New landplane build for L&G and subcompacts

[Martian]

Looks good! Looks like it works good as well. I would love to see a tilt function for that 749, you would only get an inch or two of travel:laughing:.

 

[Gittyup]

Nice Job, Steve. That's going to come in real handy. Why do some of the commercial ones have one blade angled?

 

[danceswithdirt]

Looks great, I think you'll love that behind the 749. Just finished working my drive with the 7040 and 6' plane. Purchased the 6' for the 4105 jd and its to small. Working a drive with a 7040 is a bit more tiring, the small landplane tucked down almost under the tractor is hard to see.

 

[jenkinsph]

Nice Job, Steve. That's going to come in real handy. Why do some of the commercial ones have one blade angled?

Most of the ones I see have both blades angled in parallel. The advantage I see to this is when making multiple passes you can overlap without leaving as much of a trail.

For leveling lawns I think it is better to have the blades set straight and with the blades set flush don't overload the box. All the landplanes I have seen will carry more dirt than some would think. You can level an extremely rough area fast.

 

[jenkinsph]

Looks great, I think you'll love that behind the 749. Just finished working my drive with the 7040 and 6' plane. Purchased the 6' for the 4105 jd and its to small. Working a drive with a 7040 is a bit more tiring, the small landplane tucked down almost under the tractor is hard to see.

Using the 7040 with a 12' wide x 8' skids would do a nice job leveling fields though.

 

[jenkinsph]

My first project to use it on is a front lawn area rocky weed patch with trees to work under. Rocky mountain lawn areas can be difficult to work with but with the 4520 doing most of the work this smaller landplane should save me some time and money.

Here's some pictures of my next project area before fixing it up. This is for a good customer so I hope to make her happy with it.

 

[jenkinsph]

looks good!

I would box in the top link plates for extra support and also figure a way to tie in the 2x2 box tube to the side plates other than just a weld. IT looks great, but if there is a weak link, it will be at those welds. Its carrying the weight of the plane, plus material, plus forces from scraping/grading/ and the intial shock when it first engages rocks, hard ground, etc. I would ad some thick 1/4" angle underneath the box tube and weld it to the side of the side tube to help distribute the load and take some of the stress off of the welds.

(just food for thought before you paint it) Looks fantastic!

I added some 2" x3/8 flatbar vertically between the 2" tubing and the 4x4 angle iron on the inside edges of the skids. This should help transfer some of the forces directly.

 

[TCowner]

Steve, I should be getting the 1026R delivered this week. I can take some measurements as soon as it arrives.

 

[Gordon Gould]

Originally Posted by Gordon Gould
Looks really good Steve. I especially like how you formed those skids.
One question though. I was wondering how much room you have between the top of the blade and the cross pieces. Do you think that if you get material built up in front of the blade it can get through that tight spot OK or are your cross pieces more forward than they look in the pictures ?

Gordon, thanks for the reply and interest. There is a little over 4 inches clearance the material seems to flow across the blades well> Just gave it a test run, seems to work okay but I will need to get a hyd top link for it to work the best.

The blades are set flush with the skids for lawn prep work, that said it will still load up with gravel rather easily as in the first pic below. Made a couple of passes up and down the drive and grabbed another pic.

The only reason I asked about the clearance was because your's is alot tighter than mine and mine shows a tendancy to clog. I have 6 1/2" vertical between the top of the blade and the bottom of the cross piece plus the cross piece is 10" in front of the blade. When mine clogs it mostly happens if I hit a wet spot or some leaves or the gravel has just been laid and is really loose. It also happens when I cut along the sod edge to make it straight or if there is a sod hump in the middle of the road like on some roads I work on.
I just thought you might want to think about maximizing the clearance for the material flow before you finalize things.

gg

 

[jenkinsph]

Gordon,
That is a good point you bring up about clearance, I could have gone with a taller rectangular tubing such as a 2x12" for additional clearance. In my neck of the woods in the southwest vegetation is minimal so clogging is not much of an issue. Working in soil for the most part with the blades set flush I don't move as much material as your does and it seems to flow up and over the blades well enough.

I agree that for wet soil or clay with larger clods more clearance would be advisable. In that case I would change to the taller 2x12 tubing and/or raise the end mountings of the cross beam. I'm not sure a garden tractor such as mine would handle the plane with that much material in and on it though. When you look closely at the front clevis hitch you can see that I raised it quite a bit to insure that the plane can run low enough through dips and depressions. That could have been simplified with the use of taller skids and a slightly larger tractor.

