Box blade tilt angle.

[Blue2Orange]

Finally getting some rain today. Sitting on a relatively good quality air AQI (34) island. Surrounded by areas approaching 200. Thoughts hit the old brain regarding grading the driveway with the box blade a couple days ago. Hopefully not warped thoughts from breathing in bad air from couple days ago when the AQI was in the upper 70s.

Having user issues when the implement is set level relative to the tractor. Just trying to reduce the crown and flatten a few high points and fill in the dips created by my poor snowplowing skills when it comes to control at the transitions from up to down and down to up.

The thought. Why not just extend the top link to tilt the box upwards so the back blade that would normally push material when moving backwards ends up dragging like a reversed back blade? Hope is enough gravel will be still dragged to fill in any voids, cut the crown down and deposit that material to the sides. Or best to just reverse the back blade and just use it set at an angle. Or eventually invest in scraper grader?

 

[Grandad4]

As you are discovering, a box blade can do a variety of things but there is some subtleness in adjusting it to get the most out of it. If you are like me and don't do subtle very well, it can take a while to figure out how to use the darn thing. Once you do, it is a very handy implement.

You are handicapped by the fairly crude raise/lower 3 point control on the BX, which does not allow you to set a fixed height for lowering an attachment. That takes practice, but again, you can learn to live with it. Hope the box blade gets your tasks done.

 

[Vlach7]

Angle blade is one of my favorite implements, snow removal, drainage, crowning the road, ect. I have a box blade but really never use it.

 

[Blue2Orange]

The old NH v. BX 3pt has and is a bit challenging adjustment. Not that I didn't have moments with the NH using the rear blade and snowblower. Transitions have developed deeper dips over the past 7 seasons of snow removal. Should have and finally did ease the transition from slight to significant pitch at the top of the driveway. 4-6 tons of gravel ended up to be more than I thought I would need. Had another 15 tons delivered yesterday. Was told a ton covers about 100 sq feet a couple inches. Have a few more areas to work on. Love this "blue rock" gravel. Packs down hard. Yet water seeps through. No pooling in my dips. No issues of erosion if you keep the ditching clear even with the recent trends of monsoon like rainfall.

Today, the "perfect" rainfall. So far ~0.1"/hr. Have ~250 gallons rainwater barrels to keep the veggie and fruit garden irrigated. Our dry spell had them down to maybe 30gallons. Fill up day.

 

[Blue2Orange]

Angle blade is one of my favorite implements, snow removal, drainage, crowning the road, ect. I have a box blade but really never use it.

Went from really liking to fear to use.

Box blade with the ripper shanks made for fast work of a wild blackberries bramble. Removed the canes and leveled the area. Now just need to deal with new sprouts from whatever root structure is remaining.

Then I widened the radius of the last curve on the driveway. All was fine until I hit the then too abrupt transition from steep to not so steep. Now that the transition is filled in. Will give the box blade another go to see if I can reduce the crown and fill in the minor dip and bumps the rest of the way to the township road.

Would like to try a scraper grader before purchasing. Local dealer rental IIRC is $250 for a weekend. If rental can be applied to the purchase? Would give it a try. Need to also see if I can use the scraper grader for smoothing the trails. If so, another purchase and put the box blade up for sale.

 

[NCL4701]

You can back drag with the rear blade while driving forward by extending the toplink to tilt the front blade above the rear blade. Whether it’s cutting at all depends on how high the front blade is above the rear. A final smoothing with the toplink fully extended is usually my last pass.

Running level is a fine place to start, but tilting forward or backward depending on what you’re doing is usually helpful. Experiment with it level, tilted forward, tilted back, and pay attention to the results. You’ll figure it out. First time I used one, I spent 4 hours making a bigger mess out of our private road than it was when I started, but in that 4 hours of messing around, I figured out how to use a box blade and had the road in good shape after another 4 hours.

