A new Grading bucket for a MIni loader

good morning you guys it's a beautiful new morning out well it's not perfect out it's been raining for a few days but it's not a total soaker you can see where the ground is dry i have the truck parked everything else is pretty wet so here's the job and here's the challenge we've got some extra dirt and i've been working on grating out this site but this isn't premium dirt this is actually compost material that we literally harvested off from the farm out of the ground so it's rough it's uneven it's not been screened and so what we're going to do today is we're going to use the asb we're going to get all of the general contours set down here we're going to get all the general contours set up top with the skid loader and then we're gonna try out a brand new attachment something i've never tried before and i don't know how this is gonna work we're gonna put a hydra bucket on a mini loader and in theory the hydra bucket that part should still work but the mini loaders i've never been good at grading with a mini loader i find them frustrating time consuming but we're gonna give this one a shot just to see if it works nothing more just to see if it works we got to add some dirt up in there we got to fix all of these grades so let's go through start touching some stuff up and let's uh let's do a finished grade job today yeah we got more water and it looks like it rained pretty much all day yesterday but we got sandy soils so we'll see how well that works in our advantage it cleaned off the asv okay let's see how my son left this thing he was the last one to drive it how much fuel did he three quarters tank not bad i'll take that any day of the week all right let's get to work so the first thing we're going to be doing is just setting contours but not up here we'll leave this area for my boy i just want to start to get this lower area dialed in first and foremost so we're going to do the bulldoze technique we start from the top put the bucket down and we just push material where we want it to go gotta watch that my front nose doesn't run the front of my bucket doesn't bite too hard but this is a great technique just to start in [Music] okay so i think this might be a nice spot to show you guys a little trick i use you see how i kind of got this dirt to almost be at the exact same height as the grass we're over here we got this kind of ridge you can see where it goes instead of feathering into nothing the trick to get it to feather is just to put the bucket ahead of the dirt get the back of the bucket so this is the back this is the front get the back of the bucket ahead of the dirt put it down and then your back your bucket will grab all of this dirt and pull it backwards and then you use the front to feather so you're grabbing with this part of the bucket you're carrying it under the machine and then you're feathering the front to just release enough so that'll blend and disappear into nothing [Music] what do you got baby show me what you got what did you bring home okay let's go see what i just saw you bring it home come on baby show me what you got where is it what is this that's a black squirrel that's a fully dead one [Music] thanks baby it's not a job site unless you come bringing me a special treat thank you baby no more no more so our goal with the asd is not the finished grade although it may look like we're finished grading what we're doing is we're getting a contour set let's talk about what that means is like right down there there was a swale an unintentional swale divot if it's intentional we call it a swale if it's unintentional we'll call it not a squale so there was a divot and there was some unevenness in the ground in the asb all we're doing is getting everything set so that we can then come in with the mini and we can start to incorporate because this right now is kind of bad right you guys we got to incorporate this ground together by smooth grading this this topsoil or compost material out over the subgrade like this so what i'm talking about is grass is going to have a hard time kill it could grow this is not the ideal medium and what we want to do is we want to take it to the next step that's what the next attachment will do it'll till everything together to bring that sand up it'll bring the black dirt down it'll mix it all together and in theory it should erase all of the the lines that we're creating and just make everything flow together seed bed prep step seed bed prep step it's the final seed bed prep step [Music] so before we hook it up let's take a look at it hydra bucket for a mini loader and what a hydra bucket is if you guys aren't aware of it it's a regular bucket but then it's got a harley rake or a power rake built right into the back of it you can scoop and carry like a bucket then right down on the back side of it you hit your button inside once you're done drop your material off you can hardly rake it out it's actually really clever but i just don't know how well it'll work on a mini now they claim it well derek the owner says tons of people are buying these hydro buckets more than i don't know if he said more than what they do for regular skid loaders or not