I am pattering the box blade on what JPS fabrications makes except mine will be 5 ft. With a another cylinder and lift arms going to a 3 pt plate on the back of the axle. I am just getting started and buying a harley rake or rockhound is just way out of my budget. One of the ways I am going to market myself is Custom Landscaping Attachments. I was figuring they would charge me around $1400 to build one. I even was looking at a reveal 4 in 1 setup. I have'nt baught anything yet to build with. I am just doing some homework. Other people I have "pitched" this to says it will work I just wanted to see what you guys think.
Been there, done that. I modified a 6' 3-pt box blade to go forward on my skid steer. No hydraulics or wheels required---simply use the bucket controls and the loader controls.
I made a 3-pt carry plate that fit the ss. The ideas was to use 3-pt attcments on the ss. Wrong idea. 3-pt stuff will not stand up to the abuse of the ss as testified by a York (rock/root/landscape) rake I twisted up. The box blade held up but only because the machine was relatively small, and I was easy on it.
Bigger IS better.
This is the poorman's set up and was inadequate once I found it just wasn't suited to fine grading.
I scrapped the whole project.
1. A skid steer is not nimble enough--it is hard to see backward and up against something.
2. It leaves tire marks, and or ruts.
What I did:
1. Bought a New Holland TC33D 4x4 33hp hydrostatic tractor and made a hydraulic top link for the 3-point. The hydraulic top link allows me to tip the blade backward and doze with it.
2. Bought a bigger skid steer (New Holland Ls185.b--the one in my avatar). I use the ss to do the rough and heavy work--but not all the time. I've moved 2-300 yards of clay with only the tractor and the blade and Harley rake with excellent results.
3. Kept the box blade on the tractor---it is nimble, fast, and only weighs 3,500 lb. versus the ss which is close to 8,000.
4. Bought a 6', 3-pt Harley rake. There is no job I can't do now. A friend talked me out of a ss Harely rake for the same reasons not to use a ss with a box blade.
Note: I have the hydraulic QA mount on my ss and love it. Since I change-out implements on a job many times, I made a quick-attach mount for the 3-point that looks and performs just like a ss QA---complete with hydraulic locking pins operated from the driver seat. My system has a though-way or archway in the QA plate where the PTO shaft goes--for mowers, and the Harley rake. All my attachments have the QA plates on them. When I'm not using the tractor attchments, I can still use the tractor's vacant QA as I welded a trailer hitch reciever tube to the bottom brace of the QA.
Just for kicks I loosely set just the forks from my ss pallet forks on the QA. Even though there was only the top of the forks hanging on the top of the QA, I still had over a 1,300 lb. of limestone blocks on them for a water fall I was building, and then moved a 1,800 lb. concrete commercial track parking bumper with ease.
