Hmm well here is a fine piece of redneck ingenuity. Last week we got 8 inches of snow or so. That combined with with some nasty big drifts was making my 1200' long driveway a pretty inhospitable place for the 96' Honda civic we drive to work.
I started thinking as I looked at the piles of white stuff that there had to a better way to get rid of it than shoveling for 14 hours straight. A quick survey of my resources revealed a really long 4x6 timber, some plywood scraps, a log chain, and some 2x4's, and my big old gas sucking 4x4 Dodge Dakota. I cut the 4x6 in half, and then made a big tall beam with a couple of slots for the log chain to go by making a
4x6, 2x4, 4x6 sandwich. This composite beam forms the blade. I finished off the front of it with a nice smooth piece of plywood, and then lag bolted a strip of steel sheet metal along the bottom for the cutting edge. To make it more stable I added the the outrigger off the back with the box and tube sand bag for balast. Without the tube sand, I can pick it up pretty easy, it weighs maybe 110 lbs or so. Using the log chain, and a cable with eyes on it I swiped off an old drag that was down by my shed, I was able to hook it up eccentrically to my truck's hitch so it pulled at an angle and pushed the snow to the right side. I through few hundred pounds of sand and cement in the back of the truck, and stuck her low range. It worked much better than I imagined, I was able to clear the whole driveway in little over an hour, and the whole thing didn't cost me a penny.