I have noticed that both you and Brian tend to cut deeper or more aggressively in each pass and allow more material to roll over the plane. I would think that is great for bring the gravel to the top and mixing. For my uses if the ground was flat I don't wan't it to cut at all, just carry the loose material along to the next depression. Most of my use for a plane is to smooth out new seed bed areas in sandy loam soils, I really don't do much work with gravel driveways.

If I were building the plane for mostly gravel driveway maintenance I would probably go with taller skids and have the blade 3/4" below the skids for more mixing action. I would angle the blades too, which would leave a cleaner track or trail on the leading edge. The whole landplane would be larger than this little 4' model too.

 

[jenkinsph]

Steve, I should be getting the 1026R delivered this week. I can take some measurements as soon as it arrives.

That would be good information to have, thanks in advance.:thumbsup:

 

[BRBurns]

Nice build!

If one was to build a similar land plain with the intent of gravel driveway maintnance, should the cutting edge be even with the bottom of the runner or lower/higher?

 

[jenkinsph]

I would set it about 3/4" below for driveway work as long as you have a hydraulic top link to adjust the pitch of the skids. Otherwise I would stay close to flush as it will still dig in quickly. Digging down deeper helps to pull the gravel back to the top surface.

 

[catdozer]

As far back as you put the first blade seems you have plenty of room to roll the ends as I did in the larger plane. On my larger plane the front blade is about 4 inches behind the start of the flat running surface. This allows me to pitch the plane forward and dig in when needed. I built this larger plane for the 110 and it has no problem with it.

I thought about rolling it. But here's what I went with, a 7inch and an 8inch piece in the triangle shape. So far it worked pretty good. Went across a fresh ripped field to make an access path to a new irrigation system. Earlier it wanted to dig, now it floats a whole lot better and not loosing traction in soft soil. I didn't do the back yet, maybe I'll try something else

 

[TCowner]

Steve I visited my 1026R that is still at the dealership waiting for the mower installation prior to delivery. We measured the three point hitch ends at their lowest point and it was 9 and 1/2 inches from the floor to the center of the hitch ends.

How does that compare with your X749? I was hoping you would offer to build one for me but that would be selfish on my part. Oh well, I may just have to check out the pull type Frontier model that John Deere sells. I don't think it will work as well your thee point hitch mount though.

 

[jenkinsph]

Steve I visited my 1026R that is still at the dealership waiting for the mower installation prior to delivery. We measured the three point hitch ends at their lowest point and it was 9 and 1/2 inches from the floor to the center of the hitch ends.

How does that compare with your X749? I was hoping you would offer to build one for me but that would be selfish on my part. Oh well, I may just have to check out the pull type Frontier model that John Deere sells. I don't think it will work as well your thee point hitch mount though.

That is about the same as my 749, I was interested as my other tractors will all drop to within 8 inches of the ground. I think if I were to do it again I would space the main beams above the skids by four inches or use the 2x12 in rectangular tubing for the skids. While I haven't experienced any issues with the new landplane it would be an improvement to have the taller sides.

Any welder worth his salt can build this for you and in most cases wouldn't charge more than the pull behind. Something to consider and get some estimates, depending on where you live shipping from New Mexico would be expensive.

 

[jenkinsph]

I thought about rolling it. But here's what I went with, a 7inch and an 8inch piece in the triangle shape. So far it worked pretty good. Went across a fresh ripped field to make an access path to a new irrigation system. Earlier it wanted to dig, now it floats a whole lot better and not loosing traction in soft soil. I didn't do the back yet, maybe I'll try something else

Simple but effective glad it worked out for you.

 

[catdozer]

While cleaning the hay barn found a new use for a land plane! Scrape up the hay on the ground, (landscape rake is currently being fitted to work with the imatch) but go in reverse, acts like v-plow and catches majority of the hay.

 

[jenkinsph]

Been very busy with other work but here's a few pics of the completed project with a new coat of paint. Painted this last Monday and let it sit for a week to cure in the sun. Time to put it to work on a new landscape project. Pictured with the larger landplane 8' model I built for the 4520.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Looks good. It came out very nice. A couple of decals and one would think that it was OEM. :thumbsup: