Using a Land Plane (Grader)

[California]

I have a 1/4 mile of gravel with some hills and even S curves.

I’ve been considering a land plane as a replacement for my box blade but not sure what size to get.. 6 ft of 5 ft...

Thoughts?
And land plane or clone?

What I'm using to maintain our 1/4 mile lane in from the county road might be lighter than what you need. But I'll show it here in case this gives you or someone else some ideas for simple gravel road maintenance. 18 hp pulls these implements easily.

First, a back blade with added ballast. This lane has been used for more than a century. There's plenty of embedded gravel but its as tough as pavement. After some rain I go over it with the blade to gouge the sides where gravel got tossed, to bring that gravel back into the roadway and lower the edges so runoff will go down the sides. Hopefully this will eventually build some crown. The blade carries along a little bit of material, enough that I have some to shovel into potholes as shown here. I suppose more ballast would cut more material, if I ever want to cut down and really make a proper crown. I have three more 70 lb wheel weights I could add. Note in the photo the Q-hitch is already cranked way over to the right - but its the ballast that helps the right side dig.

Then, I finish with several passes of a land plane I cobbled together from free material. Those were snowplow edge replacement components including fixed mount brackets, from a surplus auction. I could have cut the length of the diagonals to make material dump from one blade to the next but after a trial run I decided that didn't make any difference. Pulling this with my rear forks makes it possible to lift the drag for tight turn-arounds, the slack chain at the mid point provides this lift. I pull it with short chains at the front (not yet installed in this photo) and usually let the drag follow with just its own weight. But I learned setting the forks that include the q-hitch weight, 100+ lbs total, down on the front of the drag makes it cut better when I need to knock down grass in the center of the lane.

 

[ukrkoz]

I came across a very good thread place else, about using land plane on turf. From first hand folks that tried it. LP is NOT a tool for that. On areas, they tried LP on tiurf, they then had to till over cut clumps and such, to make it manageable. LP did just that - tore and clumped rooted sod. It is not a turf GRADING/LEVELING implement.