Grading Scraper (land plane) - Might be my new favorite attachment

[oldafretired]

How do you handle the gravel that remains in the plane at the end of the pass? When I stop to turn around at the end of my driveway, I end up with a load of gravel to deal with. I pick up the plane at the end of the pass to turn around.

 

[Gordon Gould]

Now if only I could train the other drivers NOT to drive in the exact same spot every time and to go AROUND the pot holes!!

I am totally convinced that other families using a private road who do not do the maintenance are untrainable in such matters. :confused3:

gg

 

[JRobyn]

Getting ready to try mine out for the first time. I had several places that were severely rutted from a single rain of about 5" over two hours a few weeks ago. So I made two "ditching" passes today down both sides of the road with the box blade in preparation, attempting mostly to reclaim the washed out gravel and at least partially fill and compact the ruts. I set the BB at a very aggressive tilt and a much more aggressive "attack angle" than I usually do. This did a nice job of cutting off the vegetation back about 6"-12" off the normal edge. The tilt tended to cut and then build up a fair amount of material on the low side which then spilled out some in the middle. So most of the ruts are way better.

 

[CADplans]

Getting ready to try mine out for the first time.

Well, even though mine is not totally complete,, I could not resist, and I took my build for a spin, today!!

jenkinsph, you can see the pics you asked for at this thread!! :thumbsup:

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/build-yourself/369327-landplane-my-diy-6.html#post4567558

 

[KentT]

I just tried my new 5ft Land Shark Land Plane from Everything Attachments yesterday. I agree that these things are the "cat's meow" for their intended purpose, and far, far better than a general-purpose box blade. My experiences and a few pics are here: http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/power-trac/370203-if-you-have-long-gravel.html#post4568131

 

[KentT]

How do you handle the gravel that remains in the plane at the end of the pass? When I stop to turn around at the end of my driveway, I end up with a load of gravel to deal with. I pick up the plane at the end of the pass to turn around.

I simply lifted the land plane up and let the material fall out at the last minute, before getting the gravel onto the pavement of the road. Then I turned around, lowered the land plane and picked up those spoils to begin my next pass, going in the opposite direction. After my very last pass, I tried to go cross-ways and spread this pile out to make the transition onto the pavement.

 

[JRobyn]

So after just one pass on each side, I am now also a HUGE fan! The road is smoother than it has ever been. No ruts, no washboard, gravel is all nicely and evenly re-distributed. The nearly 3ft long skids prevent and level out any "undulation" caused by having just the tractor wheels with their very small contact patch "set" the grading.

I started with the right side of the blade 3/8" below the skid and the left side at zero (to provide a little crown). And then also set the lift arms so that there was about 3/4" of tilt for more crown. With these settings, it was still taking too much off the center of the road for my liking. Probably mostly because the left skid of my 72" wide scraper was riding more in the opposite wheel track than on the crown. Most of my road is only about 10ft-11ft wide.

So I changed to 3/8" below on the right and 1/4" above on the left. And the same 3-point tilt. I think this is just about perfect. Most of what gets cut off the center is the grass. It rolls up in balls between the first and second blade and eventually spills out the back when enough builds up. Since it will quickly dry and be very light, I'll just let the sun and wind take care of that. Or the wife can kick it off to the side when she walks the dogs! It looks a little bad, but doesn't affect the ride much. I've gone from a <10MPH road to 20MPH or more.

VERY satisfying to have quickly graded nearly a mile of road to near perfection! I moved slow, stopped to readjust, and it still only took about 2-1/2 hours.

 

[CADplans]

So after just one pass on each side, I am now also a HUGE fan! The road is smoother than it has ever been. No ruts, no washboard, gravel is all nicely and evenly re-distributed. The nearly 3ft long skids prevent and level out any "undulation" caused by having just the tractor wheels with their very small contact patch "set" the grading.

JRobyn,, can you post a pic of your LP,,, I thought all the LP's had at least 5 foot long runners?

I am running WAY more tilt than you,,
my ditch-side runner contacts and the center-side runner is up six inches
I need that much to keep the crown, my blade is 1/2" below the runners.

Here is a before and after pic,,, 2 passes down, 2 passes up,,

Today I tryed something new, I haven't heard it mentioned before.
I hung three 100 pound tractor front end weights on the ditch-side of my LP,,,
THAT helped it cut on the ditch side :thumbsup:

 

[JRobyn]

You're correct, CAD - much more like 4ft. And this is exactly why I decided that 3-point tilt wasn't going to do the job, since that tilt is determined just by the tractor rear tire contact patch, AND because there's no real downforce even when tilted. As you have found using some additional weights for downforce.

The first blade setting I tried was about the same as yours; 3/4" below the skids. That looked like WAY too much cut for my taste, especially for the off-ditch side. So I read the LandPride manual that said that "the most commonly used" adjustment is 1/4" below the skids. That sounded like too little, so I decided on 3/8" for both sides. That's the setting where I first tried grading, using 3-point tilt to establish crown..

The revelation for me was (as is also described in the manual) that crown is MUCH more effectively created by tilting the blade carrier within the frame. Hence why I raised the off-ditch side to 1/4" above the skids. I acknowledge that this still leaves a very slight crown, but hopefully all that is needed.

I did also notice, that the first pass on a rutted road means that the off-ditch skid is IN the rut, so it doesn't hold the off-ditch side of the scraper up like it should to make a good crown. It does MUCH better on the second pass, after most of the wheel rut is graded out. But so far, I have only done second passes in a few places where the road was badly rutted to begin with. My first aggressive pass with the box blade also helped a lot. Hopefully, I won't need to do that again unless we have another 5"/2 hr rain!

I don't want to make this road TOO perfect, or Granny will be flying down it at 45mph!

 

[Doloe]

I am totally convinced that other families using a private road who do not do the maintenance are untrainable in such matters. :confused3:

gg

I would agree with this to a point...... My wife seems to be oblivious to concept.
But then who else could we blame the pot holes on?