LOL the King Klutter Box Blade broke pretty badly.One of the few King Klutter products I won't complain about. It did A LOT of work before the metal fatigue in our highly abusive relationship started showing. I put a box full of the mud I was pulling on the scale and was pulling 4,500 pound boxes of wet mud out of the pond..... And well this is a Cat 1....... 72" low end box blade with a 40hp max. So yeah I abused it hard I am either going to heat it up and beat it back into shape over the winter or take it to my welder fabricator guy and pay his reasonable rates to do the same. Either way the 3pt will be greatly reinforced. It is worth repairing and reinforcing IMO as I have need of a 6' blade I have a greater need for a bigger and heavier duty Box Blade and am running with a Land Pride. The Dealership I use now days is H&R Agri Power simply because they have a lot of stores and keep a lot of inventory if one Dealership doesn't have what you want, the odds are high that one of the other dealerships will have it and transfer it at no cost to your local dealership. I want and really need a 8' 3pt box blade and Land Pride has started making them in recent Months. I initially ordered a BB2596 which is a 8' Cat 1. My sales guy called yesterday and said it arrived and I could pick it up today. BUT they also sent a BB3596, A BB3584, and BB2584 on the truck as well and that I might want to consider the BB3596 over the BB2596 as it is thicker steel and a Cat 2 BB matched to the M series tractors and only cost $600 more than the BB25 Cat 1 series. That are matched to the L and MX series tractors. Cash is still damned tight right now with missing more than half of our cash income. I am taking the Tax and Penalty hit in taking the money out of my 401k to buy the box blade. Pretty much if I remove $5,000 I get a electronic deposit of $2300 after the tax and penalty I can't wait on getting a new box blade until Mrs Kraps Pension and SSD start flowing in Next Month and in December. The Rain, Cold and Mud Season window is closing fast and I can't leave that Mud Mess I pulled out of the pond as it is with 3 feet deep ruts every 7 feet the width and length of it all. LOL every rut will be a water run off channel and erode out pretty quickly putting 1/3 of the mud right back into the pond. So I really need to go across it now that it is dried out and smooth the ruts out, compact it, seed it with k31 and roll the straw mats over it. Thus diverting the run off from the hay field all into the actual drainage channel that has a liner and rip rap all ready to receive the water. LOL and I was in the middle of preparing the South Arm Woods low spot to become its own pond separate from the Big Pond. Mother Nature did me a solid where I am going to build the dam. I cored it and found I have hard packed virgin clay 12' deep here and do not need to build a key. And I have Mount Krap to the Right that is nothing but a big mound of top of the line gold clay. Between the M Loader and a 8' box blade I can move A LOT of clay fast from Mount Krap to build the dam core. It is 9' 7" deep from Hill top to hill top and a 15" 20' long overflow pipe at 7 feet in the center would handle the overflow easily making the deepest part of the South Wood pond around 8 feet deep after I scrape the top soil out of the dam end and a average depth of 4.25 feet. I have spent the last 4 days going like hell cutting down all of the trees in the low spot and digging the smaller stumps out with the BX Backhoe and digging the top soil out of 2/3s of the area with the BX Bucket. Those big black Oak trees are now big stumps that I will just have to blade in between and around with strategic use of the chain saw to cut out the bigger roots as I go. I will finish up forking the logs and brush from the last of the trees this morning Was to beat last evening to get the camera and take a pic of the final tree destruction. I am cutting most of the big stumps off even with the ground and keeping the bases for future table bases. They may not be the healthiest trees that grow in low wet spots but they sure develop cool looking bases. And I am getting 2-3 10' long decent mill logs out of the big trees. When it is all said and done I will have a nice little pond ringed by black oaks with a good depth for fish to over winter just fine in this region. Rough Laser shoot and measurement put the surface area just a hair under 2 surface acres. A problem I will also have to correct is that the high water mark stops 18" from the new house slab. That ain't gonna work LOL Too much water too close and it puts my loop drive around the back of the house a 2 feet underwater. So I am going to have to mine clay from the old hog pasture and move it to behind the house and raise a pretty large area up by 3'. That will take a area of the pasture that is 75 feet wide and 150 feet long and 5' deep to raise the area behind the house up 3' A very Liberal time estimate on mining and moving that clay and top soil is ten 14 hour days and being more realistic 14-15 days. LOL why not just rent a D4 or D6 and do it fast? Because I am a total cheap ass and dozer rental is expensive I could be done in 4 days with everything using a D6 but at a large $$$ Cost. I can be done with dam and raising in 3 weeks using the tractor and new box blade at a VERY much lower $$$ cost but a much higher time cost. At this point in history I have more time to spend than money LOL. Anyway it all hinges on the new box blade. I just need to decide if I want to spend $600 more on the Cat 2 or if the lower cost Cat 1 would be heavy enough to meet my needs and submit to my abuse.
@Kamp Krap have you looked at Everything Attachments for your 3pt implements? Quite a bit more expensive but possibly worth it. I'm on their FB page and the reviews & customer service are outstanding. Looking forward to seeing the tables made from the stumps. If you know someone that can do woodturning they would make unique bowls as well. Generally the base/root area can have some really cool looking grain patterns.
