimum benching work window is small. I'll add the pick mattock to the arsenal this year


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## Harryman (Jun 14, 2011)

I like the smaller 2.5, a 5lb pick mattock will wear you out faster and I see no difference in use. If I have volunteers available, I like to team them up, one takes a pass breaking up dirt while the other waits to clear it and then they switch. It gives each one a break and is really effiecient. Otherwise, if they are on their own, they waste time trying to do too much with the wrong tool or switching tools and burn themselves out quickly. If it's just you, you can do the same thing. One decent pass with one tool, walk back to the start, take a breather and start again with the other one.


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## indytrekracer (Feb 13, 2004)

In terms of getting efficient. The right tool is important. For us with mostly clay we use the rogue hoes with the ergo hickory handle. The 80R is our primary weapon. But we also use the narrower FB70H, for when the ground is harder. 

There is no substitute for experience. We have hired trail builders to build by hand on expert level trails and 40 hours of bench cutting a week makes you pretty darn good. 

I notice that I need some time in the early summer to get back into shape before I am feeling good about my output.


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## DaveVt (Jun 13, 2005)

indytrekracer said:


> In terms of getting efficient. The right tool is important. For us with mostly clay we use the rogue hoes with the ergo hickory handle. The 80R is our primary weapon. But we also use the narrower FB70H, for when the ground is harder.
> 
> There is no substitute for experience. We have hired trail builders to build by hand on expert level trails and 40 hours of bench cutting a week makes you pretty darn good.
> 
> I notice that I need some time in the early summer to get back into shape before I am feeling good about my output.


It's true, there is no substitute for experience. We never found many volunteers willing to do even 1 full day of hand benching. It was so limiting physically, and from a cost perspective that the "Pros" all mechanized...as I long-windedly pointed out above.

Very interesting idea in bringing in obstructions on benched trail. The push here has been for easy trail so anything benched has been heavily buffed as well.

It seems weird to me to bench a trail down to a dirt trail, then manufacture tech. but if a club or builder is given a piece of land to use that is sloped, then there really is one option, and I guess it's better to manufacture tech then to have none at all.

Another issue I see repeatedly with hand-benched trail is the through-the-fall-line turns being underbuilt. Heck even excavated networks suffer from this. Stuff I've ridden down in Virginia is benched side-hill for miles! They went down into ravines, crossed small streams...kept going. They flow and flow. Ride Stoney Run in Douthat! Around these parts it seems designers want to avoid water at all costs and so trails get hemmed in by a couple small streams and switch back and forth, back and forth. A through-the-fall-line turn apparently requires a much wider radius and/or much more berm/inslope if they're not gonna be total flow-breakers. If building by hand on a moderate slope, a turn like this is gonna be a huge effort and material. Let alone a dozen of them in a couple miles. Kimmers, Pipeline are great examples in Stowe. Super fun side-hill runs, lots of impact and breaking to make the switchbacks. Blueberry Lake is an example of an excavated trail network falling short on this.

At the end of the day....it's how the trail rides that is #1 for me. Not if it's pretty, or well sculpted dirt. Flow and an acknowledgement that the wheel, and the bike are a simple machine that conserves momentum should be the prime concern for lay-out and execution. However you achieve that best while not making dirt sidewalks is a win for Mountain Bikers. Since I almost exclusively work alone, finding places where it's easy to create good lines is essential, just don't have the resources to do a lot of benching. More builders.....more flowy AND tech trail. That's what we need!


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## bitflogger (Jan 12, 2004)

The only speed it up or shortcut I can think of is a scenario when you can have a spade or tool to remove a lot more dirt and get more backslope done faster.

Last night I rode whole trail area and thought about two sections - one where it took days of a few people working to get it right and another where mini ex and one person finishing did it in a few hours. In between were a spots not done to same standard - again the mix of hand and machine. It's totally worth doing it right because I thought how all I want to do is get past the lesser quality spot.


