Grading Rear blade options

[Camo]

Yeah, it is June, but snow will be here soon enough. I plowed my 200+ foot driveway last year with my ATV, and truthfull did not care for the cutting edge catching a certain few expansion joint on my concrete and chipping away at the edges. It had a trip blade but still no good.
I have an FEL on my Kubota B5200, and that is even worse for that situation of course, so I looked into snow pushers to go on the bucket with a rubber cutting edge and steel angled up wear shoes......Very nice, but a quoted price of $1500 made me a bit queezy. So I got to thinking of a plain ole rear blade with the bade being drug backwards to skip up over the raised expansion joints........And I also go to looking at rubber cutting edges, and even thinking of fabbing a wheel like on a mower/ brush hog to allow it to control the height of the blade........Yeah, you bet I'm confused......HELP!!!

 

[Reg]

Yeah, it is June, but snow will be here soon enough. I plowed my 200+ foot driveway last year with my ATV, and truthfull did not care for the cutting edge catching a certain few expansion joint on my concrete and chipping away at the edges. It had a trip blade but still no good.
I have an FEL on my Kubota B5200, and that is even worse for that situation of course, so I looked into snow pushers to go on the bucket with a rubber cutting edge and steel angled up wear shoes......Very nice, but a quoted price of $1500 made me a bit queezy. So I got to thinking of a plain ole rear blade with the bade being drug backwards to skip up over the raised expansion joints........And I also go to looking at rubber cutting edges, and even thinking of fabbing a wheel like on a mower/ brush hog to allow it to control the height of the blade........Yeah, you bet I'm confused......HELP!!!

I take the tooth bar off the loader for winter and back drag the snow off the "delicate" spots before putting the rear blade to it.
I tried the reversed blade thing, basically a bump can cause a momentary lift of the blade and that results in it riding over the snow mound that it dumps.
I cut up a rubber horse stall mat (3/4 inch thick) to the same dimensions as the blade's cutting edge one time, but never got to trying it.
The plan was to sandwich it between the blade and the cutting edge with an inch or two extra sticking out.

I have also thought of using the rake with a strip of stall mat in front of it to make a "soft" blade, a sacrificial 2 by 6 is another possibility.

Used conveyor belt in front of a rake is another possibility for a soft blade, I might try that this winter since my SIL seems to have a source, judging by the goofy full width mud flap that has just appeared on his "just for show, it never hauls a load or pulls a trailer 99% all chromed out" truck.

If you don't already HAVE a rear blade I suggest you get a rake first (or instead if funds are limited, aren't they always).
Most of them can take a drop down blade, so you get a two'fer implement.
Some can also take a row of scarifiers.

 

[Camo]

I take the tooth bar off the loader for winter and back drag the snow off the "delicate" spots before putting the rear blade to it.
I cut up a rubber horse stall mat (3/4 inch thick) to the same dimensions as the blade's cutting edge one time, but never got to trying it.
The plan was to sandwich it between the blade and the cutting edge with an inch or two extra sticking out.

I have also thought of using the rake with a strip of stall mat in front of it to make a "soft" blade, a sacrificial 2 by 6 is another possibility.

It is a steeper grade, so I'm not looking to stop or make direction changes until I get to the bottom.

 

[PA hayseed]

I used to use my rear blade for snow removal, but now I use my boxblade. I have the scarifiers all the way up, and kinda tilt the BB up. IT works in reverse as well as forwards, but I am always concerned about pushing too much in reverse.

 

[Camo]

I used to use my rear blade for snow removal, but now I use my boxblade. I have the scarifiers all the way up, and kinda tilt the BB up. IT works in reverse as well as forwards, but I am always concerned about pushing too much in reverse.

Do you use it on concrete or gravel? Got any pics? Are there wear shoes on the box blades that can be replaced?

 

[Johndeere3720]

Ive only used my grader blade to move snow. Ive tried it in reverse at an angle and it only compaceted the snow into the gravel and moved very little snow. I can see how a boxblade would work but you would stop a lot to empty it out. Maybe a rake, it will filter out the gravel but hold the sow and move it to the side. I dont know, but good luck.

 

[PA hayseed]

Do you use it on concrete or gravel? Got any pics? Are there wear shoes on the box blades that can be replaced?

I have a gravel driveway, sorry no pics. There are no "wear shoes", the BB has, for lack of the proper terminology, scarifiers on the front and a blade in the back (actually 2 blades in opposite directions). I use my position control on my 3pt to keep the blade about 1" above the gravel. Do I get gravel in my yard - yep, but not nearly as much as I did with my rear blade. Could you put a rubber strip on the BB to protect an asphalt drive - I would think so.

 

[gonegreen]

I used a rear blade last winter for removing snow on a gravel driveway. Most of the time the blade was reversed. Yes, it did pack some of the snow down, but this keeps the gravel on the driveway. The only problem I had was room to pile the snow. Make sure that you make the path as wide as possible the first time out so the next three or four times it snows (and the weather hasn't got warm enough to melt any snow from your first time out) you have room to pile it.

I bought a box blade this summer and keep seeing posts about using it for snow removal but I still don't understand how that works. My driveway is about 600 feet long, wouldn't I have to stop every 15 feet and empty the box? This doesn't seem like it would work to well if you have a narrow driveway with trees on both sides of the driveway and no way to maneuver the tractor around very easily. Am I missing something?

 

[Camo]

I have about 240 feet of concrete driveway. Do you think that the rear blade reversed would clean the snow off good, yet roll up over a couple of high expansion joints?

 

[KennK]

I use my rear blade backwards to clear snow off of the lawn - to clear walking paths for horses. While doing that I've continued the push on to my blacktop driveway, and it does not leave a clean surface. It leaves a small scattered thickness of ice/snow on top (depending on the dips & hills of the blacktop surface).

I like the idea of bolting a length of used conveyor belt to the blade (I might try that) and then using it forward.