Back Blade Mod for Snow (pics)

[mgriff543]

The George Marsh mod for plowing snow is working pretty good. I welded some 4" channel on 3" sch 80 pipe and bolted her up. It floats pretty good but still is heavy enough to scrape down to the hard pack. We'll have to wait till spring to see how much of my limestone driveway got relocated but I don't think it will be much.

The pictures on the end are of the Christmas ice storm that had power out for 6 days. Big thanks to all of the out of state line workers who gave up their holiday to put our electric back up.

Mike

 

[Royse]

Looks good Mike!
You guys got hit a lot harder than we did with that storm. (Ionia)
I was lucky enough not to lose power at all.
The ice still did a lot of damage here though.

 

[Ultradog MN]

Looks good.
I've often wondered how well the pipe would scrape down but it looks like it is sufficient for sure.
Also, that heavy of pipe would strengthen your blade too. Pretty easy to bend one, especially pushing backwards. Don't ask me how I know.

 

[Ed H.-OH]

ultradog, Hello, My son made one for me, works great, I told him I wanted one that would quick disconnect and that's what he made.As I use the blade for other things.I got the idea from Jerry/Mt
on the ferguson board a couple of years ago.Now I cannot imagine plowing with out it as you don't have to try to follow the ground with the blade, Just drop it and don't look back as it will follow the ground by it's self. Cuts the plow time to 1/2.
And no putting the slag back in the driveway in the spring.-ed

 

[rankrank1]

Ed H - Interesting mounting concept for the home-brew steel pipe edge. First I have seen that mounts like yours - I like it.

Most of the home-brew steel pipe edges seem to mount more along the lines of the OP's.

 

[Ed H.-OH]

Rankrank, Hello,I'm just a by stander here, I got
the pipe idea from Jerry/mt and my 22 yr. old son
made it for me. It works great, you don't even have
to lift it on, just throw it on the ground and back
up to it, hook the angle in the middle with the
blade and it will flip it's self in place, just
drop in the 2 pins in the top. It's a good concept
that takes all the work and time out of snow
plowing.I'm getting old and I like that LOL-ed

 

[Jim in Ma.]

Sorry but I have to ask. Why would you go to all that effort?
I have been using a back blade for years. If the ground is not frozen - I just use the blade facing the wrong way. It never digs in or makes a mess on the edges of the driveway. After it's frozen I turn the blade so it's tipped the other way to scrape rite down to the ground. Using a pipe for a cutting edge just packs the snow down to become slippery.

 

[rankrank1]

(quoted from post at 03:38:23 01/27/14) Sorry but I have to ask. Why would you go to all that effort?
I have been using a back blade for years. If the ground is not frozen - I just use the blade facing the wrong way. It never digs in or makes a mess on the edges of the driveway. After it's frozen I turn the blade so it's tipped the other way to scrape rite down to the ground. Using a pipe for a cutting edge just packs the snow down to become slippery.

The pipe mod is predominantly for gravel driveways. Yes, they purposely leave some snow behind, but that is intentional and it is to keep from plowing the gravel.

Also keep in mind if you do not have a modern tractor with a good position control on the 3 pt hitch (e.g. 9n, 2n unless you have added zane thang) then the pipe mod works excellent for those type of systems that lack control of the blade.

 

[mgriff543]

The Silver Maples and Pines have enough trouble keeping their
branches without a half inch of freezing rain. The missus and I
spent a day skidding the big stuff an my son and I spent the next
day with 8 or 10 truckloads of small stuff. The horses are kinda on
the honor system cuz I really don't want to look at the fence rows.

 

[mgriff543]

I thought about Ed's type of mount and decided I didn't want to use the gas to cut the arc on the vertical end brackets. If I had a plasma cutter, thats the way I would have done it. Mike