Today's tractor time

[Ryansweatt2004]

So far I've put just over 18 hours on my brand new L3901. Most of which has been spent grading my 1/2 mile road and moving loads of fill on a friends property. Today was spent much the same. More grading. Aside from the burm on either side I think it came out pretty well considering the center of the driveway was like one really long bowl with standing water and was around 3-8 inches below the sides in spots.

 

[Bulldog]

Looks good

 

[bmblank]

Looks good to me. Gotta get some gravel on that road. Crushed concrete maybe.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

[Ryansweatt2004]

Yup, it's definitely much in need of some stone or gravel. Luckily it's not my driveway and I left it probably 10x better than I found it.

 

[olthumpa]

Ryan, is Dave's Dinner on rt. 201 in Gardiner as good as they used to be. I can't count the number of times I ate there. It has to be at least 18 years since I was there.

 

[Ryansweatt2004]

Ryan, is Dave's Dinner on rt. 201 in Gardiner as good as they used to be. I can't count the number of times I ate there. It has to be at least 18 years since I was there.

To tell ya the truth I've never eaten there and don't eat out much so I wouldn't know.

 

[CaveCreekRay]

Ryan,

Great grading job.

One thing that will help with the winter rains is any kind of crown you can build, even a slight one using some of the berm dirt along the edges. Not sure what you are using but, if you can adjust the box to a slight angle and pull dirt from the edges and build a crown and then pack it down with car/truck traffic (smoother tires), you'll see less of the gooey mess that dirt becomes. Even if you slope the runoff to one side, getting the water away greatly improves the life and quality of the roadway. My drive used to turn into a big soggy water bed until I crowned it 6".

The worst thing is if your berms hold huge puddles and then the berm gets breached. The water runoff will cut into your nice smooth roadway.

Good work! And good workout for your new machine. Keep the pictures coming!

Ray

 

[Ryansweatt2004]

I graded everything with a 60 in landpride box blade. Everything on the sides was what I couldn't keep from spilling out the side of the box.

 

[zippyslug31]

Looks great! Makes me wish I was on mine... and not stuck behind a damn keyboard.

 

[Ryansweatt2004]

Spent a good 3-4 hours on the first few hundred feet of our private road. Ripped up a bunch of rocks along with the compacted pot holes. Cut some ditches and formed a crown in the road. Nice smooth mix of gravel and reclaim now. Tell ya what, these box blades are worth every penny spent.

 

[CaveCreekRay]

Aww, You coulda done that by hand...

CHAINED TO YOUR PARTNER IN A PRISON CHAIN GANG!!!

Its truly amazing what these machines can do. Great that you have uses for yours.

Keep the pics coming!!!

Ray

 

[JR4AL]

Nice! If you have access to a landscape rake, you could crown your road with it. It will get the spill out of the ditch and put it back in the middle of the road with the right adjustment.

 

[Ryansweatt2004]

That's the hard part of grading and cutting the ditches with a box blade. Keeping the gravel from spilling out of the sides. I've figured out that I can adjust the 3pt turn buckles enough to get a decent side to side angle on the cutting edge which helps but I really just go till the box fills up then I drag and feather it out in the middle of the road. Doing this has helped pull the gravel out of the ditches and back to the road surface where it belongs. In a perfect world I'd have enough money to go out and get an offset grader blade and rake to do a better job.

 

[skeets]

Shakin the bushes Boss Shakin the bushes

 

[zippyslug31]

In a perfect world I'd have enough money to go out and get an offset grader blade and rake to do a better job.

When my tractor was delivered, my dealer didn't have the box blade I ordered at the time. Since they knew I needed to do some urgent cutting of a driveway they loaned me a grader blade. FWIW, I found this was a terrible implement to use for cutting a new road surface. It only shaves the top and redistributes loose material; there's really no "removal" of material (if that's what you're trying to do).

If your road was already in & graveled, I'd say the grader blade might be just the ticket for dressing the surface, but when dealing with the dirt base of the road, I was super frustrated with it.

Even though my dealer gave me some line like "oh, the grader is easier to use than a box blade anyway, we'll just loan you that", I found that once I finally got my BB, the thing was so much better to use for that phase of road construction.

The proper tool for the proper task...


EDIT: Missed the part where you mentioned an offset grader. In fact I was loaned a dual edge road grader... THAT thing was all wrong for the initial cutting of the base. I stand (a bit) corrected.

 

[ShaunBlake]

Shakin the bushes Boss Shakin the bushes

"What we've got here is failure to communicate" The objective is grading the road -- get out of the bushes and back to work!

 

[Ryansweatt2004]

Two truckloads of reclaim brought in on our private road today. Somewhere around 20+ yards that I got to play with this afternoon.

 

[coachgeo]

Talked to a dad of one of my students who works for a city road department. Asked him about where to get the stuff they mill off the roads around here. told him I was considering using it for my 80ish yd. drive. His honest answer was... "DON'T USE IT". "Will be nice looking for a while" "Over summer it will mush/melt together nice" "Then after awhile it is a disaster" "Pot holes form like any other road". "You can't simply Grade it for repairs cause as it melts together its foot or more sized chunks thus not the gradeable stuff that it started as". His point was Repairs/Maintenance then ends up bigger projects and much more costly. His flat recommendation was to stay with gravel. Sure you got to grade it occasionally but repairs are easy and inexpensive.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

coachgeo,
I honestly think you got bad advice!
I know of hundreds of drives done in reclaimed asphalt and they are maintained just like gravel, it never molds back together solid, if any thing only semi solid, that breaks up again once you work it.
It's also good because it doesn't dust up like gravel and if prepped right it will not wash like rock.

 

[Humblebub]

My experience mirrors NIW comments. Mine was just a driveway and parking area that got residential only use. First a base went down and vibra rolled and then a second coat again vibra rolled. Over 5 years two potholes developed and neighbour broke up the two areas for me and packed back down. I ultimately paved with asphalt as I got a really good deal from a customer but I was quite happy with original.