i don't know if that could be i can't imagine more people buying mini hydra buckets than regular sized ones but in my world i would have never imagined using a mini for anything now i love them one of my five favorite machines of all time a forever i mean this little tiny baby thing ranks right up there with the kamatsu d41p dozer i call them the one track wonder but they were awesome because i had power to one track always helps if you have a key how many times i've driven 15 20 miles to a job site just to have forgotten to keep it out today yeah you guys thought i forgot the key where's what are you guys see that's what you get for thinking secret key he's got a red key i'm not gonna show you where that goes you can probably imagine since i'm sticking it in some place on the back side of the machine do you know what that does that's the kill switch we're not gonna say it out loud this is just on a youtube video for anybody that wants to see it so now there's two things i got to do to optimize this bucket on the mini first one is make sure that i get my angles right because this will allow me to control how deep i grade but also i've got a one pump and a two pump option so i'm gonna go to two pumps that'll get that drum spinning as fast as possible and then i'm going to throttle it all the way up even though i don't need a lot of power the engine needs a lot of flow and that's going to increase the flow so she's going to run a little bit high all right let's take a look at how this is doing for seedbed oh this is delicious look at this if you were a seed do you think you'd like this dirt oh my gosh oh come on you guys are just as excited about dirt as i am you know what you sit there watching me on your phone or your tablet or eating your popcorn on the tv you know you guys like this black yard as much as i do right please don't disappoint me please say yes yes well it's so light that it's not impacting the grade so i can prep the ground never thought of that nice light machine hydra bucket preps the ground doesn't leave ruts let's keep going [Music] okay it's actually working so i think it might be fair to give this thing a chance to work the way it should without all that crap being boogered up underneath it i mean i thought this was going to be just stuff [Music] and we're back to the asv that's not the case so let's get this thing working at a hundo percent and clean this crap out of here much better all right let's see how that works now huh yeah we'll take that off that's all the rope i've gathered just in a few passes i was using the sawzall earlier was using the flex sawzall but you can use with a knife would probably be just fine but i cut all the nasty stuff out before what did that take like just these passes right here that rope isn't bad as long as it stays buried it's when it comes up to the surface that it gets [Music] that worked way better than i thought it was going to frankie dude that's like perfect seed bed prep and if it's too like like right there it's a little bit too packed yeah i just use a little bit more down pressure and put the back of the bucket down and i can dig it deep i can till it up that's what i was doing down there i kind of had a hard ridge i couldn't work out so i just hit that ridge and ground it down a little bit and then was able to move it i think that's ready for seed down there i'm just gonna blend it this way [Music] boy for grading look at how good of a job this did that hydra bucket did yeah i don't know if it's possible for me to like a hydra bucket anymore but i never would have thought that machine could grade like this of course now it does it does put all of the stuff you don't want in one nice little area makes it easier for us to pick up doesn't make it disappear so if that's what you were aiming at if you're like why can't it just make all the stuff i don't want to disappear well when when cmp makes that attachment i'll make sure to let you guys know all right we got that finished graded this isn't even close and we're running out of daylight already so let's quick whip this out let's get this done so we can come over here and use the mini to finish grade it i think my son is my son is enjoying the equipment operation lessons he's been getting this memorial day weekend we came up by ourselves friday saturday sunday he's been in the corner [Music] so [Music] so all right you guys i think uh while we do the seating part you don't need to see that video because you guys have already seen how to see the lawn we're getting this all set up but boy look at how well this hybrid bucket grade what do you guys think does it work my my opinion is this works way better than i ever thought it was gonna work i figured this was gonna be just stupid because i you know because it doesn't really float and your ability to contour and i don't know just okay wrong i like being wrong i was wrong this is wrong but this job is looking nice it really is looking good hopefully you like it you guys god bless you guys hope you enjoyed today's video we're gonna keep going we got a lot more work to do and hopefully we'll we'll see you on the next one hit that subscribe button god bless you guys go get em