[AT] Plowing snow

Stephen Offiler soffiler at gmail.com
Fri Mar 6 10:47:11 PST 2015


You're way too kind, Brad, but thanks!  I do not think they're "great"; I
am sort of embarrased by how rudimentary they are.  Shot with my iPhone,
handheld (except the 3-minute one; I wedged it in the crook of a tree
branch); they are shaky and unprofessional.  But I am glad you like them!

SO


On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 1:31 PM, Gunnells, Bradley R <brad-gunnells at uiowa.edu
> wrote:

> Great videos Steve!
>
> My grandfather had one of those old JD crawlers and I played on it many
> times sitting in the barn when I was a kid. So they have a special place in
> my heart. I've always wanted one but $$ always seems to come into play.
> Maybe some day....but darn...those videos fueled that passion again.  ;-)
>
> Brad
>
> > On Mar 6, 2015, at 8:45 AM, Stephen Offiler <soffiler at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Dean, yes, you need a crawler!
> >
> > Here's a very brief 10-second video of my wife acting silly on it:
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c6w8k_nODs
> >
> > Here's a 45-second video shot after our big blizzard at the end of
> January
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVJtdiCLhvE
> >
> > Here's a 3-minute video of me fooling around in the snow when I first got
> > the machine up and running about 2 years ago.  It's not tuned perfectly
> > here yet, and you may notice I haven't even had time to re-install the
> > sheetmetal yet.
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Guv4Q7Kv4IE
> >
> > SO
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 8:25 PM, Dean Vinson <dean at vinsonfarm.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Seems there's lots of us getting lots of practice this year.  I'm
> hoping to
> >> be just about done for the season, but we'll see.  Folks a little bit
> >> farther south than me just got another big wallop of snow (although
> none of
> >> us here in Ohio are approaching the prodigious snowfalls that Ralph and
> >> Steve and others have had to contend with).
> >>
> >> I owned this place last winter but didn't yet live here, only visited
> every
> >> couple of days, and my biggest piece of snowplowing equipment was my
> trusty
> >> feed scoop shovel.  450-foot one-lane gravel driveway, lots of snow,
> not so
> >> much fun.   This year has been cold but I don't think quite as snowy,
> and
> >> I've got the green tractor and a rear blade which makes it way more fun
> >> anyway.   No new snow today so after work I got the tractor out to move
> old
> >> accumulated snow away from the west doors of my shop building; the floor
> >> slab is right at grade level and actually slopes down into the building
> an
> >> inch or two, and the snowmelt and runoff from our brief warm (45
> degrees)
> >> and rainy day this past Tuesday ran in and flooded the shop and the
> >> adjacent
> >> garage.  No fun sloshing through nearly-frozen water when I'm trying to
> get
> >> in the car to go to work in the morning.
> >>
> >> Like Mike M and Spencer wrote, I typically pull the snow driving
> forward.
> >> I
> >> usually throw to the left since it's convenient for the route I've
> >> developed--north out the driveway and then back in, then hard left turn
> >> just
> >> in front of the north face of the shop/garage, plowing away from the
> >> building.   If it was a heavy snow I make another round or two on the
> >> driveway, either widening the plowed area or getting a little closer to
> the
> >> gravel (hopefully without plowing too much of it into the grass); if
> it's a
> >> light snow or if I don't have much time just the single out-and-back
> trip
> >> will do.
> >>
> >> At first I tried always throwing to the east side of the driveway, since
> >> the
> >> wind is almost always from the west and throwing to the west just
> builds up
> >> a bank for the wind to drift back over the driveway, but I soon tired of
> >> having to get down and change the angle of the blade at the end of every
> >> pass and I wanted to keep plowing on both the out and back trips.   I
> was
> >> also ending up with a mighty big windrow on the east side, which as
> others
> >> have noted becomes difficult to move.   So lately I've just been
> throwing
> >> to
> >> the west side on the trip out, and the east side on the trip back in,
> and
> >> then going back periodically to clear up any drifting.  Only once has
> the
> >> drifting caught me unawares, on an early morning drive to work when I
> >> hadn't
> >> expected it to be cold enough or windy enough to drift much overnight,
> but
> >> even then it wasn't bad enough to high-center the car.  (Been there,
> done
> >> that, last winter and was glad to avoid it this time).
> >>
> >> To really clear the area in front of the garage and the other barns,
> I've
> >> taken to making a quick pass over the whole area throwing snow to one
> side,
> >> and then going back for a second pass over everything in reverse with
> the
> >> blade turned around backwards and perpendicular to the direction of
> travel,
> >> pushing the snow straight like a bulldozer.   The area is of course way
> >> shorter than the driveway, and way wider, and it's okay to just let snow
> >> pile up at the far end.  I've been impressed by how much the blade will
> >> push, the snow rolling up and over itself, and the green tractor sounds
> >> good
> >> working.   Steve O's post about his 440C makes me want to get a crawler,
> >> though... :)
> >>
> >> Dean Vinson
> >> Saint Paris, Ohio
> >>
> >>
> >>
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> >>
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