Tried a finer cutterhead on a muddy job, production tanked but the pipe looked like glass

We were doing a line near Baton Rouge last month, real sticky clay with sandy pockets. My usual setup was chewing through it fine but leaving this rough finish on the bell ends. Thought I'd swap to a finer cutterhead, figured smoother cut would mean less cleanup. First hour it clogged twice, lost maybe 40 minutes total. By the end of the shift we'd moved maybe half the yardage we normally do. But when we pulled the section, the pipe was clean as a whistle, no drag marks, no buildup. Odd part is the client walked the site and commented on how nice it looked, but the foreman's already pushing back to the rough head for tomorrow. Has anyone else seen a finer head actually pay off on production numbers or is it always a tradeoff like this?

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cameron_owens4928d ago

Hell yeah, I'm on the foreman's side here, that smoother finish is worthless if you're burning an hour a day unclogging and cutting your output in half, the pipe looking nice doesn't pay the crew. You gotta ask yourself if that perfect surface is actually worth the lost production, or if you're just polishing something nobody's gonna see once it's in the ground.