We are going to build a new tractor building at Rough & Tumble Historical Association this spring.

I offered to start stripping the topsoil this past weekend and used Dave Adams’s Caterpillar 112.

We wanted to cut about 3” - 4” just to get under the sod.

The grader wasn’t the best choice of machines but it WAS available so I took advantage of it.

The problem I ran into was once I made several passes I accumulated a LOT of dirt off to the side.

To reckon with this I would turn the blade straight use the grader as a dozer to move the “cut-loose” dirt off of the site.

Did I mention I’m a beginner grader operator?

Of course I took a few pictures for all.

Hi, Bill.
The grader might not be the BEST tool for the job but it's better than most of the ones that come in in second place, except for an elevating scraper.

As you mentioned, you finish up with windrows of material that you can no longer push. Before you get to that stage, say after you have joined two or three cuts into one windrow, leave that windrow and move outside it to uncut ground and repeat the process. When you have done this with the entire area, start at whatever end you want to push the spoil to and facing the way you want to push the spoil. Reverse up over a windrow just far enough to get yourself a full blade of material, square the blade across the machine and start 'dozing' your spoil off site. As you work your way back along a windrow, you will be leaving smaller windrows on each side, effectively making a trench or slot in which to 'doze' your spoil.

You may want to leave some spoil at each end, in which case you would only use this method until you reached the middle of your job, working your way across the site until all windrows had been dealt with in this manner and the resluting smaller windrows cleaned up as well. Then you would turn around and do ditto in the other direction.

The beauty of a grader for this sort of job is that you can 'plane' off just what you want to cut and leave no washboard effect. And a grader can be a reasonably efficient bulk pushing tool over shorter distances.

Hope this helps for the next time you get to remove grass with a grader.