Back Blade for snow removal with horse mat

[sam24and48]

This will be our second winter at our current house with a pretty long drive made of asphalt millings. Last year I added skid shoes to the blade to keep it up off the drive. However when setting the rear blade at an angle the skid shoes take that same angle as well and dug in substantially into the driveway. I also used a small snowblower on our concrete pad as to not scrape up the concrete with the rear blade and shoes. This year I added a horse mat strip from TSC as many have used to keep from scraping up the pad. I am curious if anyone has suggestions on possibly a wheel set up similar to what is used on landscape rakes to keep it just above the grade. I am not great at fabrication, welding, etc. so something that could be attached at the bolts for the blade would be great. I may just have to float it manually as I go, which isn't the end of the world, but I wanted to see if anyone else had some other ideas.

Hopefully that all makes sense. I attached some pictures of the driveway and blade. Our turn around is at a fairly steep grade on the one side so that makes moving snow a little difficult while turning, but not impossible.

 

[Ping]

This will be our second winter at our current house with a pretty long drive made of asphalt millings. Last year I added skid shoes to the blade to keep it up off the drive. However when setting the rear blade at an angle the skid shoes take that same angle as well and dug in substantially into the driveway. I also used a small snowblower on our concrete pad as to not scrape up the concrete with the rear blade and shoes. This year I added a horse mat strip from TSC as many have used to keep from scraping up the pad. I am curious if anyone has suggestions on possibly a wheel set up similar to what is used on landscape rakes to keep it just above the grade. I am not great at fabrication, welding, etc. so something that could be attached at the bolts for the blade would be great. I may just have to float it manually as I go, which isn't the end of the world, but I wanted to see if anyone else had some other ideas.

Hopefully that all makes sense. I attached some pictures of the driveway and blade. Our turn around is at a fairly steep grade on the one side so that makes moving snow a little difficult while turning, but not impossible.

Sam,
I run the same setup on my rear blade. Never needed gauge wheels. Just make sure the blade pivot post is plumb with blade fully lowered. That way when it’s pivoted left or right, it’ll stay make contact with ground across the entire width.
For gravel, I’ll run the blade like you show and push. Or, rotate 180 and drive forward. With the convex side of the blade pointed in direction of travel, I find I move very little if any gravel.
HTH
Regards

 

[OrangeKrush]

This will be our second winter at our current house with a pretty long drive made of asphalt millings. Last year I added skid shoes to the blade to keep it up off the drive. However when setting the rear blade at an angle the skid shoes take that same angle as well and dug in substantially into the driveway. I also used a small snowblower on our concrete pad as to not scrape up the concrete with the rear blade and shoes. This year I added a horse mat strip from TSC as many have used to keep from scraping up the pad. I am curious if anyone has suggestions on possibly a wheel set up similar to what is used on landscape rakes to keep it just above the grade. I am not great at fabrication, welding, etc. so something that could be attached at the bolts for the blade would be great. I may just have to float it manually as I go, which isn't the end of the world, but I wanted to see if anyone else had some other ideas.

Hopefully that all makes sense. I attached some pictures of the driveway and blade. Our turn around is at a fairly steep grade on the one side so that makes moving snow a little difficult while turning, but not impossible.

Nice.. who ever came up with this idea needs commended?
Simple but effective! Thank you!

Sam,
I run the same setup on my rear blade. Never needed gauge wheels. Just make sure the blade pivot post is plumb with blade fully lowered. That way when it’s pivoted left or right, it’ll stay make contact with ground across the entire width.
For gravel, I’ll run the blade like you show and push. Or, rotate 180 and drive forward. With the convex side of the blade pointed in direction of travel, I find I move very little if any gravel.
HTH
Regards

thanks for the tip? I’ll let my neighbor know about this for his gravel drive.

 

[sam24and48]

Nice.. who ever came up with this idea needs commended?
Simple but effective! Thank you!


thanks for the tip? I’ll let my neighbor know about this for his gravel drive.

Yeah it was an awesome idea. I had to shop around a couple TSC's in my area as a lot were out of the 3/4 in thick mats. As another tip I just used a new box blade and cut it, worked really well especially with something like a 2x4 under it above the cutting line. The mat would flop down as it cut and almost separated by itself as i cut. Probably did 3 or 4 passes total.

 

[JWool]

Same here I ran that same setup for a couple years, works pretty good, last year I switched to a UHMW POLY CUTTING EDGE.

