Grading with Bucket is hard. Any tips?

[clay45]

What beautiful lawns. Seeded or sod?

 

[socapots]

Wow,
that's some great work.

 

[tcrote5516]

Thank's guys! It was a lot of work, tons of fill and many hours in the seat but well worth it. The front was all woods with 100 - 110' pines and some parts were so steep mowing was tempting death. I have about 200 yards of fill to smooth things out. The lawns are all seeded, sod would have cost a fortune!

 

[Corney]

Is that lawn irrigated? I seeded and fertilized about 3 acres just before freeze up in 2014 and had a dry spring and summer. It started raining and I had fair results. I over seeded just before freeze up again and poured the nitrogen to it. Hoping it will look like that some day!

 

[socapots]

For me more topsoil before the seed made a huge difference.

 

[tcrote5516]

No its not irrigated and this was a VERY dry summer. Parts of it took a beating this year but it will come back. I found out where I went to thin on the loam this summer as it didn't take the heat real well.

I also cut it a bit to short during peak heat season so that didn't help either. Still learning but I'll get it figured out!

 

[Corney]

Hear you on the topsoil/ loam thing. I moved about 3-4 ' of material from one part of the yard to another so ended up with sandy loam on about an acres and its spotty. That is why I am putting fertilizer on it heavy. My brother in law works for an agg bulk fertilizer outfit and sweeps up spilled product and gives it to me.

I guess this is what happens when you have a paving guy trying to make something green?

 

[Flienlow]

This is what I do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjL8aR3jVBI

 

[CountryBumkin]

This is what I do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjL8aR3jVBI

That's cheating! You didn't spend a bunch of money on that attachment.
Seriously - nice job.

 

[skeets]

Thats almost a cool as dragin an old set of box springs, it works well,,lol

 

[CaveCreekRay]

Whatever works! And that clearly does.

I have a welding shop nearby that has a dumpster full of cool scraps. I buy them by the pound.

I am going to weld up a 3pt triangle with half inch steel teeth followed by a smoother bar to drag in my arena to pull up weeds and to level out the driveway. It'll be fun playing around to see what works. The arena is about 5000 square feet and using chemicals is not healthy or safe. Plus its way expensive. Dragging it twice a year takes out 95% of the weeds for a quart of diesel fuel.

Tractors be FUN. I am SOOO glad my wife let me buy her one!!!

Ray

 

[skeets]

An old electrical inspector I use to know did something like that but he used track spikes welded through holes he blew through som old bed frames and had a plate on top he would stack blocks on to weight it down,, he was running an old Farmall B I think, wasnt to big and it cleaned his drive way up and leaved out his garden too

 

[Tooljunkie]

I have a c channel 12" wide by 8 feet long. Hangs off 3 point works decent.

 

[chieffan]

I call it "Sand" (not beach sand of course, but Florida sand).

I'm not using float with the bucket because that doesn't seem to do anything but "float" over the humps. Maybe a little different angle on the bucket will make the difference.

The ground speed of the tractor makes a big difference on how well you can control the bucket. To fast your behind the bucket all the time, meaning when you see it start to dig in by the time you react it is to late. Ground speed should be as slow as possible till your real use to doing the job. good luck.

 

[Don64]

I misread what he has. I thought he said he had a boxblade, so yeah, it's useless with a rake... though you could rig up a blade on the rake face and reverse it and it would work then! LOL!

Great stuff for those of us with a boxblade, though! Thanks, ShaunRH.

 

[KeithG]

Using the "float" to level an area is for the "finishing" touch only. When I was expanding my back yard and trying level areas that had stumps/rocks removed trying to float it was useless. I ended up filling the holes as best I could with half bucket full of dirt then used the bucket with the blade facing straight downward so it was like a small bulldozer. I would approach the small pile of dirt I just put down and have the blade edge about 2 inches above the original ground height. This would more or less end up spreading the pile and give a flatter area of the pile. Next I would put the bucket flat as though I was going to float the dirt but I would lift the front tires off the ground and use the weight of the tractor to fill-in the hole as I back dragged it and give a more packed/leveled surface where the rut was. Do this from four different directions and the rut should be filled in enough to all for back dragging floating the finished area. You may need to repeat this process until all the ruts are fairly level with the rest of the ground and then do the finish leveling. I would also do this before york raking and it would yield a much better leveled result.

 

[clay45]

I don't know if it was here on OTT or another forum but one of the best tips I received for working my asphalt milling topped driveway was to remove my top link and use chain as my top link. It worked and drastically removed the whoopdeedoos especially on the inside of turns. I want to try this with my rake instead of my blade because at an angle I find my rakes is an effective blade with less aggresssive tendencies.

Its easy to switch out the chain and top-link as needed and makes for a surprisingly better smoothing tool.

Regards,

Clay