Driveway SCRAPER or Driveway GRADER ?

[IC Smoke]

Hey gang, I know the whole drievway scraper discussion has been leveled off quite a bit :laughing: BUT I havent seen anyone suggest something like the Agritek scraper. I have a few driveways and two small parking lots that would need leveled. My personal driveway doesnt pothole but with the rain I get a little washout in certain places. BUT I do have two driveways that tend to pothole get a little uneven. I typically will crown the driveways by angling my 3pt scraper blade to the center then grab a higher gear with the blade straight across and let the blade ride up. It does a pretty good job but it tends to not crown out far enough to get the water off the drive.

I like the landpride driveway grader but I dont like that the spill off is both on the one side, and that is where I like the Agritek style driveway scraper. They are both priced about the same only but the Agritek is 72", 96" and the LandPride is 72",84", 96"








Agritek Industries | Michigan Manufacturing - DS Driveway Scrapers

GS25 Series Grading Scrapers | Land Pride

 

[jenkinsph]

I haven't used the DS series Agritek scaper so can't comment on it. I have put plenty of hours on the skid style LPGB and have built two of them with straight blade designs. If you are working driveways for most of your use the angled blades with spillage on one side only would be an advantage imo. If you were using this for smoothing out large areas such as lawns and pastures then the straight blade works better imo. I use mine for the latter purpose, will be working a lawn over today with mine. Some of the LPGB's have adjustable height and angle for the blades giving you a choice for different conditions and use, the Landpride with scarifier teeth looks pretty good and would be my preference of the two you pictured.

 

[IC Smoke]

Im just not sure about the material spilling to one side. Id rather pull it and everything be smooth. The road I live on has some pretty serious washboards as well. I just emailed agritek about the ripper blades to see what they look like.

 

[oosik]

I just obtained a Land Pride GS2584. My driveway is a mile long, gravel and the only prior work done on it, in its thirty years, is filling potholes. It took me 6.5 hours to grade it back to the way it originally looked. I don't have any type of landscape rake so I spent another four hours chucking big rock. I priced a six inch layer of crushed stone on the entire driveway and a grading scraper looked pretty good - h@ll, a dozen grading scrapers would have looked good. It is smooth, pothole free, crowned and with no ruts. I finally gave up trying - after thirty years - to maintain the driveway in the summer with my back blade. I couldn't gain the necessary skill and I don't really think back blades are meant for gravel driveway maintenance.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Im just not sure about the material spilling to one side. Id rather pull it and everything be smooth. The road I live on has some pretty serious washboards as well. I just emailed agritek about the ripper blades to see what they look like.

It has been my experience that the side ways material movement that so many talk about is at best minimal. If one actually watches the material go up and over each blade, it travels side ways, at most 1" and I actually doubt that it is that much. Here is a pic with the grader loaded up with about a yard of material and you can see that not all that much is left.

 

[Piston]

Regarding angled vs. straight blades, i can see what Brian means about it not really moving the material all that far. However, do you think an angled blade would slice through the ground easier than straight blades would? Theoretically this seems to be the case, but practically, I wonder if it really makes any difference from one to another.

A LPGB is on my shortlist of implements to build.

 

[GGB]

I can't address the Agritek scraper, but it looks like it would work fine for spreading loose material. I've got a Land Pride Grading Scraper, and really like it. So do my neighbors!

I'm not too proud to tell you that I got frustrated with using my box blade and rear blade to maintain my driveways. But the LPGS was easy to work with from the start. It didn't take long to shape up the divots and small potholes.

I also discovered something interesting this winter. My weight box was blocked in when I hooked up the snow blade, so I just hooked up to the LPGS, figuring it would work as well or better than the weight box. Turns out it also worked well enough to push snow back and even spread out snow piles instead of turning the tractor around to use the snow blade. Then I found out that it worked great to cut down the snow and ice ruts on my neighbor's drive from when he had to leave before I could get over to clear his driveway. Slick! In the future, I'll leave the weight box off and just use the LPGS when I put on the snow blade.

 

[endinmaine]

My 900' driveway is mostly all gravel, sand to 3/4" in size. What attachment is the best to fill in potholes and regrade ?

 

[crazyal]

If you have potholes then you would really benefit from the ripping shanks on some grading scrapers. I ended up with a BEFCO GS, it was cheaper than the Woods or Land Pride and I could order it on-line and have it shipped right to the house. It's also heaver, a good thing.

I'm not sure if the angled blades are needed. The nice thing about them is they do move the gravel to the side. It comes in handy on level drives. You can drive on one side of the drive, turn around at the end, and then go back down the other side moving the gravel from the edges to the center. When it comes to moving gravel back up a slope it's not so helpful.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Regarding angled vs. straight blades, i can see what Brian means about it not really moving the material all that far. However, do you think an angled blade would slice through the ground easier than straight blades would? Theoretically this seems to be the case, but practically, I wonder if it really makes any difference from one to another.

A LPGB is on my shortlist of implements to build.

In theory the angled blades "should" work better for cutting out wash boarding. If they actually do or not, I can not say for sure. :confused3: All that I can say is that both of my LPGBs have angled blades, my 5 footer has about 170lbs per foot width of cutting weight and my 7 footer is 200lbs per foot. Mine are simple, non adjustable anything implements that work excellent and have shown little to no wear.

I honestly don't see the AGRITEK grader holding up to heavy use. I may be wrong, but I doubt that they would hold up to my use.

 

[jenkinsph]

Regarding angled vs. straight blades, i can see what Brian means about it not really moving the material all that far. However, do you think an angled blade would slice through the ground easier than straight blades would? Theoretically this seems to be the case, but practically, I wonder if it really makes any difference from one to another.

