[TowerTalk] Driving ground rods

[Patrick Greenlee]

If anyone is interested in buying a Harbor Freight (inexpensive) demo hammer 
don't buy the smallest one.  They don't carry the one I have anymore but 
they have a larger one and a smaller one.  I have seen both.  Don't get the 
smaller one.  Mine works pretty good and the larger should only work better. 
HF does not sell the attachment for driving ground rods.  Searching for a 
source on the internet of the ground rod driving attachment I found some 
vendors but the prices were mostly over $80 plus shipping. My demo hammer 
takes 3/4 inch hex shaped chisels. Buy the cheapest chisel or pointed tool 
that will fit your model of demo hammer and cut it in two with the piece 
that goes into the tool long enough to stick out of the hammer enough to 
mount a piece of tubing to it to keep you from slipping off the  ground rod.

I used a short length of EMT metal conduit but any steel tubing/pipe or ... 
should work fine.  You could even duct tape an oversized piece of pipe to 
the cut off chisel since the tube doesn't take much force serving only to 
keep the driving action centered more or less on the ground rod. I drove my 
hex shaped tool a short distance into the tight fittinig EMT and then welded 
it but I could have driven it much further on and skipped the welding,

You need to experiment with how much down force to use when running the demo 
hammer.  Push too hard with mine and it drives slower.  For most driving I 
basically just let the weight of the tool provide the down force while I 
balance it and hold it in alignment.

Patrick AF5CK


-----Original Message----- 
From: Wayne Kline
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 1:53 AM
To: garyk9gs at wi.rr.com
Cc: Towertalk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Driving ground rods

Gary many of the big names hammer drills have the ground rod adaptor. The 
trick is to find the rental co who has them both.  I use to use a home brew 
dual handled piece of 2" od 1/2" wall X 36".  But scraped that when I found 
about the Hammer drill routine .
I put in 26 8' roofs in a four hour rental  So I second the use of this 
tool.

Wayne W3EA
Sent from my iPad

On Oct 13, 2013, at 6:14 PM, "Gary K9GS" <garyk9gs at wi.rr.com> wrote:

> While on the topic of ground rods.
>
> Today I had to drive some 5/8 X 8 foot ground rods.  I live on top of a 
> ridge that was part of the glacial push South into Southern Wisconsin. 
> Think sandy rocky soil with many rocks about fist sized plus hard clay. 
> 25 years ago I had to dig a hole for a mailbox post and it took me all day 
> with a post hole digger.
>
> Anyway, to drive these ground rods I rented a demolition hammer from Home 
> Depot.  Think small electric jack hammer that looks like a big drill. 
> Made by Makita.  In place of the chisel that is usually used, they had a 
> bit made for driving ground rods.  Basically a hollow sleeve that fits 
> over the end of the ground rod.
>
> Used an 8 ft stepladder and a friend to help.  The ground rods went in 
> like a hot knife through butter.  Each one took less than 5 minutes and no 
> pounding with a sledge hammer, water pipes, post driver, etc.  Truly 
> amazingly fast.  The best money I've ever spent.
>
> -- 
>
>
> 73,
>
> Gary K9GS
>
> Greater Milwaukee DX Association: http://www.gmdxa.org
> Society of Midwest Contesters: http://www.w9smc.com
> CW Ops #1032 http://www.cwops.org
>
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