Rear Blade Rear Blade Tips

   / Rear Blade Tips #1  

njrqs

Veteran Member
Joined
Dec 5, 2000
Messages
1,396
Location
Queensland, Australia
Tractor
Kubota L1-20 DT
Well all this viewing TBN got me excited, and after seeing how much dirt I can loosen with my single tyne ripper, today I ordered my first NEW implement. A 4' rear blade. Made by a mob here called Berends.

I finally got to see the standard model this morning (there aren't any in stock in my neck of the woods) and it looked heaps strong enough for me. But ordered the heavy duty one which is 155kg and has offset and tilt etc.

So now I have to wait a few weeks for it, but want to get all the tips I can for using one. Can't find many specifics on recent posts. Will be using it to drop the levels slightly around my shed (in conjunction with ripper) and for general driveway maintenance.

Any tips for using these small blades would be appreciated and anything "what not to do".

Cheers

<font color=blue>Neil from OZ.</font color=blue>
 
   / Rear Blade Tips #2  
Neil,

I'll offer a couple of tips. I have a 7' rear blade that I've used for gravel road maintenance and digging some shallow trenches.

1. Be very careful adjusting offset if the blade is lifted to max height on the 3 point! At least in my case, the blade wants to "fall" to either side once I pull the offset pin. As blades are kind of heavy it can surprise and hurt you.

2. I prefer to grade the road making small changes and using multiple passes (that way if I make a mistake it is smaller).

3. Don't try grading if the road is wet (no matter how bad you want to play), you might make a big muddy mess.

4. If you suddenly find that you are grabbing too much gravel raise the 3pt only slightly. Small changes make big differences. If you keep moving forward you will eventually spread the gravel out nicely.

5. Perform small grading jobs on the road fequently rather than big grading jobs on the road infrequently. Once water starts to pool on a road it goes downhill pretty quickly.

I guess that is about it, let me know if you have any other questions.

Peter
 
   / Rear Blade Tips #3  
Neil,

I have to agree with paccorti's comments.

I have just begun to learn how to use the rear blade. Each time I use it I learn more about it.

Just last weekend, I cut and smoothed a new driveway for my neighbor. He had about 20 cubic yards of reclaimed soil which needed to be pushed around, graded, and smoothed. Some of the work was cutting some existing clay banks. What I did was to angle and tilt the blade to cut groove along the bank. I then leveled the blade and used the groove as my line to level the grade. Just like you would for plowing. Got the front and rear tires in the groove and made multiple passes to get the right grade.

The blade I have can tilt, angle, and swivel 360 degrees. This means I can turn the blade to push materials also. I was on and off that tractor more times that I can remember. Sometimes you need to get off of the machine to survey the situation and think things through.

Hope this helps.

Terry
 
   / Rear Blade Tips #4  
Paccorti,
I am considering purchasing a medium duty 7ft rear blade for my TC35 and have a few questions for you - Can you rotate your 7' rear blade 360 degrees while it is hooked up to your TC35D? Does your 35D handle the 7ft blade OK? What make or brand is your blade?
Thanks for any comments-
-mudx
 
   / Rear Blade Tips
  • Thread Starter
#5  
Terry

Did you use your FEL for that job also. I don't have one and was wondering how well I will go shifting dirt/gravel around.

If I get some gravel for the driveway delivered I expect it is a fair ask for me to spread it too far from the main pile.

I have an old L1501 no hydro etc. so I expect a lot of forward/reversing is in order !

I already have so many projects lined up for this blade. Should pay for itself I hope !!

Thanks also pacorti. I'll take those comments on board. I expect it will take a while to get used to but I'll get the hang of it.

Any hints to work out where the blade gets to natural ground level as opposed to having it float, trying to dig in??

I think there is an adjustable stop on my hydraulics lever so will have to fiddle with that. I assume when spreading soil.gravel etc. you want the blade to be at natural ground or higher to prevent digging instead of spreading.

(I hope you follow - I have confused myself here !)

Cheers

<font color=blue>Neil from OZ.</font color=blue>
 
   / Rear Blade Tips #6  
njrqs,

Been busy buying more goodies for the tractor and getting work done around the house. More FEL work and rear blade work.

To answer your question about the FEL, yes, I used the FEL to move the materials and dig a little. Most of the work involved was simply using the rear blade to move and smooth. I used the FEL to smooth out the work when backing up by droping the bucket and floating it on the surface. If you haven't learned this trick yet, you set your bucket level on the ground, slap your FEL control to drop the bucket and it will float along the surface of the ground smoothing and filling in low spots as you back up. Look at your FEL operations manual to explain exactly how yours works. Or as we say in the IT industry - RTFM (read the friggin manual). /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif I learned about this trick from the TBN brain trust and then read my manual. Man, it really makes the job easy and look good too.

No tricks on gettng the bucket level. Just practice!!

Hope this helps.

Terry
 
   / Rear Blade Tips #7  
Or Read The FINE Manual /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

tractor.gif
 
   / Rear Blade Tips #8  
Mike,

Typically another F word is used where I work!! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Terry
 
   / Rear Blade Tips #9  
There's a difference between what word we think when a customer/computer operator calls, who obviously did not read the manual, and what word we say/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif. Too often we get calls from an operator (back in my mainframe days) that started with "We just got this message on the console.". Our response, "Did you look it up in the manual?". "No" was the usual response to which we politely (as polite as one can be after being awakened from a sound sleep) replied, "Please read the message to me." This didn't have to happen too often before the operators would at least look the message up before calling us.

tractor.gif
 
   / Rear Blade Tips #10  
Mike,

I understand exacly what you are saying!!

Back in my scientific/engineering mainframe computer days, I worked at Los Alamos. As a support contractor, we had to rotate weekends just in case something happened.

Well, one weekend, we lost a large disk drive (remember when 1 gig disk drives cost $75k /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif). The customer engineers fixed the hardware problem and the operator was supposed to follow normal restore procedures - riiiighhhht!!.

This experienced operator was in the middle of the restores when one of the backup tapes was corrupted - like tape number 16 out of 20. In his wisdom, he took tape number 16 from the previous weeks backups. His reasoning was, well, it was the 16th tape. What's the problem!!!

Needless to say, it ruined my weekend. Took about a day to recover from that mess.

Terry
 
 
 
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