Motor-Grading Techniques

[michael james]

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The fourth pass is similar to the first, leaving a reduced windrow near the center of the road, still gradually losing material,

 

[michael james]

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The fifth pass, similar to the second pass, taking the windrow beyond the center line of the road, losing material. Note where the back wheels are running and the slope meter reading, true to slope.

 

[michael james]

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[michael james]

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With the sixth and final pass, you blade or feather the very small windrow to the edge of the road where it should become non existent, hopefully.

 

[michael james]

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The rolled and finished surface, hope this post has been helpful to anyone starting out on a grader.

 

[RocksnRoses]

Michael, could you please come over and apply for a job with our council. Six passes:jawdrop, here they use 120 Cats with 14' blades and 90% of the time our roads are graded in 2 passes, taking the windrow from one side to the other. Most of the time there is not enough dirt to fill the potholes. If we are very lucky, they might do four passes and take the windrow back over again. What's more, our roads are quite a bit wider than the road you are grading. The 120's are a little bit light for the 14' blades and they tend to washboard a bit as well. IMO, they have millions of dollars worth of equipment, driving around doing bugger all, because our roads are getting flatter and there is no material left on the side to crown the road with. With a heavier grader you can usually drop the blade into the shoulder and find some material to bring out, but that seems to be a bit technical for our lot.

RnR.

 

[michael james]

G'day RocksnRoses,
That would be a different experience, working in your climate and geography!!! thanks for the invitation, 120's with 14 foot blades is a combination l have never come across before, l suppose it is because of your wider roads.
Prior to the six passes for spreading the material that l explained in this post, it takes four to five passes to get it to that state ( the first photo that l posted), so that is eleven passes all up. It seems a lot, but it is a fairly thorough procedure and the roads last quite a long time before they need grading again. I usually average a completely graded kilometre of road in three hours, which totals out to three kilometre of road in my nine hours of grading per day.
We do have narrower roads than this so the procedure is different and we achieve more kilometres per day.

 

[Grader4me]

Excellent post Michael! Pictures are worth a thousand words. Takes a bit of work to properly crown a road, and you have it down pat. The only thing that I don't do is articulate during this..but..I can understand why you do. Thanks again for taking the time to share this...good stuff!

 

[michael james]

Thanks Grader4me, everything that l have explained in this post was shown to me by an ex grader operator who we have had on contract with a water tanker. He showed me about two years ago and l have not looked back ever since. One thing that really hit home was his explanation of cutting the complete road surface to remove all irregularities, this also gives a good mix of the existing road material, and you are not just dropping loose segregated material into the existing problems, mainly potholes and corrugations because they will just re appear quick time.

 

[Grader4me]

The slope meters come in real handy don't they? My first order of business when I took the instructor job was have these installed in all of our graders.
Yeah, the whole road has to be cut to get rid of the pot holes etc. or you'll be back at it in no time. I've had to use the front scarfiers to cut out the potholes when I couldn't get to the bottom of them with the blade.
The problem here is that the supervisors won't let the operators take the extra time to crown a road. We have so many gravel roads and not much of a budget, so its grade one as quickly as possible and go to the next one. Shame really because if you do them right then it will last much longer before regrading. In the long run they save money...but you can't convince them of that.
We had a section of road that was a problem area for a long time. It had no ditches, no crown etc and it was a mess all the time. The supervisor asked me if I would help the operator do something with this section. I looked it over and told him it would take a couple of days. I also told him to have a roller/compactor available.
The regular grader operator told me to have at it and he would watch. There was alot of good material pushed over on each side of the road from the grading over the years. I started blading this material (right side first) out on the road bringing it to center, leaving the left side for the traffic to go. I then cut my ditch noticing that the material still looked good so I brought that up on the road as well mixing it in with the other material. Make a long story short I did the same on the other side and built the road up and had good ditches on both sides for drainage.
Bladed all this material back and forth mixing etc. and had a good crown then compacted it. Did this a couple of months ago and it's now the best section of the whole road. Water runs off it well, no potholes yet and its still very smooth. Goes to show if done properly you get a better road with minimal maintenance

 

[michael james]

Grader4me, we are a bit lucky where we work, the supervisor's motto is, do it once, do it right. One problem we do have though is lack of employees some times to run our water tankers or steel combo roller, and we only have two graders, probably a common problem in a lot of councils, or where you are, counties. One thing we are starting to address is getting rid of false drains and winning back that lost material where all the grass is growing, that really helps shed water off the road, similar to what you described, don't know what the previous operators were thinking allowing that grass area to build up over all those years. Anyway, its always a good challenge. Cheers.

