The Poor Mans Dirt Pan or Bulldozer

Discussion in 'Functional Gear & Equipment' started by Thunder5Ranch, Aug 18, 2022.


  1. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    The lowly Box Blade that is ancient in its origins. The first box blades were not much different in design and function than modern ones. The earliest known ones were pulled by teams of slaves and later draft animals and finally tractors.

    Most people do not realize the power of the Box Blade and use it pretty much exclusively for grading drive ways and leveling lawns for seeding.

    The Box Blade has so much more potential and uses :) It is slow, tedious and boring but over the last 7 days I have moved 1.5 million tons of dirt with a 6' box blade using it basically as a pan pulling it with a Kubota M5660 utility tractor (56hp) The Box Blade I am using hold 24cuft in the box and I pulling another 6-8 in front of the box.

    This field of mud, dirt and yuck is 120 tons that I pulled out of the lake bed yesterday with nothing but the 6' Box Blade.
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    After getting a full 120' long field 60' wide I made a pass over it with the shanks still fully extended to bust it up and smooth it out a bit. Then retracted the shanks and bladed it down smooth. At this point I have raised that bank 4'. Today I raised it another 2.5 feet. I run a 5,000 pound water filled roller over it every 2 feet to compress it. Ideally I would compress every foot but I am racing rain. I was not expecting the 7.5 inches of rain a couple of weeks ago that filled the deep bowls below the dam. Another 3" down pour will bring the water up into what I am working on now. And the pool above it will run over all over where I am working. I can still get another 1-2 feet deepr around the edges but not going to risk losing the new tractor in bottomless mud in the lower parts.
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    IT IS BORING just making one circle after another and then up the ramp to dump the box and repeat over and over. I have added 2.5 feet more depth over all to the North Arm of the lake. It is about a 5.7 acre area to give you a idea
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    I have done about all of the depth I can do at this point I keep hitting seepy springs and a seeper usually indicated mud the consistency of craft paste is within 4"-6" of where I am at. I alreay made the mistake of making one pass to many and sinking the tractor up to the seat platform in that sticky mess. Luckily Oliver and Red chained to it and pulling together popped it out. LOL was worried at first that it was going to keep sinking until it was gone. The sand stone was what stopped it, the Sandstone was only 3.5 feet below where I broke through in that area! I am really glad it was not 8-12 feet down there like it is most every place else here!!!

    Nice Gold Clay and a nice juicy seepy springs! I have learned the hard way that if I think I can make one more pass....... It is best to NOT make one more pass.
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    What it looks like after the first pass over the top. I didn't worry about getting it real smooth last night because I was going to pull another 2+ feet up on top of it today. I did run the roller over it about a half dozen times though..... Compaction is IMPORTANT. I am doing it in 120'x36' sections along the South Side of the North Arm. The only reason being doing sections instead of all 1100 feet at once makes you feel like you are accomplishing something, doing a large area at once makes you feel like you are spinning your wheels and getting nowhere fast :)
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    I started with the box blade on the North Side of the North Arm. Total area there is about 1.8 acres. I raised it up 8 feet on the lake low end with what was there tapering up to level with the beans. Did the same thing there that I am doing on the opposite bank now........Just a lot more dirt there than I need to move now.
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    So what has moved all this dirt? Amazingly a junk Rural King King Klutter $1100 box blade. After the King Klutter Bushhog and basically having to rebuild it from the ground up in order for it to function and actually mow......... I had nothing good to say about King Klutter...... or RK for that matter. If I could have found a 6' + box blade any place else I would have bought before buying King Klutter. So I have finally found something they make and RK sells that is NOT ABSOLUTE JUNK. The Box Blade has held up to 1.5 million tons of serious abuse and not broke or twisted and I didn't even have to weld additional braces and supports on to it!
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    Yep I already broke the new tractor bucket or rather the quick connect that holds the bucket. Although I dispute that I broke it! Kubota Warranty claims I got a rock or stick caught in it and it bent the plate...... I claim if a little 3" rock or a stick can bend that plate then that is a manufacturing malfunction and not a operator malfunction. Doesn't really matter as far as the paying for it, its a $1100 part and I bought that 3 year Orange Protection Plan Insurance that is paying for the part. I am DAMN FOLKS SOMEONE IS GOING TO PAY FOR IT WHETHER IT IS WARRANTY, INSURANCE OR ME OUT OF POCKET........ JUST ORDER THE F'ing PART AND GET THE DAMNED THING HERE SO I CAN USE THE BUCKET!!! LOL when I am going up my steep ramps with a box full of dirt weighing 1500-2500 pounds, a bucket with 2000 pounds of dirt in it would make a real nice counter weight so I would not be going up the grade with the front wheels a couple of feet off the ground :) Gets kind of hairy sometimes riding a wheely up the grade!