A LPGB is on my shortlist of implements to build.

I think most of the time what I have seen Brian work with is sand or fines for the most part, hard to make sand roll along the blade. Larger rocks can drift farther down the blades. I agree that in most cases the drift is minimal because the angle is minimal. I think you would be hard pressed to tell much difference between straight and angled blades where the angle is so minimal. With a rear blade the angles can be much steeper and the shearing action is much more plausible.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

I think most of the time what I have seen Brian work with is sand or fines for the most part, hard to make sand roll along the blade. Larger rocks can drift farther down the blades. I agree that in most cases the drift is minimal because the angle is minimal. I think you would be hard pressed to tell much difference between straight and angled blades where the angle is so minimal. With a rear blade the angles can be much steeper and the shearing action is much more plausible.

That's because that's pretty much all we have, well maybe a few rocks that maaaaaaaaaaaaybe a D11 might be able to move, with a little bit of work.

 

[crazyal]

Most of the time I'm grading I'm filling in low spots so the gravel never gets too high or travels too far along the blade.

 

[Dozernut]

IC Smoke I have the Landpride 60" it is a good grader but the others are most likely just as good. One thing I will bring up, unless you have a larger tractor than you have listed, you will not be able to pull a 60" grader blade in wet or damp material. The grader will load up and you will lose traction quickly and grind to a stop. You will have a full load that you will have to spread out (unless you want a speed bump). My B2630 will not pull my 60" grader if it is wet. No problem tho I just hook it up to my L4610 which handles it easily. My point is with your smaller tractors get the 4' grader or you will be sorely disappointed.

 

[Piston]

I think most of the time what I have seen Brian work with is sand or fines for the most part, hard to make sand roll along the blade. Larger rocks can drift farther down the blades. I agree that in most cases the drift is minimal because the angle is minimal. I think you would be hard pressed to tell much difference between straight and angled blades where the angle is so minimal. With a rear blade the angles can be much steeper and the shearing action is much more plausible.

Steve,
Is your larger Landplane that you built an 8'er? I tried looking for your build thread but couldn't find it. When I build a Landplane I'm going to make it 7' wide and most likely go with straight blades. I figure I will go with 24" sides just because the plate steel comes in 4x8 sheets, so 2' tall and 8' long sides should give me quite a bit of weight, probably just over 200lbs per foot....I just hope I can pull it

 

[Recoveryhill]

Here is a pic with the grader loaded up with about a yard of material and you can see that not all that much is left.

I'm envious of your road dirt. My mile of mountain dirt road is a lovely material called rotten rock. It's a firm roadbed but tough to work. I use a grader blade to keep the ditch lines and bounce over the roadbed dislodging rocks of various size followed by a York rake to collect the debris and spread what dirt there is, into the pock marks.

 

[jenkinsph]

Steve,
Is your larger Landplane that you built an 8'er? I tried looking for your build thread but couldn't find it. When I build a Landplane I'm going to make it 7' wide and most likely go with straight blades. I figure I will go with 24" sides just because the plate steel comes in 4x8 sheets, so 2' tall and 8' long sides should give me quite a bit of weight, probably just over 200lbs per foot....I just hope I can pull it

You might be building it too big for an L4610, I would consider 1,000 to 1.200 lbs to be about the maximum weight. My 8 footer is about 950 lbs and is a good load for my 4520 with weights. In your case I would build the skids about 6' long and 12 to 18" height for a 7' grader, I would consider using a 5x5 or 6x6x1/2" angle iron for the blade mountings. Make the skid wear strips about 4"s wide so that the plane will not dig in too deep.

Like most of us I used what I had when building my plane, I had some 8" wide flatbar (5/8" thick) and some assorted box tubing on hand. I bought the wide flange beam drops from my steel supplier to make the skids that were 8" ht x 4" wide flange, which works well but would build them with taller sides if starting over. I should add that I never see materials spilling over the side skids though but a little more clearance between the frame and blades would be the reason for the increase in height

How much dirt you carry along with you in one pass should depend on what you are trying to do. If you are just mixing the top layer bring the gravel to the top then having alll the material flowing over the top of the blades works well. If you are trying to pull a close grade which is what I wan't in most cases I am more interested in having the material flow under the blades in the low spots. So my blades are set flush with the skids, I pick up the high materials and deposit in the low spots. If the ground is perfectly level (never is) I can slide over it without moving much material and there is no need to do it anyway. If I tilt the plane forwards it will dig in and cut agressively though.

In the pictures below I used the plane to smooth for a building pad. Used the fel to spread the engineered fill along with the boxblade to rough it in. Layed down about 4 inches at a time and rolled it in with a vibratory roller. then used the plane to pull a grade +- 1/4" with out shovels or rakes. If the plane had the blades set below the skids it would not have worked.

 

[RDrancher]

In my opinion the multi-bladed thing looks a bit gimmicky.

After using a landplane for awhile, the jury's still out for me on the whole idea in general. Although the landplane requires less operator input, I can run box blade and get the same results. Actually, I think a landplane would work fine with just one centered / angled blade.

Here's a couple landplane photos for you.

Arena ready for a rock picking party


Graded flex-base


A better angle

 

[Piston]

It seems like some of the landplanes with multiple blades (most of them?) are also relying on the blades as structural members. There is no other support on the bottom portion of the landplane, towards the back, aside from the blades.

 

[RDrancher]

It seems like some of the landplanes with multiple blades (most of them?) are also relying on the blades as structural members. There is no other support on the bottom portion of the landplane, towards the back, aside from the blades.

Yes, they are.

I actually like the idea of an asphalt float better. Pic from a TBN members previous post..