Harv
Elite Member
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2000
- Messages
- 3,346
- Tractor
- Kubota L2500DT Standard Transmission
Okay, now that I'm approaching 50 hours of actual seat time (almost caught up with Mark Chalkley, I believe), I thought I was starting to understand the box scraper. But... NOOOOOOOOOO!!!
My final chore over the weekend was to try to create a walking path for my elderly mother, running maybe 100 yards from the front of the house up to a spot next to the road where she likes to ogle the neighbor's front gate (don't ask me why -- she is quite senile, unfortunately). At 86, she walks with the aid of a cane and requires a pretty good surface to avoid mishaps. No problem -- I have a box blade! /w3tcompact/icons/cool.gif
I had already flattened and smoothed the entire acreage in that area, mostly so I could control weeds more easily, but now I wanted to create a strip of the smoothest, firmest earth I possibly could. I made a few passes with casual scraping, just to remove as much of the loose surface dirt and small rocks as I could. Then I tried to get serious about creating a mirror surface (I like to set high goals) for Mom to walk on.
Although basically cleared and flat now, the path had the usual pits and valleys from turning up rocks and the general unevenness of the soil firmness. I made another pass or two, playing with the angle of the blade and position control settings. If I used too much lift, there would be areas where my tire tracks were not erased, so I wound up pretty much leaving the full weight of the box on the ground.
So now I was back to the much-discussed tip angle of the blade(s). Seeing this as a real learning experience, I tried both extremes just to observe the results. Tilting all the way forward (back end high) did pretty much as expected -- hogged right in and started turning up more shallow rocks. What surprised me was the other extreme -- tilted all the way back (front end high), the box filled more rapidly than ever! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif It wasn't turning up so many rocks (it either slid over them or dragged them, creating grooves in my path), but was pulling up mounds of fine dirt. My present (and only) theory is that the extreme tilt brought the frame of the box itself into play as a scraping surface, leaving the hinged rear blade with little to do.
I got my very best results (smoothest surface) with the box set almost perfectly flat, giving the front and rear blades nearly equal opportunity to affect the soil. My question to my more experienced colleagues out there, and to our affluent, hydraulically enhanced top link friends, is this -- do you find that you do most of your box-scraping near the "flat" position, with only minor adjustments on the tilt, or have you discovered good reasons for going to the extremes?
My final chore over the weekend was to try to create a walking path for my elderly mother, running maybe 100 yards from the front of the house up to a spot next to the road where she likes to ogle the neighbor's front gate (don't ask me why -- she is quite senile, unfortunately). At 86, she walks with the aid of a cane and requires a pretty good surface to avoid mishaps. No problem -- I have a box blade! /w3tcompact/icons/cool.gif
I had already flattened and smoothed the entire acreage in that area, mostly so I could control weeds more easily, but now I wanted to create a strip of the smoothest, firmest earth I possibly could. I made a few passes with casual scraping, just to remove as much of the loose surface dirt and small rocks as I could. Then I tried to get serious about creating a mirror surface (I like to set high goals) for Mom to walk on.
Although basically cleared and flat now, the path had the usual pits and valleys from turning up rocks and the general unevenness of the soil firmness. I made another pass or two, playing with the angle of the blade and position control settings. If I used too much lift, there would be areas where my tire tracks were not erased, so I wound up pretty much leaving the full weight of the box on the ground.
So now I was back to the much-discussed tip angle of the blade(s). Seeing this as a real learning experience, I tried both extremes just to observe the results. Tilting all the way forward (back end high) did pretty much as expected -- hogged right in and started turning up more shallow rocks. What surprised me was the other extreme -- tilted all the way back (front end high), the box filled more rapidly than ever! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif It wasn't turning up so many rocks (it either slid over them or dragged them, creating grooves in my path), but was pulling up mounds of fine dirt. My present (and only) theory is that the extreme tilt brought the frame of the box itself into play as a scraping surface, leaving the hinged rear blade with little to do.
I got my very best results (smoothest surface) with the box set almost perfectly flat, giving the front and rear blades nearly equal opportunity to affect the soil. My question to my more experienced colleagues out there, and to our affluent, hydraulically enhanced top link friends, is this -- do you find that you do most of your box-scraping near the "flat" position, with only minor adjustments on the tilt, or have you discovered good reasons for going to the extremes?