 

[ledsel]

Michael, I have the problem of how do you get rid of the grass and sod that you cut from the edges? I have tried to roll it back and forth but I just can't seem to break it up and end up just trying to throw it out over the ditches.

 

[michael james]

Michael, I have the problem of how do you get rid of the grass and sod that you cut from the edges? I have tried to roll it back and forth but I just can't seem to break it up and end up just trying to throw it out over the ditches.

G'day ledsel,
Depends a bit on what you are doing, my motto is to get rid of a problem first rather than incorporate it into your job and compound the problem.
If the material you are trying to gain(bulk material) has grass growing on it, if possible, slice the grass off through the ditches first, or bring it all on, try to separate it, blade the rubbish off if possible, as you said, through the ditches, and then re grade and shape what you have left. Either that or have the rubbish picked up and taken away.

If you are maintenance grading and the drain and\or shoulder has bark and leaves or grass on\in them, l usually set the heel of the blade on an angle towards or in the drain and skim the grass and very minimal material down through the table drain and up the other side, it has to be done at a reasonable speed to be effective. I have a six speed power shift and do it in fourth gear, probably equivilent to fifth gear in an eight speed power shift. After doing that you usually have clean material in the drain and up on to the road to work with. See photo 4 as an example, although there was minimal rubbish to get rid of. Be careful not to catch the loose material that is in a windrow at the edges of the road on the traffic lines when you are cutting the grass off.
If it is bark and leaves, l lightly blade them, maybe with a straighter blade and create a sweeping or brooming effect , where they accumulate and when l get a blade full, push them off where ever possible.
I Hope this makes sense and it is helpful.

 

[Tvan]

You're the Man Randy!!!

 

[Randy Krieg]

Mr Van
Been a long time. Are there any blade operators left at Granite’s Alaska Division? I think they all jumped fence or retired. I’m sure you heard we were awarded the Tok Cut Off job. I believe it’s the same section you did with MB back in the 90s and the same section I worked on back in the 80s with Wilder. That’s the nice thing about the Tok Cut Off; every 10 years you have to go back and rebuild it. Job security. That will be a good project for next summer. I’m headed back to Badami in a couple weeks to work on the Badami iceroad again. That will keep us busy this winter.
Regards, Randy

 

[Big Iron]

I’m headed back to Badami in a couple weeks to work on the Badami iceroad again. That will keep us busy this winter.
Regards, Randy

Badami, boy that brings back some double ugly memories from years back!!!!!!

 

[Deeretime]

Is it me or does someone going to a oporator school seem pointless to you guy's?
(im not trying to pick on anyone here )
I have always grown up to start at the bottom and when a oporator see's your doing a good job and you show you know what is going on he may reward you with a few minutes on that machine, and i have always looked at oporating as a privilage rather than a job because if you wernt any good you were out on the ground.
I have seen people that go to school and can drive a machine and move them across the site, but without the old school learning curve are they ever going to learn to respect their machines and fully understand what is going on and how to move dirt productively instead of using a grader as a dozer.

my tip came from an old blade hand that i learned from, when laying out wet or lumpy material he always used to run his front wheel on the previous windrow inorder to break the lumps up.

 

[Tvan]

Old Retired Blade Hands

Got a Real Good Blade Hand out of AZ, workin with Sam's Boy gonna make a good blade hand, he's up on the GPS and Laser stuff, good Attitude, and want to. Beware of the traps I set on the Cut-off, You be SAFE and Keep in touch

 

[Greg]

From what I have seen most of the kids coming out now are nothing but machine drivers, not operators. They DEMAND air conditioned cabs, GPS, stereo in the cab and the list goes on. When they get in a machine a lot of them have a hell of a time starting the start button.

 

[Tvan]

Key word is DEMAND, don't fly far with seasoned operators and supervision