Any GradeMaster owners here?

[MotorSeven]

I have a 7' HD box blade and T&T along with 2,000' of moderately steep driveway. I can maintain a crown with the BB but it just does not do that great of job and requires a lot of adjustment and neck craining. I am looking for something that will do it's own thing without much input from the nut behind the steering wheel. I have been researching here on grader blades and am considering the GradeMaster Utility 7 which is a 7'er that weighs 660lbs. I just got off the phone with the salesman and he said they will set it up for me to maintain a crown and that it can be changed to do flat. Anyway, their delivered price is just under $1,100 which seems very reasonable.
So, if anyone has one of these please chime in and let me know if you are satisfied with it.

Products

Oh, and they will paint it Kioti Orange for me:thumbsup:

 

[JoelT]

I just bought a Rankin GS5 for $1200 - 5'@460lbs, so your price seems OK. The GradeMaster (looks similar to a Frontier.) doesn't have rip blades which may not be a biggy for some but it didn't look like the blades were adjustable either which would bug me. I've used a box blade forever and also was "looking for something that will do it's own thing without much input from the nut behind the steering wheel." We just had nearly 2' of snow melt off so haven't had a chance to use mine yet. There's a loong thread or 2 around here somewhere where everyone raves about these grading scrapers.

 

[MotorSeven]

Thanks Joel. I have the salesman sending me some better pictures this week as their website has minimal info/pic's. They seem to be a small outfit, probably family run which is fine by me. Since I have not heard any negatives from anyone here on TBN I will most likely have U-7 enroute for M-7 very soon:laughing:

 

[deere5105]

Looked at these type graders for a long time. Wound up last year buying a local built unit. A guy that does a lot of welding/fabrication builds and sells some in his yard. Believe paid $700 for a 6' unit. Not sure about the adjustability of it, but it works well over long distances when trying to fill ruts. Still use box blade when needing to move any amount of material. Have considered adding the straight grader type blade that pivots up and down and in and out to be able to better adjust for pulling material to the center to create a crown. Seems this will allow the road bed to shed water better.

 

[beppington]

So you can compare, my Land Pride GS1572 (594 lbs) was $1,400.

Also, just to say, mine includes retractable shanks like most box blades, good for tearing up the ground, & then you can retract the shanks & grade it.

Not sure what they mean by setting it up to crown - All you need to do is adjust your 3 point hitch so one side is lower than the other. Maybe I'm missing something.

This is the only decent pic I have of it:

 

[xtn]

The usual design of these units seem to have the blade made of angle iron, and set up such that the scraped material rides up and over to settle back to the ground in a hopefully smooth condition. So it seems to me that if the blades are perpendicular to the direction of travel that no crown is produced, and that lowering one side of the 3-point only makes that side scrape deeper, still without making a crown.

To get material to move sideways I think the setup needs to have the blades angled away from the perpendicular. The units I have seen online are set up this way and are presumably designed to make a crown. So I don't think 3-point adjustment is what does it. The units that can be set up to work either way presumably have bolt-in blades that can be positioned either perpendicular or angled.

I assume any other adjustability must be related to depth of blade versus skids, to change how aggressive of a cut one gets.

From watching the video at everythingattachments, I understand the only 3-point adjustment desired is using the top link to evenly distribute the cutting work between the front and rear blades.

 

[tractorworks]

I have had their u6 blade for about 7 years. It will spoil you. I use it for light commercial work and it makes crowning easy. It also works well on open spaces for leveling. I use it mostly with a Kubota B2910 and can pull more dirt with it than a box blade. I think I paid 800 7 years ago so price seems good also.

 

[MotorSeven]

Not sure what they mean by setting it up to crown - All you need to do is adjust your 3 point hitch so one side is lower than the other. Maybe I'm missing something.

Bep, the salesman said that the angle of the blades can be adjusted like Xtn explained and I think he said that it would do a 2" crown.

The real interesting part of this story is I mentioned it to the wife this morning and I didn't even get the thousand yard stare/evil eye

I appreciate all the info from you guys, it looks like it is a go:thumbsup:

 

[the6shooter]

everythingattachments has a youtube vid. of the land plane in action.
You might give that vid. a look see. But $1100.00 seems to be a good price for a 84" land plane. Hope this helps.
david

 

[Professor Marvel]

I have the same grader as beppington and I think got it around the same price, I believe it is the same as the grademaster except ours has scaffif type teeth. I use the teeth frequently but they are not a requirement. Your price sounds very good but I would look into optional teeth.
You will not be unhappy with either.

