Grading a gravel driveway from ROUGH to BUTTERY SMOOTH

[music] Welcome back to the channel, you guys. On the last video, we took the ant dump trailer and we spread gravel all throughout this gravel driveway. And today, we're going to be grading this out to a glassike finish. But let's get our last load of gravel laid out and then let's knock out the grading. So, as we're going down this road, as I'm backing up, I'm looking for the worst spots. As I go forward, then I'm going to open up that tailgate, and I'm going to just drop material selectively right in the worst spots. right, let's take a look at how this worked out. Let's go a little closer up here. Look at that. This was the SP spot I was trying to hit. Perfect. Jeez. That is sweet. I like this thing more and more. All right, it's time to get to the next phase of this work. Grading it. All right, let's grade this area out. Won't take very long. We're just going to bucket grade it. Nothing fancy. Just a little bit of bucket grading. If I can get into my machine. She locked me out. [snorts] She locked me out. All right. Now, we're going to grade this out cuz I'm not locked out anymore. As I'm grading, I'm using a combination of two parts of the bucket. One is I like to put a little bit of material in the front of it, and then I just use [music] that front lip to just micro put place dirt as I see it. So, if I got a little tiny crevice or a hole, I'll flick a little bit in there. But then when I'm going backwards, I'm using the back part of the bucket to then drag the material and lift that up [music] as I see fit. So I'm kind of floating the bucket in two different positions. So right here's a great example. You can see how smooth that gets that [music] gravel as I'm back dragging. Well, that's because I'm using a combination of that back edge and that front edge combined [music] to just get her nice and smooth. Some of you guys might be wondering if I'm using the float position and I don't when I'm doing grading like this. I like to have more control than the float position allows me to. I'm actually using a combination of the front edge of the bucket filled with dirt and the back part of the bucket kind of like a dozer blade. So when I'm going backwards, I'm grading as much as I am going forward. Heat. Heat. As I'm going forward, I'm using the bucket to pick out any high points and knock those down. Then when my bucket gets filled, I'm remembering where I need a material in the low points and I'm filling those in so that I can blend the driveway out as fast as possible. Heat. Heat. Now over here. So, let's get it so we can blend that all the way over to here. This run right here, I think, will give us the best example of how I use the front of the bucket to collect the material, then position it where I want it, and then use the back of the bucket to spread it and grade it. right, let's get this whipped up. This is where we need our material, right in here. So, we're going to go heavy right there. But, we want to blend into the neighbor. So, Hey, hey, hey. [music] So you guys can see is inside the cab. As I'm going backwards, I'm using very small movements to leave material in very specific places. Hard to cut. I'm blending it up. off blending from where the camera's at right now into the driveway with the back of the bucket. I'm going to use the back of the bucket to grab out a red. And you practice long enough and pretty soon you can get her dialed in. So you can do a good job with just a bucket. Don't need no fancy equipment. Although it's nice to have. Got my first power rake just not too long ago. I do plan on going down this entire road with a power rake, though. cuz that just makes everything flow together real nice. I do want to pack this spot right here. Want to get this Hey. [music] So, you see that glass-like sheen that's on part of the driveway? I like to try to grade everything to that sheen because that indicates high and [music] low points. If there's a low point, it won't have that nice even sheen. If there's a high point, well, it just again, it won't have that sheen. So, when it's super flat [music] like that, it just tells me that I've got all of the the small cavities filled in and all of the high points knocked down.