Land plane?

wildcard

Member
Howdy all, new here. Im looking for plans or pictures to build a small land plane, idealy using a regular box scraper. I remember seeing one once somewhere and Im sure I can get something together but it's so much better to learn from others trial and errors rather than reinventing the wheel.
I have a JD 870 30 hp and a 72" box scraper. A frame about 20 feet long would be ideal. Any help out there?
Thanks in advance!
 

Doc

Admin
Staff member
Gold Site Supporter
Welcome to NTT. I'm glad you found us.

Interesting question Wildcard. I'm not sure what a land plane is, but at 20' I suppose it's a big scraper, made to level large areas. Would you want the plane to be able to dig up the dirt also, or would you prep the dirt with a regular box blade?

Enjoy and post often. :thumb:
 

Mith

Active member
Now, if I understand it, a land plane would be like a box blade mounted on a long frame, with wheels at one end and attached to the 3ph. I've seen pictures of some homemade ones, but they are all manually adjusted, I would think that you would be looking for something hydraulically actuated.
If I recall, there was a thread about a guy building one over on Machinebuilders. Ask your question there, and if I'm right, the guy who made it will post pictures.
 

wildcard

Member
Thanks for the replies. The soil is normaly preped first so it's loose then the plane "blade" which is a box scraper shaves off the high points and fills the low points by using the average height between the front wheels and rear wheels. As it's seldom adjusted once you get it set it really dons't need to be hyd powdered.
 

GreenWannabe

Senior Member
Gold Site Supporter
I saw one out on the net that might work for you, here: http://www.purdymfg.com/softball.htm. I found it by googleing Land Leveler. Most land levelers are much larger than a compact tractor can handle, being used primarily to level large agricultural fields.

Hope this helps

By the way, welcome to NTT!

Fred
 

wildcard

Member
I may just end up building one like that if I can't find a pic or plans of what I was looking for.
Thanks and Thanks!
 
Land Leveler

lev2.jpg

http://www.beavervalleysupply.com/sectione/degleveler.htm
 

wildcard

Member
That has much too short of a wheel base to do much more than take out pot holes.
Think of a stradle equipment carrier with a box scraper in the middle.
 

wildcard

Member
Those are all very cool but Im looking for a planer. It takes uneven ground and shaves the high spots and fills thelow spots, much like what y'all are posting but much longer to even out the overall field height. The drag types get the little bumps and holes and do it well but a planer will even out the whole field. It works like a grader.Long span between the wheels so the little bumps don't change things.
 

quasar85

New member
Those are all very cool but Im looking for a planer. It takes uneven ground and shaves the high spots and fills the low spots, much like what y'all are posting but much longer to even out the overall field height. The drag types get the little bumps and holes and do it well but a planer will even out the whole field. It works like a grader.Long span between the wheels so the little bumps don't change things.

This does pretty much what you say. It's an old time Road Planer and the last owner used it to keep a Horse Trotting training track level. We've used it to level fields after ripping and the addition of various amounts of soil and drain clearings.

It has a pair of blades Vee'd in the front to scrape high spots and sweep them to the centre of the planer, with a 1 foot gap. Next is a pair of blades that butt in the centre and they'll scrape any high spots that slipped past the front pair and then sweep the trimming outwards. This sweeping centre to outside an back again lets soil fall into any low spots. There is a third pair of blades to guide the scrapings back to the centre and behind that a straight blade to sweep any leftovers out to one side

DSC02773.JPG
 

quasar85

New member
I thought a few more photos might explain things a bit better.
Behind a Goldoni Quasar 85 Tractor. The inner adjuster wheels at the top adjust the front of the frame and the depth of cut and the outer wheels adjust the rear height. The Goldoni pulls it fine but in heavier going the lower powered Case-IH (65HP) fares better because of the larger footprint of the bigger tyres.
DSC02781.JPG

Looking into the front pair of blades, towards the second set.
DSC02785.JPG

The second set
DSC02787.JPG

The third set
DSC02788.JPG

The rear sweeper bar, in the foreground is a frame in which you can place weights to improve the cutting
DSC02789.JPG
 

GreenWannabe

Senior Member
Gold Site Supporter
Here's one that has been used extensively in California's central valley and Arizona fields which were often flood irrigated back in the 50's. http://www.tgschmeiser.com/land_leveler.html

I think this is more what the OP had in mind, but it usually requires a pretty hefty tractor. They used to pull these behind Cats. Width is 14-18 feet, so probably 70 to 90 hp min.
 

shinnlinger

Member
I have seen one made from a standard back blade for a smaller machine.

If I was building it, I would remove the blade(if feasible) from the 3pt mount and hang it from a peice of RR track that had ball hitch (for flexibility) at one end and a mobile home axle at the other. I might brace the RR track above the axle a foot or so "goose neck style" for clearance.

I would then connect the ball hitch to the back of a 3pt mounted implement to give traction and leverage angle so you can raise and lower the plane to maximum effect.
 
Top