2manyrocks said:
The first time I've seen one of these graders is on this site. How does this grader compare to a box grader for maintaining a gravel road? What's good and what's not good about this kind of grader if you don't mind sharing your experience?
These have been around for a while, "Duragrader" and "Bad Boy" immediately come to mind as manufacturers(modeled mine loosely after the bad boy). there was one other I can recall, but can't think of the name just now. It used "V" blades, one spread the material outward and the second wider blade spread it back inward and evened it out. Someone posted a pic asking about it a few weeks ago on one of the forums.
I have never used a regular box for maintaining a gravel road so I may not be of much help
But in my box experience, they don't shave as well with the single blade back at the rear. They are good, in conjunction with scarifier teeth, at breaking up soil, which is collected in the box for relocation, filling in low spots along the way. Because of the blade all the way at the back, a steady release of material in my opinion is also a little more difficult to control and adjust. But I also havn't tried to do too much of that with one either, just rip and relocate. I have read here of some having good results when adding gauge wheels to their box. This would seem to me to give very fine release control to a regular box blade.
With the blade up front, I look at it more like a hand planer or block plane. it's amount of cut is less, but can be very accurately controlled with the toplink. The cut material builds up, spreads out and rides up and over the first blade. In doing so, it breaks up and loosens the material. The same thing happens with the second blade and the end result is a smooth level re-distribution of the surface material. High spots get shaved, low spots get filled and scraped smooth. I added a fold down gate for mine as I saw a need to capture and relocate the shaved material at times like a traditional box.
When dragging or grooming gravel, the material spreads out across the blades and flows over evenly leaving a smooth surface. It blends a center hump into the ruts on my drive, but so does a chain harrow on this established gravel surface. One thing I did find interesting while cutting my circular drive thru grass was that the grass and dirt as it passed over the blades, broke up very nicely, leaving the soil and separating the grass and roots which tended to hang up on the top edge of the triangular blades or was left on top of the dragged area for easy collection with a rake.
It takes more passes to remove material with one like mine as apposed to a regular box. In my opinion, kind of like the difference between a belt sander(traditional box blade) and a finish sander?
