Any GradeMaster owners here?

[MotorSeven]

I have a 7' HD box blade and T&T along with 2,000' of moderately steep driveway. I can maintain a crown with the BB but it just does not do that great of job and requires a lot of adjustment and neck craining. I am looking for something that will do it's own thing without much input from the nut behind the steering wheel. I have been researching here on grader blades and am considering the GradeMaster Utility 7 which is a 7'er that weighs 660lbs. I just got off the phone with the salesman and he said they will set it up for me to maintain a crown and that it can be changed to do flat. Anyway, their delivered price is just under $1,100 which seems very reasonable.
So, if anyone has one of these please chime in and let me know if you are satisfied with it.

Products

Oh, and they will paint it Kioti Orange for me:thumbsup:

 

[JoelT]

I just bought a Rankin GS5 for $1200 - 5'@460lbs, so your price seems OK. The GradeMaster (looks similar to a Frontier.) doesn't have rip blades which may not be a biggy for some but it didn't look like the blades were adjustable either which would bug me. I've used a box blade forever and also was "looking for something that will do it's own thing without much input from the nut behind the steering wheel." We just had nearly 2' of snow melt off so haven't had a chance to use mine yet. There's a loong thread or 2 around here somewhere where everyone raves about these grading scrapers.

 

[MotorSeven]

Thanks Joel. I have the salesman sending me some better pictures this week as their website has minimal info/pic's. They seem to be a small outfit, probably family run which is fine by me. Since I have not heard any negatives from anyone here on TBN I will most likely have U-7 enroute for M-7 very soon:laughing:

 

[deere5105]

Looked at these type graders for a long time. Wound up last year buying a local built unit. A guy that does a lot of welding/fabrication builds and sells some in his yard. Believe paid $700 for a 6' unit. Not sure about the adjustability of it, but it works well over long distances when trying to fill ruts. Still use box blade when needing to move any amount of material. Have considered adding the straight grader type blade that pivots up and down and in and out to be able to better adjust for pulling material to the center to create a crown. Seems this will allow the road bed to shed water better.

 

[beppington]

So you can compare, my Land Pride GS1572 (594 lbs) was $1,400.

Also, just to say, mine includes retractable shanks like most box blades, good for tearing up the ground, & then you can retract the shanks & grade it.

Not sure what they mean by setting it up to crown - All you need to do is adjust your 3 point hitch so one side is lower than the other. Maybe I'm missing something.

This is the only decent pic I have of it:

 

[xtn]

The usual design of these units seem to have the blade made of angle iron, and set up such that the scraped material rides up and over to settle back to the ground in a hopefully smooth condition. So it seems to me that if the blades are perpendicular to the direction of travel that no crown is produced, and that lowering one side of the 3-point only makes that side scrape deeper, still without making a crown.

To get material to move sideways I think the setup needs to have the blades angled away from the perpendicular. The units I have seen online are set up this way and are presumably designed to make a crown. So I don't think 3-point adjustment is what does it. The units that can be set up to work either way presumably have bolt-in blades that can be positioned either perpendicular or angled.

I assume any other adjustability must be related to depth of blade versus skids, to change how aggressive of a cut one gets.

From watching the video at everythingattachments, I understand the only 3-point adjustment desired is using the top link to evenly distribute the cutting work between the front and rear blades.

 

[tractorworks]

I have had their u6 blade for about 7 years. It will spoil you. I use it for light commercial work and it makes crowning easy. It also works well on open spaces for leveling. I use it mostly with a Kubota B2910 and can pull more dirt with it than a box blade. I think I paid 800 7 years ago so price seems good also.

 

[MotorSeven]

Not sure what they mean by setting it up to crown - All you need to do is adjust your 3 point hitch so one side is lower than the other. Maybe I'm missing something.

Bep, the salesman said that the angle of the blades can be adjusted like Xtn explained and I think he said that it would do a 2" crown.

The real interesting part of this story is I mentioned it to the wife this morning and I didn't even get the thousand yard stare/evil eye

I appreciate all the info from you guys, it looks like it is a go:thumbsup:

 

[the6shooter]

everythingattachments has a youtube vid. of the land plane in action.
You might give that vid. a look see. But $1100.00 seems to be a good price for a 84" land plane. Hope this helps.
david

 

[Professor Marvel]

I have the same grader as beppington and I think got it around the same price, I believe it is the same as the grademaster except ours has scaffif type teeth. I use the teeth frequently but they are not a requirement. Your price sounds very good but I would look into optional teeth.
You will not be unhappy with either.