Ground saw hit a buried cable anchor, two weeks of headaches

Last month I was clearing stumps on a job over in Bellingham, and my ground saw clipped a steel cable anchor that was buried about eight inches down. It was on an old property line, nobody had marked it because it was a fence post anchor from the 80s, not a utility line. The saw teeth got wrecked, bent three of them, and I had to stop the whole job while I drove to the nearest shop for replacement parts. That set me back half a day and cost about 90 bucks for the new bar and chain bits. What really got me though was that I never even thought to check for old fence anchors before I started grinding down at that depth. Has anyone else run into buried metal that wasn't on any map or marking, and do you have a trick for spotting it ahead of time?

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paul1171mo ago

Old fence anchors are a classic gotcha, no doubt. But I'm not sure a trick exists that would've saved you here. You'd have to be swinging a metal detector over every inch of ground before you grind, and that's just not practical for most jobs. I've hit buried rebar and old pipe myself, and each time it was pure dumb luck I found it before the teeth did. The real fix is slower cutting at the edges of a site, listening for that change in sound, and accepting you'll eat a few blades every couple years. It stings, but it's part of the cost of doing this work, not something a checklist can prevent.

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