Thread: Home made tamper

Unless it's a vibrating roller it'll only compact the surface and not down deeper where it really matters.

It's like this: get a jar of nuts, rice or similar. Try pressing the contents down and see how much they compress. Then simply vibrate the jar (pretend you're really fanging for a beer! ) and be astonished at how much more it compacts!

For small areas of only a couple of inches depth I'll use a small piece of scaffold plank and tap it with a heavy crowbar. Preferably one with a tamper on one end, not a double-pointer. For deeper thicknesses, I make up a 6" 7-ply disk that I fit to the tamping end of the above-mentioned crownar. Obviously both methods are labour intensive, which is why for large areas the vibrating plate or roller is really the only way to go...

Get a stick and nail a base plate to it.

Lift it up and down so it smacks the ground, thats the old version of a tamper.
To make it motorised make a droaning noise with your mouth as you use it.

What???:confused:

Al

I used to use the bottom bit of a piece of scaffold, heavy enough, with a 6" square foot.

I could never get the sand properly levelled with it though, probably because I wasn't making the right noise??

P

Ok, anyone got one of these vibrating machines (oops Al is listening) sitting in the shed which they could lend me for a few days?

hey Tiger,

i've got 50m2 of paving to do, it's already compacted (got a concrete base) ya wanna do mine while you're at it ? These paving guys are a rip off, $1300 for two days work, we supply the pavers, cement, sand and even help with the labour. :eek:

Damn I should do that for a living.

Yeah, I'll do yours if you get a machine, they're about $100 a day from places like Bunnies.