Rear Blade Land leveler

[Mallard1]

New here but I have a question for the experts. I have a new holland 1927 and a Belarus 570 and I'm looking for something to better smooth out our gravel roads at the deer camp. Right now we have about 7 miles of road but only about 4 get driven on much and need quarterly smoothing. Every couple of years our neighbor will bring the road grader over and pull the ditches and re crown the road but in the mean time I have been using a 6ft box blade to patch it up but it takes all weekend to do now. So I've been looking at a land plane to help speed it up. I would like to get a 8ft wife and either a 2 or 3 blade. I have seen two types and wanted opinions on them. Most of our roads are typical south arkansas gravel roads, red clay gravel.

Land Plane - takes the work out of repairing gravel driveways. Great for grooming horse arenas leveling soil, plowing snow and more.
This style seems to just be made of 4" angle and doesn't seem like it would be hard to build but I wonder if it would hold up with out replaceable grader blades

Recover your gravel road with the Everything Attachments Land Leveler, Land Plane, utility grader
This style uses replaceable grader blades and has taller sides which should carry more rock but would be a little harder and more expensive to build.

Any thoughts?

 

[mddorange]

:welcome:
To TBN Mallard. "I would like to get a 8ft wife and either a 2 or 3 blade," Wow, what would you do with one that tall????:laughing:

 

[Monster5601]

Any thoughts?

I went with the Bush Hog road grader simply because it has scarifiers that break up the compacted road surface.

RG Series Road Grader

 

[JerryK]

I have an EverythingAttachments 6' er... The reason I went with the narrower one was that I could take it out on my trails in the woods. Also, I only have 400' of drive, not 7 miles. I have not found the need for scarifiers, but I also do not try to do everything in one pass. First pass loosens it up some, and the following passes add more loose stone weight to make the blades dig down even deeper. Adjust the top link to keep a little down pressure on the rear of the plane [ tends to just ride on the front blade if you do not ] and adjust the side-to-side to hill it up some. The blades are slanted to help them cut into the hardpack, not to move material from side to side. If you make one, longer is better. And taller if you have lots of loose material on your road. But, as with width, trying to drag too much material behind you and you will run out of traction/hp...

 

[Gordon Gould]

Welcome to TBN. It is a trade off I guess but the heavier unit will do a much better job and not just rake the loose surface material into the low spots only to be scuffed out by the next storm or vehicle. I built this land plane. Notice it has hardened 3/8" thick cutting edges. I wore these down grading gravel roads in 3 or 4 years so I would think steel angle would wear quickly.



Two years ago I replaced the cutting edges with standard reversible 1/2 X 6 box blade edges and cannot see any wear yet. The old blades are upright on the right. The front wore more than the rear.



The heavier land plane grading scraper will cut the top layer of gravel and remix it before it deposits it back on the road in an even layer. It is easy to do and will hold up a long time especially if you pack it when you are done. It is so easy you can do the road more often if needed. The better you keep it the less damage you get with traffic and storms. I use my truck to pack with.




I get a much better job than just filling in with loose material. But it is a hard decision when money is involved. If you are looking long range I would go with the LPGS type unit.


gg

 

[MtnViewRanch]

With the amount of roads you have to do and with what you have to pull the LPGS with, you need to get as heavy of a unit as you can afford or build. At a minimum of 1000lbs and heavier would be better. Forget about the 3 angle blade grader. You need something with taller sides and replaceable cutting edges. I would be looking at 7 footers here and here if it were me. There are others out there, but forget about anything that is economical, won't work as well or last as long.

My 5 footer is 800lbs and my 7 is 1400lbs. I can't imagine using anything much lighter myself and I only do 2 1/2 miles of road and fence lines.

One other thing, and is only my opinion based on my experience with my 12,000lb 75hp tractor, but to get the most out of a heavy LPGS, neither of your tractors is going to handle an 8 foot wide unit very well. I know that I would not want one for my tractor.

There are other people that have them and they work well for them, probably a lot to do with circumstances.

Good luck

 

[oosik]

I pull a Land Pride GS2584 on my mile long driveway with my 60 hp Kubota. And yes, heavier is better for at least two reasons: 1) usually heavier means stronger and 2) heavier will stay down and move/level more material. When I first used the LPGS on the driveway - I put a 400# cast concrete weight on the scraper to aide in "keeping it down". Now I use the unit bare on an annual basis and it does a good job.

 

[Mallard1]

Thanks for all of the quick replies, I see is should go with the ones with taller sides and replaceable cutting edges.

Gordon, I like how you built yours and have a couple questions.
1. how tall and thick are your side plates
2. how wide and thick are the skids
3. if you had to do it again would you leave the blades going straight across or would you sweep one side back?
4. did you make the cutting edge height adjustable?

sorry for so many questions just trying to work up what materials I might need.