One thing that was counterintuitive to me when I started with a boxblade: To remove, or avoid creating, dips/bumps/washboard, do NOT go slow. Once you have the grade in the right general shape, run as fast as you can with a full box. With some speed, the blade can’t float fast enough to closely follow every bump and dip so it smooths them out at least some. Might take a few passes to get it all smooth, but so long as it gets better with each pass the dips and bumps will disappear pretty quickly, kind of like flattening a rough cut board with a hand plane.

 

[Blue2Orange]

Thanks for the tips. Extended the top link so the box forward scraper blade was ~1/4" elevated. Took a few overlapping runs to reduce the crown and level out the surface. Couple duffus moments. Gravel pile is at the top of driveway. Loaded up a bucket load and grabbed a load in the box blade with each run downhill. Forgot twice to lift the box blade after dumping the bucket load and backing up to get around the bucket load.

 

[ZTMAN]

Keep practicing. You will become an expert in short time and discover that a box blade is one of the go to implements for multiple tasks

 

[Survivor]

Angle blade is one of my favorite implements, snow removal, drainage, crowning the road, etc. I have a box blade but really never use it.

Angle blade is THE tool to use for ditching, crowning, and smoothing a driveway.

I could see where a box blade would be useful if you just have nothing but a rough trail with a bunch of humps and hollows, just for getting it into a somewhat level surface to actually start building a road out of. But without gauge wheels or better yet a long frame with a real axle set way out behind the blade, you're probably just going to make the problem worse because every time the tractor rolls over the humps and hollers, the box blade is just going to fly up a down twice as much.

 

[NCL4701]

With a boxblade, you control the cut with the angle set by the toplink and float the blade. The sides of the box limit depth of cut much like gauge wheels. Floating the blade takes any porpoising of the tractor out of the performance of the blade. Same principle as gauge wheels.

Angling the front up above level would usually angle the front blade such that it won’t cut in, so level is usually max depth of cut. Angling front below level has the front blade cutting more aggressively, but also lowers the front edge of the sides, so the cut is shallower than if the box were level. If you try to control the cut running forward by controlling the 3 point height, that doesn’t work well for the exact reasons you stated, but that’s not the way a boxblade should be used.

If you need a really heavy cut (knocking the top off a big bump, pushing out a pile, etc.) you use the rear blade and push backward. You can get a heavier cut in reverse because lengthening the top link raises the box sides and sets the rear blade more aggressively at the same time.

Like many tools, boxblades work well when used properly. They work poorly when used incorrectly.

BTW, IMO angle blades are a great tool, particularly those with offset and gauge wheels. Not knocking back blades at all.

 

[Blue2Orange]

Extending the top link so the pulling direction blade is ~1/4" above the grade and rear facing blade is "dragging" has worked well. Loading up the bucket and dragging as much gravel as I could grab from the pile in the box blade has worked nice. A dah moment has improved efficiency. Just lift and feather dump the FEL bucket while driving forwards has made quick work of dealing with dips and areas with too steep a crown. The gravel used drains well yet becomes a very firm surface. No real need for a crown. Crown makes for no fun snow removal. . "Blue rock". The material interlocks nice yet drains. Even in our recent trend of monsoon rainfalls. Old gravel use to rut and puddle. Until this Spring, the last load of blue rock was just 30 yard stretched over 800 linear feet as a skim coat back in 2018. I knew with time the transitions from slight to significant uphill pitch would become an issue with every passing winter of snow clearing. This time I filled in the transitions.

Find the box blade overall a more versatile implement than the the rear blade. Blade is nice for the early light snowfalls and basic maintenance grading of the driveway. But eventually the snowbanks become too large. Or the dreaded early heavy dump before the driveway freezes rock hard solid. Snowblower time.

Still considering a land plane. BX is pretty limited due to HP. Was considering the LandPride GS1548 with the adjustable height scraper blades. But thinking it might be a stretch going uphill. Using it to maintain the trails might not be possible. Double digit inclines for long stretches. The 0548 blades seem to be set relatively aggressively low. IIRC, 1 1/2" below the skids.

