Need some ideas on building a land grader

[lzicc]

I am looking for something to grade my limestone driveway and was looking at a land grader. I think this would work well. Has anyone built one? It looks pretty basic to build, just trying to get some ideas. The blades look like they are curved, not sure if this is just the way the pics look or if they need to be curved. I'm am also trying to find out how far the blades go below the sides.

 

[DRL]

This is also on my too-do list. The ones I have looked at the blade was 3/4"-1" below skids. I was figuring on using blades off a box blade or similar.

DRL

 

[jimmysisson]

There's 178 threads under grader in Search - grab some coffee!
Jim

 

[Gordon Gould]

I built one. Used lots of ideas I found here. My blades are down 3/4". Good, bad, I don't know. It works is all I know. There are lots of opinions. I kept mine simple for lack of fabrication tools. The best advice I can give is make it heavy and make the space between the blades as big a practible for you. Do the search and read all the pros and cons.

 

[lzicc]

Golden Gould, nice job. I see your blades go straight across instead of at an angle, I wonder if that makes a difference.

 

[Gordon Gould]

Golden Gould, nice job. I see your blades go straight across instead of at an angle, I wonder if that makes a difference.

Me too
From what I've read people say they build a crown with the slanted blades. I use a rear blade to shape my road with crowns and pitches. Usually once a year or less. My grader does not alter the basic road contour that I set with the blade.
If I was going to do one thing different with mine it would be to make the blade depth adjustable. I wore 1/4" off my blades last year. With a rear blade you don't notice this but with the grader everything is relative to the skids. My blades are only 3/8" thick. I am going to get some 1/2" ones for it.

 

[Taylortractornut]

Ihave one with straight blades I built from mobile home trailer frames and grader blades. We have a larger one we had mad e by our friend William built for us copying a dura grader with angled blades. It works good but the angle blades are supposed to pull materials from the loaw side and moves them back into the road. One of our workers used ours and bladed the haul road with the blades pulling the material off the crown and put it on the shoulders. I had to go back over it with the blades angle the right way.

 

[smiley]

The angled blades not only move the material back up to the crown but the material moving across the blade fills any ruts and depressions a straight blade may miss. I built a drag type one years ago, from about 3" angle iron that had the front blade angled one way, part way across the 6' wide square frame, a second blade behind it to move the material back the other way and a third straight blade in back to level any windrows out.
I also posted here before about a boxblade modified for spreading blacktop as below.
If anyone already owns a boxblade, you can achieve the basicly same bridging affect by adding 4-6 ft angle irons with the fronts turned up, to the sides of your boxblade. I anchored mine at the front of the box and slotted the box at the rear so the runners could be adjusted up and down, to adjust the height of the cutting edge to lay a specific depth if you're working with loose material.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

With the blades angled, not only does the material move side ways a bit better, but this is the best way to remove wash boarding in a road. Most people just don't believe how well they work until either they see one in use in person or until they take the plunge and buy or build one.

Seems like for the most part, guys that make them are the only ones with the blades straight. From what I've seen all the ones that you buy that have fixed blades have them at an angle about 2' apart. Some company has them adjustable, but I don't remember who. Big money though. I agree with having the blades as far apart as you can get them. I know that on my bigger grader there is room to move the rear blade back some and I am going to do that someday.

I would like to emphasize that the heavier that any grading implement is, the better that it will work. I know that this has been said before, but if you can build a unit that weighs 150-200 pounds per foot of width you will have an implement that will work much better than one that is lighter and less money to build.

 

[AGGIE00]

For a smooth surface that doesn't hop, you need angled blades. This allows the box to bridge anything uneven and also cut out knots in the road. Most you will find have the cutting edge 3/4" below the skids. I would use any cutting edge that has a good bit of curve to it that helps the egde to cut. I would also make it as heavy as your tractor can handle. Grader blades would work well, but they are not reversible and would need replacing as they wear ever so slightly. Having said that, you would have to do a lot of work to wear a grader blade on a 1000 lb implement that is typically on a 50,000 lb machine.