Box Scraper Blade engineering

[Deere Dude]

I have a medium duty John Deere box blade and pull it with a 45 HP 3720. I can't level out rough dirt very well and was searching links and there are a few ideas of people putting tag wheels and other things in the rear to try to alleviate the dumping of the dirt when the tractor rears hit a little knoll or loading up when the rears hit a dip in the ground.
Before I do to much fabrication in this heat, what do you guys think, pro and con, of me bolting two 5-6" angle irons 6' long, of which I have, and one on each side of the blade. They would be bolted to the side plates. One side of the angle would be bolted to the side of the plate and the other side of the angle would be under the side plates. So the BB would sort of float on the edges. That way the They would trail the box blade by about 4' on each side. My thought is the BB would float on the long angle irons and not dig in when I didn't want it to.
Obviously I would have to take it easy and run it straight, no turning, so I wouldn't bend the side plates. The rear end of the angle irons would have to be bolted in place so they wouldn't bend in or out right away.
What do you think?
Chuck

 

[dex3361]

So your thinking of making a land plane out of your box blade? The only issue I can think of is when your tractor noses down or up and causes the beams to dig in. If you allowed a little give in your top link it helps with the problem you are having. When I use my Box Blade I use the float function of my hydraulic top link. This allows the top link to extend and retract to compensate for the rising and falling of the tractor when it hit high and low spots.

 

[jenkinsph]

I have considered making a set for my boxblade out of 4x6 box tubing. I should add that if you center the skids and allow them to swivel with stop blocks then you can still adjust the boxblade to dig as needed. The idea was to have something I could use instead of always bringing the larger plane along.


My experience with boxblades is that you need to go slow enough that you have time to adjust the hitch in realtime. Most newbies get frustrated with a boxblade because their groundspeed limits their reaction time when attempting to finish grade. When you approach a dip or mound you need to proceed forward only as fast as you can adjust the height of the boxblade. Practice makes perfect, the more seat time you get the easier this becomes.

A landplane/grader is alot easier to use for averaging out dips and mounds, I find it to be one of my favorite implements.

 

[Degolyerent]

Practice does make perfect for sure, just go slow so you can react to the drop or rise of the front of the tractor. When you feel a change in the tractor it is time to either raise or lower the blade and it is usually only a slight amount depending on the terrain you are working on.
If you practice for 50 hours or so you can start to get pretty good, I have a few thousand hours of grading under my belt now, but it was pretty trying at first but that was a long time ago(1970's)
If you are not going to grade much a landplane or a rake would definitely be easier,and maybe better on gravel drives anyway

 

[Deere Dude]

Ya, I guess that would be a land-pane of sorts. I am thinking I just have to slow down and adjust as the low spots need dirt. I was thinking I could just set it in one spot and drive around sightsee as I'm grading, but that doesn't seem to be the way it's going to work.

 

[sandman2234]

That little bit of speed reduction is what it takes to make a box blade work and those wheels are what it takes to make a land plane of sorts and allow a faster ground speed. Take it a little faster, by making the complete transition to a Dura-grader type of landplane and you can probably move about as fast as you want to, lol. My boxblade sits idle while the roadgrader gets the tar worked out of it, but that may just be because I haven't unhooked the grader from the tractor????
David from jax

 

[2manyrocks]

This is a very similar question to another thread where it was suggested that the OP use some oak skids on his box blade for the same reason. Steel --doesn't flex so much before bending. Oak will flex some but can break. Then's there is the wear factor.

Whichever one, I'd bolt them on so you can pull em off if you don't like em. If you use oak skids, it's no big deal to saw off a little if they happen to be too long.