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## Sasquatch1413 (Nov 6, 2008)

Benching takes a long time but at least you know the trail will be there for a long time. In Kansas City, we have lots of rock so my tools of choice are always a 5 lb pick and a rogue hoe. Break up the rocky soil with the pick, drag it away with the hoe. Rarely do we get to do "hoe only" benching in pure dirt but its almost joyful compared to rocky bench work.


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## Harryman (Jun 14, 2011)

DaveVt said:


> Very interesting idea in bringing in obstructions on benched trail. The push here has been for easy trail so anything benched has been heavily buffed as well.


We always add chunk back in if we have the materials. The push here is for tech.


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## Fattirewilly (Dec 10, 2001)

DaveVt said:


> We never found many volunteers willing to do even 1 full day of hand benching.


If you have volunteers do a full day of benching, my money is on not seeing that volunteer again... Keep your workdays to two or three hours, keep them fun, have food etc. and they'll come back.



DaveVt said:


> Another issue I see repeatedly with hand-benched trail is the through-the-fall-line turns being underbuilt. Heck even excavated networks suffer from this. Stuff I've ridden down in Virginia is benched side-hill for miles! They went down into ravines, crossed small streams...kept going. They flow and flow. Ride Stoney Run in Douthat! Around these parts it seems designers want to avoid water at all costs and so trails get hemmed in by a couple small streams and switch back and forth, back and forth. A through-the-fall-line turn apparently requires a much wider radius and/or much more berm/inslope if they're not gonna be total flow-breakers. If building by hand on a moderate slope, a turn like this is gonna be a huge effort and material. Let alone a dozen of them in a couple miles.


I always start a trail design on paper with a topo map, and try very hard to limit the number of switchbacks/climbing turns/turns across the fall line. In planning the workday and what to expect to get completed or not completed, I'll budget 50 man hours for a turn like that, which consumes a lot of volunteer time to basically go 10 feet.


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## Moe Ped (Aug 24, 2009)

Fattirewilly said:


> If you have volunteers do a full day of benching, my money is on not seeing that volunteer again... Keep your workdays to two or three hours, keep them fun, have food etc. and they'll come back.
> 
> I always start a trail design on paper with a topo map, and try very hard to limit the number of switchbacks/climbing turns/turns across the fall line. In planning the workday and what to expect to get completed or not completed, I'll budget 50 man hours for a turn like that, which consumes a lot of volunteer time to basically go 10 feet.


Good stuff here; the project I'm currently on we meet at 8, have a 30~45 minute lunch; head back out to the cars at 2. So we put out about 4 hours of "hard labor" but the crew is mostly well-seasoned and we work at our own paces. Newbies typically have blisters (yes even with gloves) at 2 hours no matter how much we emphasize "work at your own pace". So yes 2~3 hours is about right for trail work day when the public is invited.

This project is 100% hand-built; if we were working alongside powered equipment we might be able to stretch the day out a little longer. Seems like there's more rest time built in staying out of the way of the machinery.

RE switchbacks best avoided but often a necessity due to trail corridor constraints. On multi-use trails they can become a handy speed control feature for bikes; a little less obtrusive than having to fabricate "pinch-points" which nearly always look contrived. One of the best things I ever heard at an IMBA trail class was "one switchback is equivalent to one mile of trail". Can be true at times!

RE perfect tool those 7" Rouge Hoes with the re-curve hickory handles are tough to beat if you can only have one tool. But for serious trail building an minimum suite for me is a pick-mattock, McLeod, good forged shovel and a wheelbarrow. Got roots?; add a pulaski. Regarding pick-mattocks in our soil conditions this time of year the 5# is go-to for all but the smaller ladies. 2.5# is just too light. I wish they made something in-between; perhaps somebody does?


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## Dave_schuldt (May 10, 2004)

Get a fire shovel, more of a scraper than a traditional shovel. You can move and fling lots of dirt by bracing against your knee. I know they're expensive but 10 times better than anything you'll find at the hardware store. 
USFS Firefighting Shovel, 216957 | Ben Meadows


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## DaveVt (Jun 13, 2005)

pliebenberg said:


> RE switchbacks best avoided but often a necessity due to trail corridor constraints. On multi-use trails they can become a handy speed control feature for bikes; a little less obtrusive than having to fabricate "pinch-points" which nearly always look contrived.


