Aluminum rakes for asphalt and concrete

Aluminum rakes for asphalt and concrete what they are, why they are used, advantages and disadvantages, application, and photo.

Rake – a hand tool, has long been used for various kinds of work: they level and loosen the soil, break lumps of soil, rake hay and weeds, mowed grass and fallen leaves, and use when harvesting cereals and gathering berries.

Aluminum rakes in road construction

Aluminum rakes are used in construction:

• For road works (distribution and leveling of the mass of sand, crushed stone, gravel, asphalt).
• For cleaning the area of construction debris, lumps of soil, mowed plants.
• When decorating landscapes and lawns.
• In the arrangement of sports, playgrounds and playgrounds for children.

The choice of aluminum as a basis is not accidental – because this metal has high strength and lightness, is resistant to the negative environment (snow, excessive cold or heat, rain), not prone to corrosion and decay. At changes in temperature, the metal retains its structure perfectly. The estimated service life of aluminum products is more than 80 years.

Aluminum rakes used in road construction work are made of aluminum and magnesium – the combination of these two metals makes the alloy especially strong and invulnerable, which is important when working with coarse fractions of crushed stone and gravel.

Increased strength is created by the design – metal brackets on the sides of the handle can withstand heavy loads without deformation and breakage of the tool. Fastening of the working blade to the handle is done with tight reliable bolts without any welding connections. It takes only a few minutes to assemble the rake. The blade can be of several types (flat on both sides, or flat on one side and serrated on the other – the second option is more universal because it allows you to use the tool for different jobs).

Aluminum rakes Advantages

Aluminum road construction rakes have a number of important advantages:

1. Moderate cost. This allows you to save your road construction budget and can be a powerful competitive advantage when competing for a profitable contract.
2. The rake’s small size and weight make it easy to store, and allow you to move it between construction sites without much trouble or expense, and use it at 100% without downtime.
3. The rake can be used to quickly process hard-to-reach places where large construction equipment cannot get through. For example, narrow roads and sidewalks, small parking areas near stores and offices, sports and playgrounds, garden areas, and so on.
4. Unlike expensive complex equipment, which requires special skills, the rake can be trusted even to unqualified personnel without fear of breakage or damage – you just need to show them how to operate it (it will take no more than five minutes).
5. Easy and comfortable to use – ergonomics and small weight (from 1.5 to 2.5 kg depending on width) allow you to work with the rake for a long time without feeling tired. Many manufacturers cover part of the tool’s handle with rubber, which prevents it from slipping and makes the grip more comfortable. To avoid industrial injuries and loss, the handle is painted in a contrasting color (it considerably increases work safety, because a rake with a bright handle is easy to notice on the gray surface of crushed stone, asphalt, and gravel).
6. High durability and yet lightness – the tool is made of a special hardened aluminum and magnesium alloy that guarantees resistance to rust and mechanical stress.

Aluminum rakes Disadvantages

The main disadvantage of aluminum rakes, as well as any other manual tool, is that the potential is limited by human physical capabilities – it is impossible to quickly and efficiently manually level and compact a large area of crushed stone, gravel or asphalt mixture without the use of special equipment. If only manual labor is used, it will take a lot of time and effort to do what motorized means (motor graders, bulldozers, rollers, and others) will do in a matter of hours.

Another disadvantage of aluminum rakes is that they can sag under the influence of coarse fractions of loose materials and may need to be repaired (straightened).

Types Aluminum Rake

Aluminum rakes used in construction have several varieties:

• Levelers – such a tool has special teeth, the size of which may vary (depending on the fraction of crushed stone or gravel used). Thanks to the teeth you can evenly distribute all the material, level it, provide the necessary thickness, preparing the site for further work (pouring bitumen and other). If you plan to level the ground, the tines help you cope with small clods – they break them, forming a homogeneous layer of soil. In addition, a tine rake can also be used for cleaning – their design allows you to effectively rake grass clippings and garbage.
• Lute rake (the name was born because of its resemblance to an ancient musical instrument). Such rakes have several slats (2 to 4-5), fixed in parallel to each other – working with them, you can quickly and efficiently level the soil/gravel/gravel. Lutes are widely used by landscape designers to decorate the space of garden and homestead plots.
• Ironers – design features and functionality are inherent in the name. The working part of smoothers is flat, has no ridges and teeth, and allows you to finally level crushed stone or gravel, already prepared with a coarser serrated leveller. In addition, smoothers are indispensable for spreading and tamping asphalt mixture over gravel/gravel/old asphalt pavement.

The most popular in construction are universal aluminum rakes, one side of which has tines and the other is smooth.

Such a tool can be used for different purposes (and for profiling, and for leveling and forming a smooth surface of the road surface). Manufacturers of rakes offer products with a working part and handles of different sizes – you can pick up the optimal ones for your purposes. In addition, there are models with a rubberized handle and a simple metal, with a paint spraying and unpainted.

Handle and blade are supplied unassembled. The tool is assembled with the help of fasteners and a hexagon key, which are included in the kit (it takes only a few minutes to assemble and disassemble the rake, and to change sides from tine to smooth, and vice versa) – this is very convenient, because it does not require additional time and money.

Using a leveling rake

Aluminum rakes are indispensable in road construction work because they are widely used:

1. For patching, when it is necessary to locally “cure” problematic places of the road surface, quickly and without significant costs.
2. On small road sections, where it is inexpedient to use expensive motorized tools (as the cost of their delivery to the place of work is too high), and you can do with light hand tools.
3. At large sites (if you want to “work” some areas where, due to lack of space is difficult to engage large-sized special equipment – in this case, even in high-tech time, comes to the aid of ordinary manual labor).
4. In individual construction and improvement (in dacha and garden plots, in the yard, for the arrangement of various paths and grounds).

The choice of the method of work is left to the organizers – they decide what tools and equipment are needed, whether hand tools (rake, hand caulking, vibratory plates, etc.) will be enough, or whether it is necessary to involve large road-building machinery – such as bulldozers, excavators, graders, pounders.

Aluminum Rake Photo

Despite its simple construction and low cost, the aluminum rake is one of the most important tools for road construction. It is used to distribute, shape, and compact the loose material prior to asphalt surfacing (and leveling it). Rakes are indispensable when you need to prepare a small area. They will be useful on large sites – there are always narrow places where large and powerful equipment that copes with the bulk of the work can not pass, and then comes to the aid of hand tools.

The pictures show the main types of aluminum rakes: smooth working parts, with teeth, thickened.

Asphalt rake, type RL (tine-less blade)

Asphalt rake type RU (with U-tines)

Asphalt rake, type RV (V-tine)

Aluminum rakes Video

Leveling and compacting crushed stone and gravel, asphalt mixtures with a rake is, at first sight, a simple matter.

However, even here there are nuances – how to correctly assemble a rake and fix a working part, how to hold it, what force to apply pressure, which side of the working part (smooth/toothed) to act in each case, which design is better, which manufacturers there are and which of them to choose.

All these questions can be answered comprehensively by watching the training videos, which describe all the details.

Where to buy an aluminum rake?

How to choose a good aluminum rake? Pay attention to the quality of the metal, the strength and ergonomics of the construction, and the strength of the joints – remember that if you save just a little on a cheap tool, you will soon have to change it, because it will quickly fall into disrepair.

To make your rake last for a long time, buy it from trusted companies, and you can also buy aluminum rakes from big online stores: Amazon, The Home Depot, and Walmart.