Trencher attachment for box blade?

[old grayfellow]

Been trying to cut some shallow drainage trenches with a box blade on my 186d, by dropping one side of the 3pt hitch way down. The box blade is then angled so it cuts only on one end. It works "sort of", but not very efficiently since the box blade won't bite in very deep and can't take on very much dirt in this position.

Instead of this, i was thinking of making a "trenching blade" attachment maybe 12" wide and extendable down to 10" deep (below the level of the box blade). Was thinking to weld or bolt a "bridge piece" of 1/4" steel between 2 ripper teeth that mount in the blade (following their forward angle), to turn it from 2 ripper teeth into a single dirt removal blade. That way i could use the box blade level, and as the dirt was brought up by the trencher it would fill the box blade.

Will this work?

 

[Car Doc]

Well it might do just fine you are the eyes on that project are you trying to remove dirt from the trench or just displace it? Have you ever seen a middle buster? Its a potato digger by some peoples definition anyway they will dig nice trenches and are usually fairly inexpensive new at around $120-150 and used probably a little less. Welcome to the forum btw!

 

[GolfAddict]

Have you tried putting the rippers down? I built a long drainage ditch alongside one of my son's driveways. I was having the same trouble you are experiencing, but then I put the rippers down. By tilting the box blade way down and with the rippers down, I found it worked very well. The ripper on the high side did not dig in much and on the low side all the way in. The blade would then carry the earth away, much more on the low side than the high side. It took quite a few passes and I would alter my path slightly each time so the rippers would not follow in the same "trench" each time.

When I had the ditch shape I was happy with, I cleaned it all up and smoothed it off with the rippers back up. It turned out well for me. May be worth a try if you haven't already tried this...

 

[old grayfellow]

Thanks for the ideas--
I'd like to remove the dirt more than to displace it, but can go either way.

My box blade didn't come with rippers so i don't have any yet, maybe that's the trouble. I'll get some and give it a try with them, maybe no need to make the shovel blade connecting them. Although it would be nice if that allowed me to just cut a neat vertical trench in a couple passes with the blade level, instead of tearing up a wide area of dirt and getting a wide slanting trench like i've been doing.

 

[DutchHenryBrown]

You might want to check out Everything Attachments.com he has a video on using a BB to cut a ditch and other things. Good luck.:thumbsup:

 

[deepNdirt]

Back when I got my first tractor it came with only a Box scrape, and for the most part Moving dirt was all I needed to do at the time, although it came time where other task was necessary, so! rather than buying the tool I needed to perform the task I had idea's of improvising the use of the tool I already had, ( box scrape ) what I did to dig a trinch was I took a spade from an old plow I found at the salvage yard, I then drilled 2 holes into the outer edge ( Lip ) on the rear of the Box scrape so that I could bolt the plow to the Box, I made sure that the plow spade was high enough that I could travel with it and still not touch the ground, when I got to the area in which I wanted the trench I simply drop it all the way down and start pulling/diging , ofcorse it took a couple of passes in the hard Ga, red clay but I put in 300 ft of underground cable and some water line with this makeshift trench digger,:thumbsup: Oh yeah! I could use it to lay out garden rows as well,
The pictures show example of what I used,