I was watching a few youtube videos, actually I enjoy the comments more than some of the video's at times. The particular one was a sort of training video. I had a good laugh about the folks that brought up back blading and how bad it is on the this and the that. The one thing that no one considers is the dirt builds up under the blade frog plate area and actually protects the underside pretty much from wear, in some instances its probably better on the blade and cutting edges than going forward.
Well,back blading is kind of considered the domain of inexperienced operators or chancers . I’ll say this,here in the UK,we get our fair share of bad ground and rain. If a bunch of scrapers or dumpers have left deep ruts in abit of bad muck,and you’re stuck on a D8 or D9 trying to civilise the area to make it look pretty,you’ll need to back blade to keep the tractor from getting bogged too. It’s ok if you’ve got a nice lgp D6 or something to clean up with,but any 8/9 driver that leaves the place like a bomb site would likely loose his job and receive a smack around his ears
^Like he said, you have a light dozer and are putting in cap break or road rock, you'd best be able to do it in the forward direction, but with anything that gives, the dozer ruts are going to remain so backblading is the only answer. You don't get to choose to cut to the good stuff, many times.
I know guys who can grade a yard out working between foundations, sidewalks and concrete driveways backblading everything. "Painting" their way out so the last pass puts them backing into the truck or trailer with the blade down until it comes to the ramps. If the soil conditions are good, a few minutes with a rake or square point shovel is all that is needed to knock out the occasional little berm or grouser mark. Other than it, it's ready for grass.
Of course when your bulking material you'd not back blade. Its for finishing and helping smooth here or there. Even to reach off the limits to pull something back out of the woods etc. There is a reason dozer blades have a "float" position. Your not going to do lifts and fills then compact with out back blading, at least in the area of the country.
Yeah, there's a reason dozers have float position. Back blading works great in the conditions it's recommended for such as smoothing ruts or eliminating track marks. Good grader operators will back blade loose material at times too.
One thing that drives me absolutely nuts is an operator fine grading or back blading a fill lift -1' or more below sub-grade. It's a waste of time, money and diesel fuel unless it's the last lift before a rain and we need to grade the lift to drain. Now with that being said I see no issue with back blading during final grading, we do it all the time and haven't wore out a mold board yet. Sometimes have to cut the bolts off changing cutting edges but rarely, usually they come right off with an air wrench.
Like I mentioned above back blading can't wear out the blade, the dirt builds under it and protects it. My above post should be edited, to say "at least in this area of the country". Well CM1995 if your using a D3 or 4 to do your foot or so lifts then maybe you can get away with not back blading (this state west coast, I don't know about yours). I did all my work with a D8 so the roughness and tracks does no good for compaction, been there done that. Have to keep the compaction test person happy. Oh and we had a fellow at the one outfit I worked at before I quit, he was from Alabama, he thought I over stripped an area of ground, wrong it needed like 2 more or so feet. So ground in Alabama must be way different than here. Oh and its more of a waste of diesel to have to dig up the fills you did and redo for compaction.
We've used 8's and 6'R's in addition to 6N's down to 5's and even 953's on fill lifts over the years. For a rock fill lift a 953 works pretty good separating the large rocks for the lower portion of the lift and keeping the fines on top. If we're using trucks I like to keep them on top of the leading edge of the lift to aid in compaction as the lift progresses. We primarily use 84" pad foot rollers for compaction whether we're using trucks or pushing cut into the fill. When it's time for the nuke box just drop the blade and cut a smooth spot. For the clay soils we have one wants a smooth cut for the nuke to sit on as any loose material or voids underneath can give a bad test. I can count on one hand over the last 20+ years where we've had to dig a fill lift up. Still no need to fine grade a fill lift 1' or more below sub-grade IMO - YMMV.
All the rollers I've ever used are smooth drums, they won't compact the dents/ impressions that the tracks leave. The compaction even looks horrible without back blading.