I see the point about the 8ft being to wide and will drop to 7ft. on the small NH it is 4x4 and water in the tires so it does help a little. I think I will probably just build one, it doesn't seem to be to much to them and maybe I can save some money and add a little weight, other than the side plates and scraper blades I should have everything else on the steel rack.

 

[Gordon Gould]

Questions are no problem.
Keep in mind I run my LPGS behind a 30 hp Kubota that weighs about 5000#. I am not familiar with your tractor but from Brian's comments it is much bigger so you could scale things up.


Gordon, I like how you built yours and have a couple questions.
1. how tall and thick are your side plates
It is 3/8" X 12" plate and 1/4" X 2 1/2" sq tube. Cutting edge mounts are 3/8" X 4" X 4" angle.

2. how wide and thick are the skids
Skid are 3/8" bar 2" wide

3. if you had to do it again would you leave the blades going straight across or would you sweep one side back?
I think straight across like I have them. I do a lot of adjusting with the top link. I am thinking that having the blades straight across makes it easier to control the cut on a leveling operation. If the blades are angled back then as you adjust the top link the forward part of the blade, or one side of the scraper, will have a different cutting pressure or height than the rear part of the blade, or the other side of the scraper. I have never ran a unit with angled blades so my thoughts may not be valid

4. did you make the cutting edge height adjustable?
No, but that would be a very nice feature but to complicated for me. My blades are fixed 3/4" below the skids. I use the 3pth height and top link to make any adjustments in cutting aggressiveness


If you build one that is only 12" high or so like mine make sure you don't put a cross member over or close to being over a blade. There is a lot of material that has to flow over the top of the blade. You don't want to create an obstruction or pinch point that will hinder the flow. I have 1 foot clearance front and back between a blade and an overhead cross member. My unit is 4'6" long and 5' wide. Weighs 600 lbs

Do a search and check out the work of jenkinsph (Steve). He has built a couple of very nice units and uses them in his business to do lawn prep leveling as well as road grading.

gg

 

[MtnViewRanch]

I don't know if this is an issue or not, because I have never heard of anyone else's blade angle being so thick, but my angle is 4"x 6" and 5/8" thick with the cutting edge going onto the 4" edge and the angle is like this ^ of course. But laying the non equal leg angle down like that seems to get the perfect cutting edge slope.

As far as the blades being angled, I think that in theory they are suppose to work better when angled. I can't think of a single professional-mass produced unit that does not have the blades angled. Pretty sure that every privately built unit has straight blades. Lots of supposed reasons, but let's be real, it's way easier to build these with the blades straight.

People talk about adjustable blades, why go to the trouble? As long as you have a hydraulic top link and a 3pt hitch, you have ALL the height adjustment you need. You can make extremely fine adjustments with a top link and those adjustments take a few seconds , can be done with the tractor in motion and are at your finger tips. I do not understand why anyone wants all the adjustment headaches that would come with manually adjustable cutting edges.

I understand having the cutting edges being adjustable to account for wear, but to adjust because you want a deeper or shallower cut, make that adjustment with the hitch or top link.

As far as making fine adjustments and the angled blades being uneven, again in theory it should make a big difference. In the real world, I have not noticed that it makes a difference. Maybe I compensate for it with my hydraulic side link and don't even realize it, honestly can't say. I just know that for me it hasn't made any difference at all.

Something else that people talk about, the material migrating over to the side because of the angled blades. Good, bad or other wise, on my LPGSers, it migrates over less than 1", so that is not really a concern either in my opinion.

Just my :2cents:, good luck with your project. :thumbsup:

 

[Mallard1]

Thank you both for the help. It looks like I probably won't make my blade height adjustable for simplicity sake.

Mtn view, how much below the frame do your scrapers hang? Also I like the idea of the thicker angle. I've got a bunch of 2x4x.25 tubing that I plan on using for the 3pt mount and cross bracing

Gordon, it looks like you made a swing gate for the back of yours, how do you like that?

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Thank you both for the help. It looks like I probably won't make my blade height adjustable for simplicity sake.

Mtn view, how much below the frame do your scrapers hang? Also I like the idea of the thicker angle. I've got a bunch of 2x4x.25 tubing that I plan on using for the 3pt mount and cross bracing

Gordon, it looks like you made a swing gate for the back of yours, how do you like that?

My cutting edges are 1" below the runners. The idea of the tail gate is a GREAT idea in my opinion, and hope to put one on my 7 footer some day when I have some extra time. People say that a LPGS is a single purpose implement. They are wrong, but by having a tail gate, it sure would make moving 3+ yards of dirt at a time much easier for me and not so dependent on ground moisture content. For me to easily move that much ground with it now, moisture content has to be just right. The only improvement to Gordon's tail gate is it needs a hydraulic to open and close it.

As far as thick angle, I have run across 4" brush before and it shaves it clean with barely a hiccup and has bent nothing.


