Leveling sand pile

[sewells]

Okay, I took the plunge, got a new JD 790 FWD, 419 loader 5' Tufline box blade, 9" auger, SQ600 5' Bush Hog. First job I tackle, I can't really seem to get exactly the results I want. Believe me, it's not the tractor or the implements. They're great and I like them a lot!

I'm making a round pen to train my young horses in. Got two big dumploads of washed river sand. Had a guy who knows what he's doing come over with his tractor (before I bought mine) and make a really nice level pad in my back pasture for the round pen.

My problem is I've got the sand spread out after about 4 hours of work but for the life of me I can't get it to level out nicely. I've got little 6" high bumps of sand all over the place. I've tried leveling with the box blade. I tried leveling with the FEL bucket edge. So far, the best results have come from tilting my bucket lip down and back lowering it into contact with the sand and then backing up slowly to spread the sand.

My question is this. Am I missing something here? Should I be using a different piece of equipment or using what I have in a different way? I'm a complete newby to tractor use so I'm open to suggestions. I'd really like to have flat sand for my wife to start working our youngster horses out on.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Steve Wells

 

[Ledgemere Farm]

Are your 3PH arms level? Some have an adjustment on one side or the other to angle the hitch.

 

[sewells]

Yes, they seem to be level. I should have been more specific as to the problem with the box blade. As the tractor goes up one of the small rises (approx. 6" of sand that isn't level yet) the box blade digs in deeper because raising of the front end of the tractor makes the box blade go down in the back. When the tractor gets over that little ridge of sand the box blade comes back up letting sand spill out of the box. The sand spills, guess where, pretty much right where the little ridge was in the first place. So now, I have a bigger ridge (at least a wider one) than I did in the first place and I haven't leveled the sand much at all. In fact, it makes more for a washerboard type of surface in the sand than it does a level surface.

I suspect I'm just not taking something into account or overlooking some way to use the tool that should be obvious to me but isn't.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[Spencer]

You may want to try pushing the sand with the back of your boxblade while going in reverse. This way your tractor will be traveling on the level surface that the blade has already made.

 

[Typhoon]

Ok, the ridge that you are talking about, don't hit it at the same angle again... hit it 90 degrees from where you just did.. see what im saying? You should be hitting the ridges from the ends of them (parallel) not from the sides. Hope you understand what im saying here.. hard to explain without a drawing.
-Brad

 

[normde2001]

To start with, set your boxblade about 1-2" above level ground and drive around. that will knock down the high spots and fill in the lows. As you get better at it, you will be able to "time" lifting and lowering the box to compensate for the dips and rises of the tractor. It kind of reminds me of icing a cake with a big knife.

 

[Bird]

If you're trying to smooth it while driving forward, the box blade needs to be tilted back just enough to keep the front blade off the surface; i.e., lengthen your top link. And if you're trying to smooth it in reverse, then the blade needs to be tilted slightly forward to raise the rear blade slightly off the surface; i.e., shorten the top link. In each of those cases, you would lower the 3-point all the way for the blade to float. And if you add a hydraulic top link so you can do that on the fly, you'll never want to be without a hydraulic top link again. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[Henro]

I don't know if this will help, but with my box blade, if I want to smooth things, what I do is extend the top link a whole lot, so the box blade is hanging on a pretty good angle.

Then I lower the 3ph all the way and drag the box on the ground. This way the box seems to stay on the ground even if the front of the tractor goes up and down over bumps...

The only thing that actually does any work in this setup is the rear blade of the box. I have been able to get quite good results with fine crushed limestone, so I would expect you would get good results with sand too.

Try it and see what happens...works for me...

 

[sewells]

Tried using the rear blade on the box blade going in reverse. It was a little better but I still couldn't get the surface to level out like I want it (why I care that much when the horses are going to unlevel it pretty much immediately is a mystery to me, guess I just want to know how to do it if I need to in the future). Someone else mentioned shortening the toplink when I'm using the rear blade and moving in reverse. I didn't try that and that sounds promising. I had lengthened the top link when using the front blade of the box going forward so I don't know why I didn't shorten it when doing the opposite thing.

Oh well, I program computers all day every day for a living so it stands to reason I'm not going to see the obvious /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif
Thanks for the reply.

Steve Wells

 

[sewells]

Well, I think my first mistake was to use the FEL to scoop up the sand from the pile and then dump it. I wound up with tons of mini-piles of sand all over the round pen. I would have been better off if I had dragged it back with the back side of the FEL bucket in the first place. By the time I figured that one out, I already had the problem with bumpy piles.

So many in fact, that I couldn't really parallel with one without being in line with another. Oh well, live and learn. I think I've got it now to the point where I can drag my chain harrow around on it and smooth out the lumpy stuff I think.

Thanks for the info.

Steve Wells