Our little private road needed some attention. Wheel tracks were worn in just enough to create a little berm between the wheel tracks and ditches, which is often the beginning of decline of gravel roads. There was plenty of gravel at the edges of the road so I decided to break out the old Leinbach backblade that’s older than I am (that’s old) to windrow gravel back toward the center of the road. Yes, I can pull it back to center with the boxblade but the backblade works better.
The blade is really too narrow for the L. It was a better fit for Dad’s 9N. But it’s in the shed and I use it so rarely, no chance I’m upgrading. The blade has been centered on the mount for at least 50 years. A couple months ago, I walked past it thinking it would be nice to have a blade that would offset and noticed the blade DOES offset. Not very convenient as you have to remove 5 bolts and bolt it back up in a different set of holes. Decided next time I used it, I was going to give the offset a whirl, and today was the day.
I had 5 good size bolts to remove which had at least 50 years, probably more like 60 years, to rust together. I also had a Milwaukee M18 Fuel high torque impact I picked up a while back. I’ve used it, but not on a challenge like this. Figured Kroil and heat would be involved. Wrong. The Milwaukee took them off and put them back easy peasy, although a couple were more than a little warm by the time they came off. I don’t think my old Chicago Pneumatic would have had a chance against all that rust.
It looks large and way offset in the first pic. That’s a perspective trick. Total width centered almost covers the tires but not quite.
Swung one pinhole you can start to see why offset is desirable. Angled, it barely covers the tire in the ditch. At least now it does cover the tire in the ditch.
Normally have the float valve on the toplink, but for this job wanted it on the side link. A quick hose swap allowed the blade to follow the contour of the road.
This is the before. Probably doesn’t look all that bad but water running in the wheel tracks like little ditches ain’t cool.
This is after one pass up and back with the backblade. It’s still pretty wet here so anything not on top already is dark, but it’s stone dust and rock so it will all be gray again by tomorrow. Definitely not done. Just step one, pulling material in from the sides so there’s something to work with.
Dropped the backblade in favor of the boxblade. One pass on each side and it was looking pretty decent. At least good enough for the crown to shed water all the way to the ditches.
Usually I don’t much like working the end of the road that ties into the public road where traffic flies by as I’m having to get right to the edge of the pavement. Have to watch traffic and what you’re doing to the road. Today, a crew from the power company was running new lines to service an adjacent development under construction. They had one lane shut down in front of our road with flaggers controlling traffic. Didn’t speak to them due to the noise of each other’s equipment but they saw me and made it clear they’d stop traffic for me for a bit. That was nice and of course I thanked them.
For grading, hydraulic toplink and sidelink is nothing short of amazing for an old guy like me that’s turned turnbuckles for decades.