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    Running the shanks 1 hole from fully extended in the heavy really damp stuff. Run them fully extended in the drier lighter stuff.
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    The trick to taking large chunks of clay out each pass is to scraped a 8" deep path down the middle of the area you are wanting to rip and really cut down. after you have that path dug down you simply pull cross ways over it. Every pass drop the shanks just past the lip and it digs down and as you come up rips a big chunk from the opposite edge. just back and forth digging a deeper wider U with each pass. Want to make it a nice slope just stop going across and running along the original trench and working your way up over and over with each pass.

    I decided to build three more dams One for a stock pond up the South valley, one just above the main lake to flood the valley between the main lake and stock pond to act as a silt pond and a filter. And The third above the water line of the main lake that will flood 3 minor arms in the woods and will act as a catch pond for all of the leafs and sticks that would other wise come out of the woods and end up in the bottom of the main lake. That is what Mount Krap and Mount Krap Minor are for and why I had the contractor push them and make those giant piles of clay and top soil where I did.

    It will take me about 4-6 weeks using the Kubota and Box Blade and Oliver with the roller to build each the two larger dams and about a week to rebuild the existing stock pond damn and make it taller and wider. Decided to go that route rather than a 20 acre lake. I will still end up with around 19 acres of surface water it will just be one lake, 2 good size ponds and one smaller stock pond. The benefits of a woods trash catch pond and a filter silt pond far outweigh one big body of water.

    Give me enough time, fuel and motivation and I could have built the same dam that they build with a D6 and a track hoe...... with a 56 hp tractor and a box blade :) The Dozer can do in a day what it takes me a week and half to do with the tractor and box blade though :) Contractor did a great job on the dam, a good job on the middle and South arms and went epic half ass on the North Arm. LOL kept telling me I should have hired a contractor that had a big tractor to pull 2-3 pans...... I kept telling him that when he bid the job that he told me he had the big tractor and 3 pans. Neither here or there at this point because I have scraped the 5+ acres of top soil that he refused to and will have pulled 2 million tons out of the lake bed that he should have in the North arm and changed what was going to be 1-2 feet to 3-6 feet deep. Just took me a while and still a while left to go getting the last half million tons of clay that I want out....... Just keep hoping that there are no big rain downpours between now and finished!

    But A box blade whether it be 4' for a sub compact or a 14' for a 100hp+ tractor is a must have for any rural property owner. And if you are a doomsday homesteader farmsteader type you can build a lot of strategic earth works with a small tractor and box blade!
     
  2. duane

    duane Monkey+++

    The difference between a box and a straight blade is unbelievable until you have used both, the snow plow type will not carry dirt and the box blade with a set of wheels a ways back will level quite well also. Keep up the pictures, I find them very interesting and very informing as well as just good country eye candy.
     
  3. Gator 45/70

    Gator 45/70 Monkey+++

    Kubota knows how you like breaking their ''stuff''
    Kubota should put you on the payroll as a testing it until it breaks engineer!!!
     
    Tully Mars, Thunder5Ranch and SB21 like this.
  4. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    Straight blades are real useful tools as well. When I refresh a road or the driveway I like to make a pass with the box blade to rip rock back up to the surface and then a regular blade angled to pull the rock to the center and then one more pass with the box blade down the center (Shanks up) to smooth it out.

    If it can be broken I shall find a way and means to break it! I was on the fence between the quick connect loader and a pin on bucket. I have a feeling in the future that I am going to regret getting the quick connect. Particularly if they are correct that a Stick or Small rock can bend and twist a steel plate..... That screams cheap soft steel to me :(
     
  5. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    Errr NOT Millions of Tons LOL Millions of pounds :0) Wish I could millions of tons in 7 days though!!!
     
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