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Shaver Post Driver

K

knightstead

Member
My wife and are are buying some additional land and I'm planning on building/replacing roughly 2,000 ft of barbed wire fence. I live an hour away from the property and between work and kid's schedules, I wont have tons of time for the manual labor and old school way of building. I found a Shaver HD8 post driver for sale that is priced at 1500. It needs one spring and hoses might need to be replaced in the near future. I'm hoping that it'll save lots on time on the 20-30 wooden posts that'll need to be set. Does this sound like a viable plan or would I be better off buying a three point post hole digger? I have a Kubota M4800 to run the equipment, and land is rocky, an hour southwest of St. Louis. Thanks for the advice.
 
We had one when I was a kid, they work great. Regular rocks are no issue for them as we had Rocky soil too. They demonstrated it by driving a post through blacktop. I can't remember ever having a post it wouldn't drive.
 
Ian familiar with them and possibly they still make them. A couple years ago you could find a detailed parts illustration on line and the price for each part. You may be able to get garage door springs to work. The price sounds a bit high
 
I have a HD-8 3pt hitch model. There is also a HD-10 heavier duty. I have had very few problems with my HD-8. Unsharpened posts in dry soil may be the exception. On the occasional instance where I try to set a post directly over a buried flat rock, I just move the post a little one way or the other in the line of the fence. I assume you will be pounding more than 20 or 30 posts (typo?). Your back will thank you. Problem with a post hole auger and rocks, they will throw you offline worse than a pounder will. Plus, the post will be a lot looser in the disturbed soil.
$1500 for a workable model is a deal in the machinery market we have these days.
 
I don't have an exact count on posts yet, but I'm hoping 30 or so wood posts is in the neighborhood. I'll have H braces for corners and gate posts and maybe a line post every 100-150 feet, with t posts every 10 feet in between. I know in a perfect world I should have more line posts, but I'm not sure how much of an option that will be through some of the thicker woods. This fence will not be holding any livestock, just establishing a property line and hopefully keeping a few trespassers at bay.
 
I figure your down in the Union-Sullivan area. You can probably find a fence builder that can help. Your lookin at something that could turn into a money pit and a job your not familiar with. Just a thought.
 
You're close, our place is about 15-20 minutes southwest of Sullivan. I'm not opposed to having it done, that was actually my original plan. But after doing a little research I thought the 1/4 mile that needs fenced first might be 6-8k to have it done professionally. I guess it wouldn't hurt anything to have them come out and give me a real bid. I'm not a novice at fence building, I fenced one of our fields several years back. It wasn't perfect, but turned out pretty well and I learned a lot. I work in construction, so I'm not afraid of hard work, it's the time that's the issue. I've used 3-4 weeks of vacation to work on projects out there over the last two years, and I guess I can do it again if needed.
 
Had one of those, drove rail road ties for corner posts. Clay ground. Early spring was best, dry ground mid summer it was a little light. Early Shaver had steel rollers in place of the nylon slide blocks, nylon was much better. Just remember that you need a large return line for them to work. Single hydraulic live feed. They did offer fittings for some model tractors to use the filler tube as a return. If you try to use both couplers, you may as well throw it in the scrap, just dont work. Watch where you put your hands on the post!
 
We have a Shaver HD8 with a 3-point hitch mounting configuration. We run it with our 3020 John Deere. We've found it works best to have two people run it: one to stay in the tractor seat (and be guided where to park), and the other to operate the pounder. It can take awhile to get things lined up and plumb, but it does do a nice job. The biggest posts I've driven were about 7-1/2 to 8 diameter. Anything bigger in diameter won't fit the HD8. The glaciers were very generous to us in western MN/eastern SD, so I can't honestly say that rocks won't bother. I've only ever driven pointed posts, and I haven't tried to drive through really dry soil. I'm used to driving 100-125 4 x 7' pointed wooden posts into an existing fence with an 18# maul each year, but if there is a long stretch of new fence to build, and the land lays fairly level, we'll hitch up the pounder. Make sure the valve matches your tractor hydraulic system in regards to open or closed center operation (the correct fitting has to be present in the valve, and will likely be stamped cc or oc to indicate that).

Good luck!
Lon
 
I have one I havent used yet . Im going to make a pilot post from steel to drive where its rocky to help posts go in the ground
cvphoto123130.jpg
 
I drove posts for a living for a few years with a HD10. The springs were not worth having. They were in a severe service application and so they did not last. I welded weight near the bottom on each side instead. That worked well. I ran into a few jobs where I could not get the posts in the ground, and sometimes could not prevent the posts from breaking. Sometimes it went really well. With the posts laid out ahead of time and a two man crew we had a record of 180 posts in an hour. After the machine was set up as a one operator unit my record was 105 posts in an hour.
 
$1500 would buy a lot of T posts. I have built and rebuilt a bunch of fences to hold the cattle. I have used all T posts except for corners and the corral. Just seemed a lot easier and faster than dealing with wood posts.
 
Ditto all that Lon just said. 1500 is an average auction price for a working HD8. I bought one last fall and like it. Use adjustable stabilizers with it to prevent movement of worn lift arm links. I have not added any weight to mine but have thought about a 1/2 inch plate on each side for that.
 
Up here in Michigan I put down wells. 40-50 FEET DEEP 1 1/4 AND 2 INCH CASINGS. Would a post driver hammer those in using 5 ft. sections going thru clay???
 
(quoted from post at 18:59:04 04/14/22) This fence will not be holding any livestock, just establishing a property line and hopefully keeping a few trespassers at bay.
Click to expand...
If that's the case, do you really need line posts?
 
Honestly, not really, but when I do projects I have a tendency to over engineer them and plan for the worst case. I haven't met the new
neighbor yet, and he could possibly have cattle or horses on his side. I also can't rule out having any livestock of my own out there in the
future. I'd just rather do this once, and not have to try and beef things up at some later point in time.
 
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