Homemade muck dredge7/22/2023 ![]() ![]() “The mud comes out of the tire as a real nasty, silky mush full of slime, weeds and dead leaves. Then I drive back to the other side of the pond again and start over by hooking up to the spare cable,” says Kalnbach. up onto dry land, then attach a short cable to the rebar loop and to my loader bucket and lift the tire off the ground to dump the load. “After I make a pass across the pond I pull the drag about 10 ft. He also attaches a spare cable to the rebar loop. To use the tire drag, Kalnbach attaches a long 3/8-in. A rebar loop mounted on back extends inside the tire and is welded to the frame. He welded together a triangle-shaped, steel rebar frame to reinforce the tire so it keeps its shape. Kalnbach cut away about one third of the tire, using a grinder with cut-off wheel to cut through the top of the tire and then a reciprocating jig saw with wood blade on the rest. “Our tire drag works much better than dragging a beam or a big rake, or even bed springs, because it digs into the bottom of the pond while also catching weeds and slime.” deep, but sediment has washed in from a nearby field and now the water is only 2 ft. We stock them with bluegills and perch and have enjoyed a lot of fish dinners over the years. “The ponds are 1/4 and 1/2 acre in size and were made back in the 1960s. It’s an inexpensive way to make a pond deeper without having to hire someone to do the job for you,” says Kalnbach, who used his tire drag for the first time last summer. ![]() “I got the tire from my neighbor’s 4-WD backhoe. He pulls the tire drag behind his Kubota B 6100 14 hp. Michigan farmer Doug Kalnbach recently built a “tractor tire drag” to dredge out a couple of small ponds on his property that were partially filled with sediment.
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