I really dislike the concept of the trail/designer trying to control the speed of the riders with turns. Build the turn for the speed a rider will naturally have. Trying to force people to slow down when a trail is naturally giving them velocity leads to erosion and makes the trail feel like crap. a much better choice would be a grade reversal before a turn IMO. Riding a trail where the corners are the feature forcing you to slow down feels like poop.


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## KeithNorCal (Jun 7, 2016)

DaveVt said:


> I really dislike the concept of the trail/designer trying to control the speed of the riders with turns. Build the turn for the speed a rider will naturally have. Trying to force people to slow down when a trail is naturally giving them velocity leads to erosion and makes the trail feel like crap. a much better choice would be a grade reversal before a turn IMO. Riding a trail where the corners are the feature forcing you to slow down feels like poop.


I have to agree with DaveVt here with regard to grade reversals being the optimal speed-control device. Thanks to all for the great tool talk and recommendations.


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## Moe Ped (Aug 24, 2009)

DaveVt said:


> I really dislike the concept of the trail/designer trying to control the speed of the riders with turns. Build the turn for the speed a rider will naturally have. Trying to force people to slow down when a trail is naturally giving them velocity leads to erosion and makes the trail feel like crap. a much better choice would be a grade reversal before a turn IMO. Riding a trail where the corners are the feature forcing you to slow down feels like poop.


I think you missed the "multi-use" constraint of the particular trail I was referring to and I didn't mention the 15 mph speed limit imposed on bicycle traffic. The "natural speed" (given the trail grade dictated by topography and the permitted trail corridor) is way over the speed limit and grade reversals do little to dissipate the rider's kinetic/potential energy unless it's abrupt enough to require braking. I do agree that braking does lead to erosion.

BTW the land manager in this case forbids banked/bermed corners and also grade reversals tight enough to be considered "rolling grade dips".


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## Miker J (Nov 4, 2003)

Best tool for benching, depends on where you live. Here in the NE we have dirt, rock, and a lot of roots.

So, I have my favorite cutter mattock I use for benching, and most work. It has the heavy head, 5lbs I think, and a broad flat end. Larger roots are left to the cutting side. A heavier tool works better, as when you do come down hard on an unseen rock, it's not so jarring. If the terrain is forgiving I can get away with the newer, larger, heavier head Rogue hoe.

For smaller jobs I have a lighter cutter mattock.

With few exceptions I can build most trail with a cutter mattock, a fire rake, folding saw, and hand nippers. A tool in each hand and the folding saw and nippers in pockets keeps things light and mobile. A flask of water in another pocket and a leatherman tool and that's pretty much it.

I like trail building as much as I like riding.


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## DaveVt (Jun 13, 2005)

Moe Ped said:


> grade reversals do little to dissipate the rider's kinetic/potential energy unless it's abrupt enough to require braking.


Grade reversals that are well planned can bring riders to a stop without brakes. Also, braking on an up-hill delivers a more natural force and is, as a result, way less erosive then having riders brake on a flat, or downhill.


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## Harryman (Jun 14, 2011)

Keep it narrow, turny and with choke points if you want the most effective way to slow people down. I've also used large grade reversals on a downhill section in an uncomfortable rythm. Too odd of a spacing to double creates a maximum speed threshold before you smack the next face. It's still fast and great fun to ride but a challenge to suck them up at speed.


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## Schulze (Feb 21, 2007)

Excellent thread. I've been doing an hour or two of benching 4-5 days a week for the last few months. It's getting easier.


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## hankthespacecowboy (Jun 10, 2004)

I second the importance of the pick mattock. The 2.5lb size is nice for lighter work, but for heavy benching, step up the 5 lb size, specifically the Truper brand. The blade/mattock side is significantly wider than most picks, and the blade sits flush with the handle, which makes it easier to get closer to finish grade, v. having the handle stick out past the blade. Look for "Made in Mexico" v. "Made in India" on the blade of the mattock. Apparently Mexicans know more about picking than Indians.... 

