Box Scraper Beginners guide to using a box blade

   / Beginners guide to using a box blade #71  
Thanks for digging that one up. Being a newbie, it was long before my time at TBN. I just read all 7 pages.

Now there is also a good video on box-blading at (Temporarily blocked due to reports of company closure), but there was a lot of good info in this little webinar! Retroactive thanks to the participants!
 
   / Beginners guide to using a box blade #72  
Thanks for digging that one up. Being a newbie, it was long before my time at TBN. I just read all 7 pages.

Now there is also a good video on box-blading at (Temporarily blocked due to reports of company closure), but there was a lot of good info in this little webinar! Retroactive thanks to the participants!

Good video. However, I don't have that level of drive lane as the video showed leveling dirt.

Cheers
 
   / Beginners guide to using a box blade #73  
Hiya,

I just to say a big thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread over time.

I only have 50 hrs experience on a tractor. I just got a boxblade last month and used it for the first time last week to help clean up about 300 ft (out of 800--500 still to go) of road and spread out ~32 yds of road base.

There are still some bumps and dips. I may have put down too much material in some areas and not enough in others. All of which I figure are due to my inexperience.

I can say that if I hadn't had the information in this thread (and the others on the forum), I would still be out there reinventing the wheel while turning the air blue.

Of course the true test of the road will be when we get our next frog strangler of a storm. We will see if the repairs hold up :D
 
   / Beginners guide to using a box blade #74  
Although a storm is a PITA normally, it can also help.
You can view it as an "indicator" where the run-off is worst. and where the most damage occurs. That is, go out there ans see how your road is shedding water, or if it is collecting it. Wherever it is collecting water, try to cut a gradual slope or crown, so the water runs off to the side. Ruts and puddles are great indicators of where you need to make corrections to your road. Your goal is the get that water off the road and into your gutters...and finally into a drainage culvert out to an area where it doesn't matter. Each year your road will suffer less and less damage if you use that method.

I know getting out there in the pouring rain can be miserable.
But I try to view it a s a positive. Seeing it then is a sure fire way to address the worst conditions and make corrections. If you can't get out there during the storm, the damaged areas after the storm are another way to identify problem areas. But sometimes actually seeing it makes you aware of where the problem starts. In other words, lets say you see a lot of ruts or other damage and you only repair the ruts. Well, just repairing the ruts will not eliminate the problem. You have to see where all that water is coming from and divert it before it gets to that rutted area so it doesn't do it again next year. You can do do the repairs when the weather lets off a little or after the storms pass.
It's a great time to cut in new gutters because the ground is soft and workable.
Rob-
 
   / Beginners guide to using a box blade #75  
I have a question regarding rocks after you use the box blade. When my driveway was built they use what we call pit run, it has rock from 3 inch to 9 inch in diameter, my problem is that when I pass the blade some of them come up. some will leave a trench as I am pulling the box blade, but my biggest problem is picking them up at the end of the "Blading". I do it by hand put them in the bucket, and it take a long time, my driveway is a little over 1 mile long, Is their any implement I could use to pull behind the tractor that would either put them in a pile or even pick them up?
 
   / Beginners guide to using a box blade #76  
Hi Bob,
I have the same problem with the rocks leaving a "trail or small trench" if they are not scooped up by the box blade. And I do the same as you do ... go out there and remove them by hand and dump them to the side of the road.
I personally don't know of an attachment that will pick up only those rocks?

Remember that once your road is established and fairly smooth, you don't want to keep cutting it deeper and deeper each time you use the box blade. If this is the case, that your road is already established pretty much how you want it, set you box blade so that it does not cut the road too much, but rather that it glides over the road and only cuts away the ruts or piles that stick up. You goal should be to smooth it back out again.
After you remove the rocks, it's very likely that even though you are only trying to smooth it out again, you will still pick up some rocks that make those grooves in the road. It's one of those things that you have to deal with. It should get less and less over time, but will continue and will happen regardless.

One thing to do is occasionally have some DG (decomposed granite) to spread over the rough areas. I am lucky and have a "pit" on my property where I can get the DG to help spread over the crummy parts of my road. With a mile long road, I suspect you may have an area on your property that you can get some to do that too. when you do that, it's important to do it when the road is moist and will accept the mew material. Equally important is to run over it to compact it it into the rest of your road or it will just wash off during the next rain.

But as far as the rocks, if they are in your road, sooner or later they will appear. It's one of those "never ending chores" that we have to deal with.
Rob-
 
   / Beginners guide to using a box blade #77  
Thank you for your answer My road is establish but with the cold weather we get up here, -40 F in the winter and 3 feet of snow in the spring the frost bring them up, so every spring........
I do not have a gravel pit yet, I say yet because my 2 neighbors have one and I have access to them, here the gravel is under 20 feet of clay, so I have not taken the time to dig a 20 feet deep hole in my yard yet (80 acres), but someday I will have my own gravel pit, my neighbors tell me why bother, I can take theirs, but it would be nice to have my own.
I was hopping something existed, I do not know anything about the rake people are talking about so I wanted to know if that was what it was for, if I can not find anything I will build a drag this summer, at least it would put the rocks in a row, I am thinking of welding 4 inch angle iron with the small end of the V sticking up, and then welding these angle iron in a V shape and leaving a gap on the small end of the V this way the rocks would be left in a row and easier to pick up, as any one ever tried that?

sometinng like this with a flat bar on each side of the drag sorry not to good at drawing \ /
\ /
\ /

I know it would also pick up some loose gravel but I can fix that with the box blade after I pick up the rocks. Any Comments or ideas?
 
   / Beginners guide to using a box blade #78  
I wish I had found this thread last year....... I've been practicing with my box blade for months, but never once did it cross my mind to adjust the top linkage. How stupid do I feel?
 
   / Beginners guide to using a box blade #79  
Bumping for the box blade newbies. :)
 
   / Beginners guide to using a box blade #80  
I subscribe to excellent threads like these and try to reference them in responses to newbies to the subject.

So much is repeated on here ad infinitum that it's ridiculous.

Thanks for the bump.
 
 
 
Top