Dredge Plug Removal Tool

[easy goer]

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Okay, I know don't plug the dredge hose! But what if it does get plugged?

My plan. Use the cork in the picture, with spider wire , feed the cork through the hose with the spider wire attached, at the end of the spider wire attach a length of paracord, at the end of the paracord attach a rubber coated 3 or 4 prong claw hook, pull the hook through the dredge hose removing the blockage.

My previous plug ups have always had water flow which should allow the cork to flow through the hose, then the spider wire, paracord, hook and finally the plug up.

Okay fire away! Why won't this work?

Easy goer

[chickenminer]

Well I am not a dredger but this sounds too complicated ! But if you do try this I am assuming you are going to attach rope to both ends of your claw hook? Because you know you're going to get the hook jammed up with the rock!

[Joe S (AK)]

So Easy, there will be some problems …

Plug ups usually come along when a piece of longish gravel, traveling through the suction hose, twists or tumbles enough that it toggles inside the hose. Following gravel and sand pack the new diagonal obstruction and continues packing it until little to nothing makes it through. In a heartbeat everything stops.
The natural human tendency is to beat the hose to free up the offending toggle and then, with sufficient shaking, somehow get enough water flowing again to get things running. When that fails, then the suction hose needs to be removed, hauled up on shore to be beaten into submission using the ever handy chunk-o-rock. Usually one in 5 times the ill-advised rock splits the hose and, well, there you are sitting and cussing the river demons.
Some dredgers carry a piece of ½" electrical conduit and run it up the dredge side of the toggle and try to jar the toggle enough that it is back into its 'traveling mode orientation' again and just hope that further thrashing of the nozzle side of the 'log jam' loosens everything up just enough that water flow returns. The bigger the hose the harder it all is.
In my case I carried the conduit and a mechanic's rubber mallet and carefully beat / jarred things back to working once again with the rubber hammer or the conduit.
So, the weak point of the rig you are proposing is that the entire process would preclude that the jam up is only light, that the suction process didn't pack the obstruction enough to firmly capture your 'Roto-Rooter' rigging so that it has enough operating movement AND that the movement you want (back into the packed plug) is enough to free up the toggle. MAYBE one in 10 or 20 plug-ups could, possibly, perhaps, be resolved, but then again …………..
Looking back on the process would show that the very best prevention would have been to stop that toggle from being sucked up to start with. Some dredgers use homemade restrictors of one kind or another to stop those almost-too-big rocks from being ingested to start with – resulting in much less material being processed with much more underwater rock chucking going on.
The best (and yet most difficult) practice is to slow down the feed at the nozzle to no more than a 50 – 50 percent of water to gravel. Not hogging max gravel intake allows better slurry travel as well as less chance that a toggle will get a foothold. A better chance is better than not-so-better chance – right?
All the best to you!
Joe