 

[Henro]

This will be our second winter at our current house with a pretty long drive made of asphalt millings. Last year I added skid shoes to the blade to keep it up off the drive. However when setting the rear blade at an angle the skid shoes take that same angle as well and dug in substantially into the driveway. I also used a small snowblower on our concrete pad as to not scrape up the concrete with the rear blade and shoes. This year I added a horse mat strip from TSC as many have used to keep from scraping up the pad. I am curious if anyone has suggestions on possibly a wheel set up similar to what is used on landscape rakes to keep it just above the grade. I am not great at fabrication, welding, etc. so something that could be attached at the bolts for the blade would be great. I may just have to float it manually as I go, which isn't the end of the world, but I wanted to see if anyone else had some other ideas.

Hopefully that all makes sense. I attached some pictures of the driveway and blade. Our turn around is at a fairly steep grade on the one side so that makes moving snow a little difficult while turning, but not impossible.

That is pretty cool! I would like to increase the width of my backblade for snow removal, and had not thought of doing something like this. No asphalt or concrete here, but the added width would be helpful. I suppose I could do it with metal in my case...have to think more about it...

 

[sam24and48]

So I was just doing some dinking around on amazon and harbor freight to see if anything spurred some inspiration. I have totally avoided trailer jack products as I assumed they wouldn't cut the mustard. But look at this picture I just came across at the following link. Would that be possible with one set on the main shaft of the rear blade?


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084P9MZRG/ref=sspa_dk_detail_6?psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzME1QWE1aTTU5OEs0JmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNDk4Mjg1MlRHV1dJRldVSTg2QyZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwODU5NjQyRTFGSVA0Sjg1REdBJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfZGV0YWlsMiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

 

[sam24and48]

Also if you look close you can see he is using the pvc pipe method on his rb2060 in that picture as well and that looks like gravel underneath.

 

[chim]

I’ve used a squeegee on a couple blades and might suggest:

We have best luck with wear when using the tread from old tires. Tougher than horse mat.

I would prefer more support behind the rubber. It looks like the rubber will bend back and you will drag the cutting edge in the gravel.

 

[OrangeKrush]

I’ve used a squeegee on a couple blades and might suggest:

We have best luck with wear when using the tread from old tires. Tougher than horse mat.

I would prefer more support behind the rubber. It looks like the rubber will bend back and you will drag the cutting edge in the gravel.

I could see this happening on the larger heavier blades but my BX blade probably not a problem. I see what you’re saying though..

 

[OrangeKrush]

Yeah it was an awesome idea. I had to shop around a couple TSC's in my area as a lot were out of the 3/4 in thick mats. As another tip I just used a new box blade and cut it, worked really well especially with something like a 2x4 under it above the cutting line. The mat would flop down as it cut and almost separated by itself as i cut. Probably did 3 or 4 passes total.

Is this the 6’x 4’ or close to it? My buddy bought something from there for a small truck bed mat, really thick and heavy for about $40 I think.

 

[sam24and48]

Is this the 6’x 4’ or close to it? My buddy bought something from there for a small truck bed mat, really thick and heavy for about $40 I think.

Yes that is exactly what it was. It was right at $40 bucks if memory serves as well.

 

[Orange1forme]

Also if you look close you can see he is using the pvc pipe method on his rb2060 in that picture as well and that looks like gravel underneath.

I was going to suggest looking at the pvc method.

 

[OrangeKrush]

Can anyone tell me how the pvc is attached, I can't see it that well in the photo.

 

[Fatfenders]

I also cut up a stall mat and attached it to my blade. I ended up with 8 - 6' strips, enought o last me for a while. Haven't had any snow to try ot yet, but thought about running blade backwards until a little snow base was built up.

 

[orange crusher]

 

[Orange1forme]

Can anyone tell me how the pvc is attached, I can't see it that well in the photo.

It is cut lengthwise and then use a mallet to pressure fit it on.

There are some youtube videos on this.

 

[OrangeKrush]

It is cut lengthwise and then use a mallet to pressure fit it on.

There are some youtube videos on this.

Thank you! I think I may have a piece of pvc out there somewhere but I think the rubber pad sounds like the way y to go. PVC may be free to try though.

 

[sam24and48]

So I've been doing some work on this. here are some pics of what I have so far. I'll try to give a little more detail once I have finished if people are interested. Crossing my fingers that it works.

 

[ayak]

My thanks for posting this idea. It used to be during winter, the gravel and grass became one during winter plowing and I lived by ‘hey, that’ll grow back’.
So I picked up some 3/4” horse stall mat from TSC, ordered some longer plow bolts thru Bolt Depot (these had been hard for me to find) and it worked flawlessly. The mat edge skipped right over the rock and when I got stupid and went into the grass, it even skipped right over the grass too.