Best implement for maintaining a gravel driveway

[dmccarty]

bellweather,

"...how do you crown the driveway? "

I don't. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

I hear the Collective TBN GASP of shock! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

My land just is not flat. So the road is not either. I try to
set the box blade as flat as I can and just go at it. The water
runs off just fine.

But what you can do is adjust the lower 3PH to set the
box blade at an angle. That will put a crown on if you work
up and down the drive. Does that make sense?

Rip the road to loosen the material with the teeth down and
the box blade as flat as possible. I make quite a few passes
down the road. I drive straight up and down road on multiple
passes. Then make multiple passes going from one side to
the other. Looks like a drunk is driving the tractor. Then
I pull up the teeth. After my driveway building project which
I'm about to start a thread, I pulled my box blade teeth
completely out of the implenment. Then just drive up and
down the road and spread the gravel.

I'll start down one side. Work my way up the other. Then
down the middle.

The key to this is to go slow. I'll be in A range and 2-3rd
gear. Going fast does not get the job done faster. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
If you have a hydraulic top link that helps quite a bit. On the
other hand you really don't want to touch the toplink once its
set. If you have lots of wavy places in the road it might take
multiple passes to flatten things out a bit. But the key is to
go slow, and don't take big bites. Resist the impulse to
play with the toplink. Sometimes you have to but I think I
mess with it to much...

And remember. It ain't rocket science. Its dirt and gravel.
If you mess it up eventually you will get it back in place. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Hope this helps,
Dan McCarty

 

[bellweather]

dmccarty...
That sounds pretty clear. I think I'm ready to take on the driveway - I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks again for you input.

 

[cisco]

For redistributing gravel on a fairly reasonable road (no large pot holes or the like), my county crew uses a large York rake, attached to the back of a huge truck, no less, from which gravel is periodically dumped. However, when the potholes are deep, the road rutted to a major degree or the like, it's graded - for those of us with tractors and modest pieces of property, it means a box blade. Angling the box blade (by using the adjustable side of a 3 pt) restores the crown, and if really angled, can rip a decent ditch on each side of the road (those this takes a bunch of passes over the area, each one digging deeper). If the road is really a basket case, then as per prior posts, lower the rippers on the box blade (after a modest rain - I heartily agree - dust is not my favorite food), and tear up everything, then smooth and shape the result with the box blade. Simple, and time consuming. If you're finding that a dirt road requires frequent re-working, think about graveling it a couple of times - not a panacea, but lengthens the maintenance interval.

 

[Hydraman]

Built this gizmo the other day-- tried it out yesterday-- it works GREAT!!! Control is very precise!! Almost micrometric!! Vertical control is hydraulic -- blade pivot is hydraulic!! Blade is 9' - pull w/ 70HP at idle-- Turn hydraulic flow control to minimum.. All I need to do now is paint it, and use it!

 

[DocHeb]

Pictures from other views please! How do I attach a laser levelling system? /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[Hydraman]

For some reason unknown to me, all other pic's I have of this are way too big for this forum- the next pic has 157000bytes, and they all go up from there. I will keep trying different angles, light, etc. to get pic's I can post here!!

 

[karmakanic]

Hydraman,

There should be an adjustment on your camera for the resolution. I had the same trouble until I changed the resolution from fine to medium.

Your photo manipulation software should also have a way to adjust pixels. (Don't know if pixels is the right term, my software just calls it picture quality, and asks for me to adjust it when I save the pic to an outside folder) I use medium resolution on the camera and still have to lower pic quality to 3/4 on the scale to get them to post. But they still look fine on the site, since computer monitors can't use the higher quality anyway.

You want to shoot for 50k-70k bytes. I don't think just camera angles, light, ect will get you there.

HTH,
Dave Perry

 

[karmakanic]

BTW, That's a real nice grader you made,,,very impressive...that'll get the job done for sure,,,what project did you build it for? Surely there's a project?

Dave

 

[MarkV]

Hydraman, sure hope you can work out the photo glitch. I know many of us would like to see more of your blade. It would be a worthy subject for a description and photo tour in the “Build-it Yourself” forum.

MarkV

 

[Ozarker]

All you have to do is reduce the size of the picture using your graphics program. Not sure what program you are using but almost all graphics programs have a way to reduce the pictures and save it smaller.

Try reducing it 10% at a time until you get it small enough to post.