I just dug out the biggest damn stump, it's a monster! It's from a Ponderosa Pine. My neighbor's big excavator couldn't lift it! Biggest I ever dealt with and would have left it, but wife want a chicken coop to go there so... I was in the burn hole yesterday, where we dragged it, clean off as much dirt as possible with a pick, going to try and burn it later this week after a few days of sunshine. How's the fish doing in the lakes/ponds? They going to be eating size soon?
Well got it home and first thought.... We are going to need a bigger tractor to unload it Ahhhh Much Better! I decided to go with the 7' cat 2 model after talking to my regular field mechanic. Sales people not the best source of advice, the mechanics that work on this stuff Great Source of advice His opinion was that my 5660 would struggle with the 8' on anything other than flat terrain and the 7' would be the better choice for my tractor. A very Beefy hitch set up. If I manage to crumple this one there is something bad wrong! The Box Depth and height holds 60% more than the King Klutter does. One problem with the King Klutter was damp soil and clay got really packed into the less deep pox and could be a real PITA to get emptied out. Zero problem with greater depth lift it and gravity does the job. Had about a hour of daylight left to play with it around the Big Pond. This has dried into something resembling a detonated mine field. There are ruts in there as deep as 3' One pass over the entire area starting with a box full of top soil for Lube. Made a few passes across the North arm through the water..... Just to see. The box full of sticky stuff for the most part dropped right out...... New paint has a little to do with that. Then it was quitting time! Too long and too hot of a day to turn the lights on and keep going. Stopped by the growing mill log stack on the way to the Cabin to admire a particularly good looking black oak log I put on the stack today. I actually got four 8' and one 12' good logs out of that tree. Thinking about changing the plan of making the kitchen cabinets out of pecan to using these black oak logs. Pulled some real nice lumber logs out this morning. LOL at the rate the stack is growing........ I am going to be chained to Mill until the end of December I am going to finish up around the ponds dried mud mine field in the morning, and get the last 20 mill logs forked to the stack and the brush from everything moved out hopefully before noon and start a drain channel for the rain coming in Thursday. And hopefully get to works scraping the bed out Friday and have that done and by Saturday afternoon and get to work building the Dam and be done with it in about 3-4 days of 60s and 70s temps. It has just been murder working out there the last week. some cooler temps will be very much welcomed!
On a side note I was pleasantly surprised from the first call to the Sales Lady that as far as sales people go, she was actually very knowledgeable about the implements I was asking questions about. She also did not annoy me with high pressure make the sale nonsense and had a solid knowledge base about everything I asked without going to the computer propaganda. More pleasantly surprised by the prices! The BB3584 was $2369 and the BB3596 would have been $2590 the BB25 Cat 1 models were around $350 less than the Cat 2 BB35 models. A King Klutter 72" is up to $1700 at the local RKs and TSCs now. The BB3584 that I got weighs a hair over 850 pounds, I had to set it down on the livestock scale and see this morning. I like to use certain implements and attachments as counter weights. Like the Backhoe on the BX allows me to lift more on the front Thus I rarely have the backhoe off unless I am running the tiller or the chipper shredder. I bought a couple dozen ripper shanks for the King Klutter Box Blade. I bent two of the original shanks and they were hard to find anywhere LOL I had to hit 3 TSCs and 5 RKs to collect 25 shanks and teeth. The Land Pride 7' and 8' BB25s and BB35s use the same identical ripper shanks with L pins and R Pins at $60 per shank that is a real nice bonus. The original shanks that came on it were a bit different with bolt on teeth, at some point they changed to the pound on dimple teeth. LOL if you are moving along in low 3 or 4 and catch a big root or the rare big rock here it is pretty much a guarantee that you just bought a new shank. Yes I am going to repair the King Klutter 72" Box Blade And really beef the 3pt up on it. I just don't have the time or the motivation right now to put the rosebud to it and heat it up and beat and twist it back into shape. It will work on the BX25 for light duty stuff like driveway and road grading and is the right tool for some jobs with the M5660. A foot shorter makes a big difference in some tight spots. And my fresh perked pot of rancid extra dark french roast coffee is finished and my to go tanker cup is full....... So back to getting the pond mine field of dried clay baby butt smooth. And then swap the forks on the tractor back to the bucket and start building a dam out of the center of Mount Krap.
The King Klutter Box Blade yeah, the ripper shanks from the 5 RKs in a 50 mile radius and two TSCs. The Land Pride BB3584 from H&R Agri Power. Only reason I bought the King Klutter Box Blade and Rotary Mower is they were next to impossible to get anywhere in the spring of 2022. Out of the 5 RKs Harrisburg was the only one with 1 in stock, neither of the TSCs had any, and the Implement dealerships had 7-10 Month lead times on the higher quality mowers and box blades. The 10' Box blade I had and the Bushhog were at the end of their lives with more welded on patches than original steel LOL.