 

[Survivor]

Extending the top link so the pulling direction blade is ~1/4" above the grade and rear facing blade is "dragging" has worked well. Loading up the bucket and dragging as much gravel as I could grab from the pile in the box blade has worked nice. A dah moment has improved efficiency. Just lift and feather dump the FEL bucket while driving forwards has made quick work of dealing with dips and areas with too steep a crown. The gravel used drains well yet becomes a very firm surface. No real need for a crown. Crown makes for no fun snow removal. . "Blue rock". The material interlocks nice yet drains. Even in our recent trend of monsoon rainfalls. Old gravel use to rut and puddle. Until this Spring, the last load of blue rock was just 30 yard stretched over 800 linear feet as a skim coat back in 2018. I knew with time the transitions from slight to significant uphill pitch would become an issue with every passing winter of snow clearing. This time I filled in the transitions.

Find the box blade overall a more versatile implement than the the rear blade. Blade is nice for the early light snowfalls and basic maintenance grading of the driveway. But eventually the snowbanks become too large. Or the dreaded early heavy dump before the driveway freezes rock hard solid. Snowblower time.

Still considering a land plane. BX is pretty limited due to HP. Was considering the LandPride GS1548 with the adjustable height scraper blades. But thinking it might be a stretch going uphill. Using it to maintain the trails might not be possible. Double digit inclines for long stretches. The 0548 blades seem to be set relatively aggressively low. IIRC, 1 1/2" below the skids.

I have a six foot angle snowplow blade to quick attach on the loader. That and the eight foot grader blade are on the tractor all the time in the winter. If it's a light snow then I just use the grader blade because it does a cleaner job and is two feet wider and I can push the snow well over into the ditches. The rear blade follows the camber/ crown better because it follows the rear wheels. There's also a little "float" in the 3pt and I set the lever so it's just a smidge below barely touch the ground.

You are correct, the snow is heavier or wetter and I have to break trail with the front blade. I always clean up with the rear blade and push the snow as far off the side(s) as possible. The front blade is sort of rough because sticking out so far beyond the wheels, the ground has to be perfectly level or it's off camber from the surface. On the parking/turnaround, I usually finish up with pushing backwards with the curved edge of the grader blade. That leaves it so it looks like it was swept with broom.


Oh! And in the winter I use a longer top link and adjust it way out so the castor of the blade is as close to vertical as possible. That way the blade tilt is very nearly zero as you angle it from side to side. In the summer I often shorten the top link so I can get a slight tilt down on the toe end of the blade from the first angle pin hole, and a lot of tilt down on the toe to create or refresh ditches when it's angle all the way about 45*.

 

[Blue2Orange]

Lake Effect snow. Light up here use to be less than a foot. Recent few years snowfall has been low. IIRC, only needed to use the snowblower 4-5 times. Total snowfall didn't come close to average. Didn't even break 100 inches. We had some form of precipitation coming down as rain, frizzle every month during the winter. USDA noted we are now ag zone 5. Ok with me to be warming. Don't like freezing rain making for a slippery driveway surface. Studs or chains are going to be needed on the BX. Use to need to lay down sand/cinders and take a running start with the NH to get up the steeper sections and just remove snow going downhill. Bit sketchy at times.

Heavily wooded 40. Driveway is only ~12 foot wide with 2-5 foot wide drainage ditching. Limits how much snow I can blade. Did use the box blade to widen the outer edge of the last curve at the top of driveway. Had to take down couple +100 y/o red oak trees couple years ago. Dying and eventually would drop branches or worse on the garage or house. Sort made a turn around circle around one of the stumps. Winter it serves as an area to pile up snow. I like the combo of using a loader bucket and rear mounted snowblower once the snowbanks make using a blade a bit useless. Hindsight. Should have kept my 8ft back blade. Traded it in for the 5ft. when downsizing to the BX. Might have been useful in cutting back the banks.