Might be a stupid question... But I struggle to get a decent flat surface with my ancient d6 and 20hours of seat time lol. Made me wonder why you cant have the blade in float with some fabricated guide wheels out 10ft in front of the blade. Kind of like some of the skid steer land planes you see. I could not find this ever being done... Is there some reason this is impractical?
They do, it’s called spreader box or aggregate spreader. It’ll lay gravel out flat as a skillet, but isn’t meant for the type of work you are probably doing. To be proficient at operating a piece of equipment takes 200hrs seat time, to master it takes 2000hrs. Keep at it, you’ll figure it out. Grade with material in front of your blade, work from different directions (90*, 45* or 180* if its a road), and overlap by one track width each pass if possible. Also it’s not a crime to back drag with float.
It takes lots of hours to develop the ‘touch’. Most will develop it with enough hours but some never do. They just can’t get the ‘feel’
Yep gotta put the time and effort into learning how to get what you want out of the machine. Some are born with the bubble in their butt and others have to develop the skill. In my 25 year career in the business I have only had one natural dozer operator. Hired the kid with no experience. Put him on a packer first, then a couple of months on a dozer pushing a rock fill (something he couldn't really mess up - him, the grade or the tractor) and he did an excellent job. Took him to a subdivision job to run our D5GXL fine grading the streets prior to the slip form guys coming in. Left him there by himself and told him to grade the roads out to drain towards the inlets and follow the back of curb stakes. Stopped by 2 days later to see absolutely beautiful work, I was impressed to say the least. I told him - "You can see grade can't you?" in which he just shrugged his shoulders. Told him - "Don't change a thing of what you are doing." Haven't had another natural since then. Everyone else has to want it and work at it.
You have two things working against your, age and wear of the dozer makes it sloppy, and you don't get enough time to learn in the brainstem where you learn this sort of feel, and then you might be an older guy and not able to learn as easy as a youngster, especially if you didn't grow up operating other machinery. It's completely logical and possible to set up a hydraulic valve to control blade height. GPS has made it obsolete, and in the past dozers were used for roughing and graders would be used for fine finish on roads, so I've never seen it on a dozer blade. I have a vintage pull blade probably from the 50's that would have been used for final grading highways BEHIND a crawler, it has a 6' drawbar to dolly wheels, then a 20' frame that holds the blade at the back with pivoting wheels behind the blade, and a self contained motor and hydraulic pump to lift the blade controlled by a wheel on another 20' arm and guide wheel behind it, so a 40' span with the blade controlled to be at the average height in the middle. Made sense at the time, but still won't make something perfectly flat, will only average the 40' with each pass. It will take out the shorter bumps with a 5-15' length. Gurries GP40 40' Land Plane Gurries GP40 40' Land Plane, Self-contained Hydraulic System Powered By Wisconsin Gas Engine (NOTE: Would Not Fire Up On Listing Day), Tail Arm & Wheel Attach At Center Of Blade, Tongue Hitch, 7.50x16 Tires On Blade, 6.90/6.00x9 Tail Tire, 6.90x9 Front Tires, SN: P477 www.bigiron.com The wheel and tail piece are stored on the main frame, but to use as designed the tailpiece would be mounted to the pivot seen in the middle and control the wheels raising and lowering hydraulically.
I've got a small 1.5yd pull type roll over scraper that can be set to use as a pull type box blade. If you look close in the picture below you can see it on the trailer behind the dump truck. With a few passes at different angles you can get something pretty dang flat and smooth with minimal effort. Anytime you suspend a blade between two sets of wheels it will tend to self level, the longer the better as in the case of yours. Same principle as a road grader. Yards, riding arenas, roads, etc I'll usually get within an inch or two with the dozer, then a couple passes with that little scraper for the 'fairway finish.'
We used to use something similar referred to locally as a land leveller. It was used to level plow furrows but i used it for yard maintenance and fine levelling after scraper/drainage work after putting topsoil back. It had a long tongue and 2 rows of blades about 5’ apart and was about 16’ wide. The ones in our area were made by local welding shops or home made
As mentioned above ... there are some tricks... Back in the day at least in my planet if one wanted to succed as contruction operator one got to master the big 3... Dozer , Excavator, Loaders either wheled or track. Pro´s were also able to operate motorgraders... (thats another keen) Let me point out 2 or 3... When u´re starting u can´t "hear the machine talking to u", until u´re able to "listen" the machine start always from a flat surface, then level the blade in the air and lower it slowly, barely touching the ground, then start moving foward, slowly untill u master the lift, 1st gear . Keep in mind that thing weigh a ton at least , plus 1 cubic meter of dirt weigh another 2.5 ton all this will push the blade in the ground... Second trick is to have the blade always suspended from the tractor, never push it down, if it is not digging by itself u need to ripper. Third trick, has to do whith how u use the controls... always one motion at a time, and haft second imputs at half control range, if u need more motion, have 2 or 3 half second strokes consecutively...and keep in mind that once u push down 2 or 3 strokes probably u´ll need to lift it 3 or 4 seconds later. There´s some 20 years that i do not drive a dozer for a living, back in the day with a PAT blade in a D5 i was able to use the 3 functions at the time, and make some motor grader drivers shy, with enough time and "employer" patience of course.
Great tips, one issue I have is my soil is very hard clay, dozer struggles to bite in, my tiny tractor ripper can help but it feels pretty inefficient. I will try working off of a flat surface. That makes sense.
You have a built in device to drag around on a dozer. And before I get a rash over it, think about what really happens when doing that.