Is 3x3x3/8 angle ok for grader/plane build?

[94BULLITT]

I have never used a land plane. I want to build one but I have not had the time to. I am going to build mine with the blades set straight. I think it would be more versatile that way. If you want to crown a road you can adjust your side link.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Found some 3x3x3/8 angle for a good price. I want to build a 7' Dura Grader type grader/plane for my 45hp JD5105. Will this material be sufficient for the cross pieces that hold the cutting edges? Also would like to use it for the cross pieces on the frame.

Thanks

To answer your question, no the metal is not heavy-strong enough for a 7 foot land plane grader blade in my opinion.

 

[bcp]

You can still use the 3x3x3/8 for crosspieces and hitch material.

Bruce

 

[hazmat ranger]

Good points on angled vs straight. I have some serious wash boarding on my drive and the backblade doesn't quite smooth it- angling reduces the lump a bit but skids and pulling more material would help fill/shape the road better.

Put this on my list of build projects!

 

[chim]

Here are a couple pics of one I had made up at work. We have quite a bit of gravel for parking and storage areas. The gravel gets beat up with yard lifts so we needed something to smooth things out. The homebrew landplane is made of two hefty pieces of I-Beam and 3x3x3/8 angle for blades and a couple pieces of scrap channel to reinforce the front and rear. The front piece of angle has a flat piece of 1/2" stainless flatbar stitched onto the bottom. The leading edge of the stainless was trimmed at about 45 degrees to make sure it would cut. The front angle/flatbar was welded into place so it was angled forward with the leading edge about 3/4" below the bottom plane of the beams. To make shoes for the front, we split a piece of schedule 40 pipe in half and welded one piece to the front of each beam. It works so well I can stick anyone on the tractor and they get the place looking great in short order.



When the material looks nice and flat, we then run over it with our homebrew roller. I used 24" schedule 40 pipe sliced into four 12" and one 18" pieces. Each piece was cast full of concrete with a 2-1/2" pipe in the center for the axle. The 2-1/2" pipe has a few "spokes" to tie everything together. I did this in lieu of making it one solid cylinder to avoid most of the skidding I anticipated at sharper turns. Each piece of the roller can spin at its own speed since they have a piece of 2" pipe running through them. The width came out to roughly 5-1/2 feet.

 

[jenkinsph]

chim,

I like your roller setup nice design that makes alot of sense. I may have to copy that.:thumbsup:

 

[94BULLITT]

I like the roller too.

 

[hazmat ranger]

Lots of impressive work!!

 

[jbwrangler]

To answer your question, no the metal is not heavy-strong enough for a 7 foot land plane grader blade in my opinion.

Thanks. I haven't bought any steel in a while, but it seemed like a pretty good price. 22.00 per 11.5' stick. I picked up 6 pieces.

 

[crazyal]

I think the angled blades work better to remove the washboards. Ideally you would want a land plane long, 8' or more. By doing so it's not going to move up and down with the small ruts and such. But 8' long is way too long for a driveway with turns or hills. That means for road work most grading scrapers are around 4' long. If your blades are lower than the skids a straight blade can hit a washboard and rise over it if it's hard and then fall back down. The angled blades will cut better because all the weight is on just the section of blade (vs the whole blade on a straight bladed GS) that's touching the washboard.

My BEFCO blades are angled and it does seam to pull the gravel to the side. I guess that's a feature but I actually wish it wouldn't. Often I'm trying to pull gravel up back up the hill on the driveway. Because of this it ends up trying to put the gravel from one side to the other. It forces me to do things to counter it.