Keep us informed, and we like pictures.

 

[Mallard1]

Thanks again for the help, I'll sit down this weekend and come up with what all lengths of everything I need to get started

Maybe I'm missing something on his tail gate but it looks like it's just hinged, not lockable, but that that would be easy to add. I only have 1 rear remote so hyd for the tail gate will have to stay a dream for now.

I got a price this afternoon for a 20' stick of channel for the sides. 3" flanges x 12" x 1/4" (I don't remember the weight) and its around $320 delivered. So don't know if I will do that or just 12"x either 3/8 or 1/2 for the sides and cap with flat plate. I have a brake so bending the plate to make the bends is easy.

Glad I waited until we started hitting 100 degrees here to do this! As I get going I will post pictures as I go.

 

[Gordon Gould]

Gordon, it looks like you made a swing gate for the back of yours, how do you like that?

I find it quite useful. It was my attempt to make my land plane act a little like a box blade since I don't have one. If I am grading a clean gravel road the tail gate does almost nothing. The gravel comes off over the rear blade as smooth as it is going to get. But if you have sod or leaves or other debris in the road the gate will hold it and allow the heavier gravel to pass thru under the debris. I have a set off pin stops that the bottom of the tail gate will hit or rest against. I can hang the gate behind the stops like this to collect sod



I can get a lot of sod dressing the edges of my rough country road. I let it accumulate in the box then take the pressure off the blades and let the gravel run out. Then I just lift the LPGS and have a pile of mostly sod in the road. Then I use the tail gate as a crude blade to push the sod off the road . The gate hits against the stops when backing into the pile.





If I swing the tail gate up and over forward so it hangs in front of the stops the box will accumulate dirt and gravel just like a box blade. With the long box it is easy to evenly level and spread new material on a road when you have applied it a bucketful at a time and have a series of flatish piles. Even after I have tailgated new gravel onto a road with my little dump truck, which comes out pretty even, I go over it with the LPGS in the box blade mode to get it just about perfect before I pack it.



gg

 

[Mallard1]

Well suffered a small setback today, pulling the Belarus home on the gooseneck today I split the plastic cac tube going from the intercooler to the intake manifold, sounded like a shotgun going off when it blew. With no boost I couldn't top 40 and blew enough smoke to move the mosquitoes a county over for the last 15 miles home. Hope to get it fixed by Wednesday. I did stop by the mahindra dealer and looked at their lpgs and it seemed somewhat light weight, I think ~600lbs for 6ft so would like to make it a little heavier than that one but still good to see other ideas

 

[jenkinsph]

Good advice so far, Gordon has a nice lpgs with the flip over tailgate.
Here are pictures of two that I have made. Notice the smaller blade has box tubing skids which don't hold the rocks to drop on the grass. The next large lpgs I build will use much taller rectangular tubing for more clearance as Gordon mentions causing clogging. Both of these work well in clean dirt but I do have to watch for grass build up in field work. My blades are straight and set flush with the skids.

 

[Mallard1]

I've been working on getting the A/C back running in the Belarus tractor and looking at plans for my build. I plan to build one similar to Gordons but having a hard time getting the weight higher.

using 1/2"x12"x5' for the sides and 1/2"x12"x7' for rear gate I get appx. 350 lbs
using 2x4x.25 tube for 2 cross braces and 3pt frame I get appx 175 lbs
1/2"x3" flat for skids comes to 35lbs
4"x4"x.25 angle for attaching blades to I get 100lbs
2 7ft blades guessing another 100 lbs.
misc parts 75lbs

this puts me a little over 800lbs, this just seems significantly lower than the 1200+ I see people talking about? am I missing some part of the build?

 

[MtnViewRanch]

I've been working on getting the A/C back running in the Belarus tractor and looking at plans for my build. I plan to build one similar to Gordons but having a hard time getting the weight higher.

using 1/2"x12"x5' for the sides and 1/2"x12"x7' for rear gate I get appx. 350 lbs
using 2x4x.25 tube for 2 cross braces and 3pt frame I get appx 175 lbs
1/2"x3" flat for skids comes to 35lbs
4"x4"x.25 angle for attaching blades to I get 100lbs
2 7ft blades guessing another 100 lbs.
misc parts 75lbs

this puts me a little over 800lbs, this just seems significantly lower than the 1200+ I see people talking about? am I missing some part of the build?

So forget about that 1/4" wall tubing and go to 1/2", that adds another 175lbs, your angle for the cutting edges should be 1/2" minimum and should be 4x6. There now you are around 1200lbs. You want some weight, everything should be 3/8" minimum and a lot of 1/2" and even 5/8" material.

 

[ishiboo]

IF it's strong enough as designed, put a weight box on top and add concrete, water barrels, or whatever to get the weight you need.

 

[JerryK]

Don't ask the wife to sit back there while you grade. Nothing good could come from bringing it up..........