Snow plowing over gravel.

[foggy1111]

sorry....pushed the wrong button....TWICE.

 

[doc_cottom]

You could install some adjustable "snow plow shoes".

I put some swiveling 6" caster wheels on my front mounted blade mounting them where the shoes were. Set them up to hold the blade up about 1" off the drive. It works great on new snow, picking up only a few rocks. If you allow the snow to melt a bit, or drive over the snow and compact it you will pick up more. Just push all your your snow to one pile, let it melt in the spring then use the blade to recover the rocks.

My castors are from Rural King, and have tubed pneumatic tire. Actually, I took them from my Harbor Freight shop cart to see if the idea would work. I'm happy with it.

 

[CJBOTA]

Slotting the pipe to get a good fit and then hammering it on seems like alot of work. Has anyone tried just stitch welding the pipe or tube to the end of the blade. I think that is what I am going to do unless you guys can give me a good reason not to. What do you think?
CJ

 

[Jerry/MT]

Slotting the pipe to get a good fit and then hammering it on seems like alot of work. Has anyone tried just stitch welding the pipe or tube to the end of the blade. I think that is what I am going to do unless you guys can give me a good reason not to. What do you think?
CJ

As I said before, there are a lot of ways to skin this cat. I choose to slit the pipe, put the plate in side and weld it on both sides of the plate. I felt it would reduce the bending load through the weld. That was my choice. Other people chose different attachments methods.

What make this device work is the large radius of the pipe that allows you to
drop the "blade" down completely on the gravel and remove the snow with out significantly disturbing the gravel.

One of the guys on the YT Forum devised a quick attach method that allows him to drop the blade near the pipe assembly, drag the blade forward and the pipe rotates up and alligns with some pin holes. It can then can be pinned to the blade. A neat attachment but the object is to move snow without disturbing the gravel and using the large radius pipe as an "edge" is what allows that to happen.

 

[GregbkH]

This has been working well for me. Not hard to get on or off.

 

[RockyNY]

Slotting the pipe to get a good fit and then hammering it on seems like alot of work. Has anyone tried just stitch welding the pipe or tube to the end of the blade. I think that is what I am going to do unless you guys can give me a good reason not to. What do you think?
CJ

I mounted a pipe on my FEL Bucket with welded tabs top and bottom, and bolted on each end. It works fine, but the load angle is different from a plow.

I used a 2" pipe, but I wish I had gone with a 3", as the pipe still digs up some gravel or dirt when the ground is soft.

 

[psdx]

This is not a pipe on the bottom of the blade, but it is a very effective way to plow snow on gravel. I've used this arrangement for fifteen years. The height of the blade is easily adjusted, and I never disturb the gravel.

 

[ededic]

This year in Michigan we are having a most unusual year of not much snow and higher than normal temps. I have over 1000' of gravel driveway and use PVC pipe on all of my straight edges (loader, blower and blade on Gator). With the snow-pack-thaw, rinse repeat year, I can't seem to keep the gravel off the lawn even with the PVC. Today with a rain imminent, I just used the blower to blow the snow banks back into the driveway for melting putting any gravel back on the drive. Beats raking in the spring.