Advice needed on grader type to build?

[Nigelw]

Struggling here with a little self made issue of which is going to be better to have on our farm?

Issue, need a grader for pulling in the sides of the 2 outdoor and 3 indoor riding arena's, the material is waxed fibre sand and can be fluffy and dry as well as hard and damp.

We have the John Deere 4410 compact full hydraulic compact tractor as well as a Schafer compact loader.

Initial idea was a rear mounted 3pt drag blade to pull the sides in with fittable box sides to work as a drag box for levelling the lows, but then I happened on a picture of a belly blade on a compact JD and started looking at that idea, and after going over to a neighbors for coffee today I saw an attachment that fits the front of a wheel loader that converts it into pretty much a motor grader.

What do you guys think would be either better suited or easier to build and run on which machine?

 

[Renze]

Hah, finally another Dutchman on here !!

my brother has horses too, and we made him a drag of 3" pipes with a classic horse harrow inbetween. He has a sand floor with fibers (waste from carpet factories) mixed into it.

If you use a blade, you can easily make high and low spots. Especially if one of the horse riding girls operate the tractor every now and then. Better would be something like a pasture drag (weidesleep) with an angle iron that cuts off the high spots, but doesnt collect material in front of a blade if you run it too deep, but allows it to run overtop. Its a more fool proof concept with less problems caused by wrong operation.

All you want to do is clear the horse track along the edge (hoefslag) and fill the hoofmarks. So you need to work the surface only, not actually move material (you have a Schaffer to fill holes if horses dig any when running free)

If you put it on the front of your articulated loader, you can either drive forward and leave tire marks, or drive backward and drive yourself stuck along the wall: when you get too close to the wall, you need to steer the rear end towards the center, but that moves the front (with your arena drag) in opposite direction. When looking over your shoulder to steer the rear of the articulated loader into the right direction and you correct your steering to move closer to the wall, the drag swings to the wall as well and you're likely to hit the wall.

On the arena drag/harrow we made, as i said its a pipe frame but we put welding elbows on the corners so the corners of the frame are rounded, minimising damage when driving too close to the wall. Also with a tractor 3pt hitch, the drag wont push against the sidewall when you dont tighten the stabiliser chains. So i'd go for a drag behind the tractor, not on the Schaffer, because in horse arenas you'll allways do the most work along the edge where the horses walk the most, filling the rut about 50cm from the walls, with the loose dirt that accumulates right beside the wall where no horse sets foot.

 

[Nigelw]

Hi there, although I live in the EU county of the Netherlands I am an Englishman I am affraid to say LOL

Well, the thing is with the blade, I am the only operator here who would be allowed to use it, the girls are not allowed on the Schaffer at all and only a handful of other staff here are allowed to drag the arenas with the JD 4410 and even then they are scared to death of getting close to the sides!!!

I am an experienced opertor having some 20,000+hrs in the seat of prett much every piece of heavy plant from 75T diggers, Dump trucks, bull dozers, motor scrapers and graders and hence the idea of getting on with building the grader type machine.

I am leaning towards a front mounted blade on the front of the schaffer, wheelings don't worry me as long as it gets me off the handle of a rake ;-) I hate the current drag behind the JD and have a new plan for a better machine, the current one was built for straight sand surface and has a curved "C" tine to rip the surface and levelling bars behind it with a roller to pack it down, the problem with it is that the "C" tines pick up the fibre and that tends to ball up in front of the tines and that gives a very bad grade and looks terrible so I'd like to get a better drag on the back to give me a clean and level finish.

The plan for the belly blade of the JD was to use the front loader hydraulics to give lift and lower from the up and down control and using the side to side movement to power a double acting ram to enable angling of the corners of the blade. I had wondered whether this idea could be carried forward onto the front mounted schaffer blade but I'm not sure about the costings for those sorts of hydraulic fittings and piping????

The rear drag blade idea would just use a linkage on a trailing dolly wheel that would be operated by a single acting hydraulic ram to lower the blade and deepen the depth of cutting, on a swivel it could be straightened out and box sides fitted to enable dragging of materials into low spots.

 

[Nigelw]

Started gathering materials today as a couple of salvaged "I" beams have been set to one side, on the look out for some 6mm flat plate to build the Schaffer mounting, then on to deciding exactly what and how I want to build it?

Might try just a front blade on the boom but think it will possible dig too much as it can lever and pivot off the front axle, but it is possible that the design may be built in such a way as to enable it to morph through to the best possible machine for my application.

 

[boggen]

i no longer remember the thread title. but it was within the last 90 days. someone posted a regular 3pt hitch rear blade. that had a pipe come off the back side of it. and then another pipe clear out in the back that formed a T (little bit narrow than the blade itself) from what i could tell, you adjusted the "top link" on the 3pt hitch. along with the lower lift arms, to adjust angle of blade and/or if the back T slide across the ground.

i want to say the T portion that stuck out the back was on a "hinge" right at the back side of the 3pt rear blade. and then someone welded the hinge completely.

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there is a much older thread here on TBN, 3pt hitch rear blade, was slid over a couple 4x4's, one end of the 4x4's attached to 3pt hitch (a simple bar going through lower lift arms), and then on the far back end, some gauge wheels. i think they were pin style to adjust height. and the rear blade was fasten in middle between rear of tractor and gauge wheels. to create more of a motor grader doing. ""lots of length between rear tires on tractor and gauge wheels in back. plus weight from 4x4's so the blade would not skip/hop across the ground. and you were still able to swing the blade 360 degrees to either pull stuff in from one side or the other side.

the motor grader style noted in above paragraph were there is a large distance between wheels with blade in center. help keep any sort of humps / dips from happening. the longer the distance the better in a sense.

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LPGS (land plane grader scraper) is more for gravel/rock driveways. and acts more like a sifter. bring rocks to the top and letting the fines fall down to the bottom. restoring a gravel driveway. i would imagine that would be a bad thing for horse arena, but no experience there.

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the actual blade "cutting edge" can make a difference from either a stand flat sheet of metal with a sharp edge placed on it. to more of a "curved" blade. curve blade will more likely allow material to curl up onto the blade and roll/fall over onto itself. breaking up the clumps and spreading things out better.

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there is offset 3pt hitch rear blades. the square pipe/frame between 3pt hitch connection and the connection for rear blade itself. is longer. and end of the pipe / frame work next to 3pt hitch pivots. allowing the entire blade to be swing out to one side of the tractor almost. this might be more useful, getting the tractor up off the fence lines, but still having the blade stick out further. so ya not leaving tire scuff marks on the fence.

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there are some other LPGS (land plane grader scaper) units out there. that go under different names. but i get a little gun shy. due to there really is no angling or thought put into the blade edges, or how things move back and forth.

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Tractor Attachments And Skid Steer Attachments For Any Tractor Or Skid Steer has a wide variety of implements, go through the list. of what they have, you may get some ideas.

google below line... and then click on images...

rear blade site:www.tractorbynet.com

the above line will only return stuff from TBN. and possibly help reduce some of the clutter that google brings back.