 

[JoelT]

Someone that's got some grading scraper experience needs to confirm my thoughts on getting or maintaining crown. With a box scraper I use an offset 3point adjustment to leave a highside on the crown side of a pull. More often than not, before a finish pull, I don't fully drop the box scraper but hang it so it's plus or minus just barely grabbing on the crown side, which can make it pull pretty good on the outside. The grading scraper on the other hand is designed, I think ?, to have it's full weight down on both skids - zero 3point influence - well, except for the top link's angle of attack influence. So, to maybe get/keep a crown I figured I'd need to adjust the blades for a less aggressive cut on the crown side - maybe 1/4" 1/2" difference?

What say the guys that been there done that?

 

[Gordon Gould]

I have a homemade unit with straight blades. If the road is crowned it will stay crowned (unless I run down the middle straddling the crown which will flatten it. If the road is flat it will stay flat. In other words I can maintain the original road contour just fine unless it is completely ruined by a washout.

I think a fair statement to make on units with angled blades is that they will tend to create a crown. In most cases you just wont get that much material movement to the side to efficiently build a crown. Of course you can do it by making lots of passes. If you already have a crown they will maintain that crown as good or better than the straight blade units but you may only be able to travel in one direction.

You may also be better off with their heavier series 6' unit. Weight per foot of blade is important. But you can always add some to what you get.

They may set your unit up so the blade is lower on one side than the other as well as angled. This would help a little more in creating a crown. I would not like it if it was fixed that way. It would make it specialized and be very limiting for leveling or flat work. I would ask about this so you know what you are getting.

Regardless, you will love your new grader scraper. They are fantastic road maintenance tools.

 

[JoelT]

I think I'd quiz the dealer about adjustable blades or not too.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Gordon, do you find that you prefer to grade without your top link, or do you use it both ways depending on conditions? :confused3:

 

[Gordon Gould]

Gordon, do you find that you prefer to grade without your top link, or do you use it both ways depending on conditions? :confused3:

Brian, that is an old picture, taken before I got my hydraulic Top and Tilt from FitRite Hydraulics.
I used to grade the road with the fixed top link ( you can see it sticking up in the pic ) and once I had the surface all softened and remixed and I was sure there were no snags in the road that would make the scraper kick up on me w/o a TL, I would make one more pass with the chain top link just to even out the little places where I should have adjusted the top link but didn't. I haven't used the chain since I got the hydraulic top link. It is so easy to make TL adjustments as I go now. And I don't have to make that extra set of passes with the chain.

I should get a new picture with my Tnt and grader if you are going to be looking that close :laughing:

 

[MotorSeven]

I think I'd quiz the dealer about adjustable blades or not too.

You were right Joel, they will be welded in position for a 2" crown...not adjustable, but this will be used exclusively on gravel roads so I have no problem with that.

 

[JoelT]

You were right Joel, they will be welded in position for a 2" crown...not adjustable, but this will be used exclusively on gravel roads so I have no problem with that.

2"? To help me fill in my big voids of how to set these things up - I'm curious as to how they're gonna do that. I presume the blades will be below the skids a certain amount at the outside and positioned a lesser amount below the skids at the crown side. How much below the skids at each side is a good working number? Could you find out?

I suppose in a perfect world, with a 1/2" offset, 4 passes would give you a 2" crown....but?

 

[crazyal]

A grading scraper is on the list of things I need to get this summer. On the types with adjustable blades can you raise only one side? If so I would think that you could set it up so the blade would dig on the edge of the road and pull the dirt towards the center.

 

[beppington]

A grading scraper is on the list of things I need to get this summer. On the types with adjustable blades can you raise only one side? If so I would think that you could set it up so the blade would dig on the edge of the road and pull the dirt towards the center.

Mine adjust on both sides via 3 bolts (I think) on each side. I don't have any pics I took just to show this, but here are 3 that kinda do:

 

[Gordon Gould]

Mine adjust on both sides via 3 bolts (I think) on each side. I don't have any pics I took just to show this, but here are 3 that kinda do:

How do you like to set your adjustments up ? Do you change it much or keep it the same way all the time ?