Box Blade or Landscape rake?

[Kenster]

Spiker, I realized that the borrowed box blade was a four footer when the tire tracks weren't getting covered up. Other than that... it did a great job. But I have that one, plus another neighbor with a five foot box blade, and a more distant friend with both a five foot back blade and a five foot box. So, I'm good on blades, I think. I do believe a rake with wheels is the way to go. And it will be a six footer so that when set at a 45 degree angle it will cover both tire tracks.

I'm in Texas but otherwise, I'd sure be talking to you about your rake.

 

[mojoinco]

Hmmm...been thinking of adding some wheels behind both my box blade and blade. And I have an engineless riding mower. I think I see a marriage in the spring!

A 6 ft rack will be too short for a 45 degree angle. Sqrt of (A*A +B*B)=C. C is the hypotenuse, or the long side of the triangle. So 45 degree blade angle is only 3' 3" width. I expect you will likely be normally using it at something like 1/2 of that angle. As my trig is more than a little rusty, you might just go to a dealer with a tape measure and eyeball the width at a reasonable angle. But if you were to look around for trig identities of a right angle triangle with one 22.5 degree angle, and one 68.5 degree angle, and all the opposite side stuff (insert blade length) it wouldn't be that hard to figure. Oh, the dreams of sin, cos, etc I may have (nee nightmares).

 

[PapaPerk]

Box blade without a doubt.

 

[AGTtactical]

I have a 6' boxblade and an 8' landscape rake. Landscape rake does the best job every time (with a caveat): You need to have guage wheels on it so that the leveled gravel sets the plane of the road, you need to have it big enough such that it is wider than than tractor wheels when angled out, and you need to use a chain for the upper link so it can float in a level position no matter what bumps or holes you tractor runs into.

I cut the rake to 45 degrees to comb the gravel towards the center of the road in each direction and then set the angle to zero and comb the top section flat. With a wide enough rake, you can do 1 lane of the driveway in each pass and it will be Road Commission Approved quality. The little teeny weeny rakes are for scratching dirt. Get one big enough to be proud of the result. You can hang a few hundred lbs of weight on the rake if you need to dig a bit deeper into the base.

BTW, my box blade has the hydraulic top link and it will pull the gravel up and along. But, the rake makes it into a driveway instead of a logging road. Best driveway so far has been made with crushed asphalt. No more dust, quiet, stays put, looks nicer that crusher dust and easier on the snow plow skids.
Use a back blade if you like roller coasters....

Wow, what a great post zzvyb6! This is exactly my intended us! My tractor is 72" wide...rake (EA Land Shark with center gauge wheel) will have 45 degree angle and 30" offset ability). Would you still recommend an 8' rake, or a 7? My road width is 12' wide, 15' in the curves, #34 rock. Photos below...kind of hard to see, I know.

The EA has a slot for floating...only about 5" of slot. Are you saying to not use that and instead use a chain since a slot might bottom out?

For the scarifier box blade guys, I would not do that. The last thing I'd want to do is dig up my compacted road bed, which took a long time to settle properly. Much of my number #34 is compacted so well its like concrete. Some places need dressing...mainly pulling rock back from the edges and into the low areas. I rather do a nice refinish with a rake with gauge wheels...2nd choice would be a rear blade w/gauge wheels, 3rd a land plane, 4th a box blade with no scarifiers, and last box blade with scarifiers down.