best blade for the job?

[oldbroketractor]

Looking at the different blades that fit the 7117 long frame tractor. Considering a grader blade but not sure what preforms the best. I don't get snow here but move a bit of dirt on the farm. So Dozer, grader or rear blade, which handles best?

[Burntime]

If your grading a center blade is best. If your just pushing dirt or snow, then the front blade.

[Talntedmrgreen]

quote:Originally posted by Burntime

If your grading a center blade is best. If your just pushing dirt or snow, then the front blade.

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id="quote">

id="quote">Agreed. They are much more commonly found (and cheaper) than an earthcavator, which is the best method for moving volumes of dirt or breaking up hardpack. I have found the other rear mount blades (agrifab and brinly) disappointing at best.For dirt...best bang for the buck is a midmount grader. Spend $200 to get one, and you can get $200 back out of it easily down the road if you choose. They dont wear out and are always in demand. Front blade would be a last resort for me in the dirt.

[drbrian722]

For me, it all depends on what I'm doing. The grader blade works well in loose dirt that you want to, well, grade. But if you had a cube of dirt dropped and you wanted to spread it out, the dozer works better IMO. Lastly, if I want to just grab a bunch of dirt in the trails and level out and fill in for smoothing a path, the rear Brinly box blade (with a lot of weight) does a fairly decent job.

I also have a Brinly rear grader blade that is almost useless in dirt, but works well with stone and when turned backwards allows me to move my dump piles back much easier than any other blade I have.

[Brettw]

I find the front dozer blade relatively useless. Unless you have loose soil and want to move it around, forget it. Not nearly enough weight or traction to really move anything of any substance unless it is very loose. And then, you will want to be able to push most of that part of the pile in one pass, or you end up driving over the rest and packing it down. The front blades can be good for snow, and light general moving of material or back grading (even that doesn't work so good as the plow isn't really heavy enough). JMHO, from experience.

[Burntime]

One thing I used the front blade for with great success was pushing all the bark after log splitting. I could push it over the front of my property. It was usually a dry time of year so use a weakness as a strength...

[RayS]

I used my 46" front blade to back fill my drain field. It worked all right for that.

[joelk]

I dug out a fire pit with my front blade, about 8" deep and 16' in diameter. It took some time but worked pretty well and beat digging by hand. The hydro lift was invaluable for that task. I just pushed the dirt out into the woods and leveled it out. I found the grader blade useless for digging hard packed dirt, but great for leveling it.

[oldbroketractor]

Well I just bought a grader blade. Let you know how it works out. Thanks for the comments.