Boxblade: scarifiers or weight?

[Briarwood]

While looking for a boxblade for my B2710 to maintian a 1500' gravel lane, I found a number of options and prices all over the board. I have narrowed my choices to two 5' blades. The heavier one has only 4 scarifiers and the lighter one has 5 scarifiers. Which is more important: number of scarifiers or overall weight? For $200 more, I can get the heavy blade with 5 scarifiers (different manufacturer) but is one more scarifier worth $200?

Briarwood

 

[JonLeonard]

I just got off my tractor 10 minutes ago. Been using my box blade for the past 6 hours on our road.

First, let me say, the box blade is not the tool of choice for simply maintaining a road. Its difficult to get gravel back to the center of the road with it since you really cant tilt or angle it. If you already have a road and just want to keep it up, I'd look for a rear blade that offsets and tilts (Im hoping to buy a Midwest Model 22 blade soon)

That said...a boxblade is a GREAT implement. Over the past week I have done a great deal of recontouring the sides of the road to help drainage, smoothing out dips and ruts in a pasture and removing berms caused by no maintainence to the road for years prior to my efforts.

I would have to say, I would take weight over the one scarifier any day. You want one that is built heavy. I use the scarifiers to rip away the grass, and then pull them up and make passes removing the soil with the cutting edge.

I wouldnt say Im an expert with the boxblade, Im learning more every day /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Good Luck with your choice.

Jon

 

[Buck]

I go with wieght too for the same reasons as jon.

Buck

 

[ScottAR]

Personally, I prefer both scarifiers and weight... When cutting, On my blade, the shanks have 4 settings and I set them on the 3rd. I leave them down until I'm ready for finish grading. I'm also considering a weight rack for the rear for faster cutting. So, if you can, get both. JMO

 

[karmakanic]

You'll probably get better penetration with 4 rippers then with 5, and weight is always good when it comes to box blades, so that answers that.

But if you really want to maintain that driverway with nice sloped sides for drainage, and a level top surface that doesn't suffer from the "dippsy do(s)", then look for a box with double blades where the rear blade can be locked down, and then add a top n' tilt kit.

With this set up the pitch of the box can be adjusted on the fly to cut only the high spots and to fill in on the low spots and the the tilt can be adjusted to cut whatever angle you want. The double blades back to back allow it to be a self correcting blade, and a double edged box blade is the only way to get that short of a grader. Add hydraulic rippers and you're loaded for bear.

Even without the top n' tilt kit the double bladed box is worth the added expense. It still has the self correcting feature. You just have to do the pitch and tilt adjustments manually at the top link and the side lift arm.

FWIW,
Dave

 

[JRP]

Briarwood,

The weight is prefered. It sounds like a you do have an additional $200 that can be available. Do you have a hemote hydraulic? If so, you probably would be better off saving an additional $50 and get a hydraulic top link instead of one scarrifier.

The hydraulic top link is also useful for other implements. It should be standard equipment.

Jim

 

[Kelvin]

I'm curious, what is the weight difference between the two yard boxes? A 20 lb difference versus a 200 lb difference could possibly change some of the previous opinions.

While I don't disagree with the posts suggesting the heavier one, I will add that if the lighter one will do the job that you are trying to do (I'm pretty sure that it'll do as good as the heavier one for moving/smoothing gravel) then I'd be tempted to save the $200 ...IF... that is going to be the primary job for the yard box (>95% of the usage?).

However, if there was a possibility that you'd want to scrape up soil or do other yard box work on more than very rare occasions, then I'd CONSIDER following all of the "go for the heavier box" suggestions previously mentioned. Problem is, sometimes it is hard to predict how often you will end up using that new piece of equipment...

Bottom line: The heavier box won't make much difference on some jobs and will be a much better tool for other jobs. I'd say that the lighter box will perform nearly any task that is better suited for the heavier box, it just may take longer to accomplish compared to the heavier box. Consider the frequency that you'd be performing these "other" jobs and decide if that is worth an extra $200. Obviously, for most people that have responded so far, the answer is "Yes, it is worth it".

Kelvin