I work in line (parallel) with the trail;usually start with the blade side, cutting in from the critical edge towards the tread hinge. This helps keeps the critical edge defined. Once the benching gets too heavy for the blade side, I switch to the pick, and rip a line along the tread/backslope hinge. This helps break up the larger mass of material, which you can then disperse, or stockpile for rollers/grade reversals/sweet jumps. 

Repeat the blade/pick/stockpile process until you are down to tread grade. At this point, the backslope should still be a vertical wall, such that the tread/backslope intersection is a roughly a 90 degree angle. Now, use the blade side of the pick, or that sweet 7d hoe to lay the backslope to something more like a 45 degree angle. I refer to the material generated by this process as "backslope butter;" and use it to fill in any inconsistencies in the tread, or accentuate features.


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## Walt Dizzy (Aug 18, 2003)

dirtyBob said:


> I'm some years into my trail building addiction and a huge determining factor in whether or not I'll build in a certain spot is the amount of benching I'll have to do. I've passed on some pretty sweet spots because a quality ten foot section of hand-benching can take up my whole 3 hour window for the day (a guy has to work). Some benches? Alright. Lots of benching... gotta pass if I want the trail to be shreddable come spring. So, with power tools out of the question (i'm primarily using the 7D Bench Illegal Zion, which is essentially a gnarly, heavy duty hoe with an axe handle) here is my question:
> Anyone run into a really efficient way to hand-bench?
> 
> Thanks for any insight. Looking forward to recon season when these poison oak leaves drop to a less sinister level.


I keep leaving it behind, because I have been working in places to far away to carry it easily, but what about a Yard Boss?


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## Moe Ped (Aug 24, 2009)

hankthespacecowboy said:


> I second the importance of the pick mattock. The 2.5lb size is nice for lighter work, but for heavy benching, step up the 5 lb size, specifically the Truper brand. The blade/mattock side is significantly wider than most picks, and the blade sits flush with the handle, which makes it easier to get closer to finish grade, v. having the handle stick out past the blade. Look for "Made in Mexico" v. "Made in India" on the blade of the mattock. Apparently Mexicans know more about picking than Indians....
> 
> I work in line (parallel) with the trail;usually start with the blade side, cutting in from the critical edge towards the tread hinge. This helps keeps the critical edge defined. Once the benching gets too heavy for the blade side, I switch to the pick, and rip a line along the tread/backslope hinge. This helps break up the larger mass of material, which you can then disperse, or stockpile for rollers/grade reversals/sweet jumps.
> 
> Repeat the blade/pick/stockpile process until you are down to tread grade. At this point, the backslope should still be a vertical wall, such that the tread/backslope intersection is a roughly a 90 degree angle. Now, use the blade side of the pick, or that sweet 7d hoe to lay the backslope to something more like a 45 degree angle. I refer to the material generated by this process as "backslope butter;" and use it to fill in any inconsistencies in the tread, or accentuate features.


Actually look for "Made in USA"; they're still available if you look online. They cost a little more than the foreign ones but are worth it IMHO not to mention keeping jobs here. The secret to keeping the costs down is buying only the heads and sourcing the handles locally. The last ones I bought were from Council Tool Co; looks like they're still in production.

Speaking of keeping costs down; I've been forge sharpening picks/mattocks/etc. for a little while now---twice the life as compared to re-sharpening by grinding. (very little material is removed; just returned to the proper shape by hammering)

This photo I'd gotten the mattock ends sharpened/hardened when it started raining; need to go back and do the other end.










From top:

Older USA
Nearly new USA
India not so old but nearly worn out
India nearly new
Mexico cutter mattock

In general the tools from India tend to be thinner; I need to check the actual weight of the tools.

BTW the Fiskars' pick/mattock is very expensive but an amazing tool. If you appreciate Silky saws you'd probably like the Fiskars. The only thing I don't like about it is the handle is backwards for using the mattock.


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## dirtyBob (Jun 1, 2005)

hankthespacecowboy said:


> I refer to the material generated by this process as "backslope butter"


Haha! classic. i had this line running thru my head as i was benching today.

it's butter baby. butter.

thanks for the suggestions guys! putting them to use!


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