Is there no money in small direct drills?

Drillman said:

Yes time will tell.

but until I see a system locally that works consistently and gives reliable yields I will stay on the fence.

And I’ve just bought a fresh plough.

Click to expand...

There's a lot more to it than the choice of drill

Some people seem to think Regen or direct drilling means just skip the cultivation and riches will follow - with an inevitable 'i told you it wouldn't work here' a few months later

Spud said:

There's a lot more to it than the choice of drill

Some people seem to think Regen or direct drilling means just skip the cultivation and riches will follow - with an inevitable 'i told you it wouldn't work here' a few months later

Click to expand...

Yes it’s a bit like organic farming some folks think you just stop putting fert and sprays on.

I do get the whole DD thing now, although I’m still not convinced it’s right for us. I think we could pretty much cut ploughing out at home if we had the right kit going forwards. We have been dabbling in non plough tillage with encouraging results, but as I explained on another thread a more suitable drill will be required going forwards to do it on a larger scale.

As is we’ve just upgraded a tractor and bought a monster plough to pull behind it, I wouldn’t have done this If I were solely doing my own work but some contracting we do requires ploughing due to the way the farmer wants to farm. In that scenario I’m just the contractor and need to upgrade kit to do the Job to the standard that I and they are happy with.

Further spending on soil engaging kit will now have to be put on the back burner while funds recover but from a timeliness point of view what I’ve bought will move us a step forwards which was part of the original aim.

Spud said:

There's a lot more to it than the choice of drill

Some people seem to think Regen or direct drilling means just skip the cultivation and riches will follow - with an inevitable 'i told you it wouldn't work here' a few months later

Click to expand...

Yep, all other operations remain the same and therefore compaction compounds faster than cutting out disturbance can remediate it.
Pour nitogen on and wonder why "the soil don't work".

So predictable..

havnt spread n for a coupkle of yrs dont own a drill or a subsoiler

but i must admit i do have 8 ploughs

Drillman said:

Yes time will tell.

but until I see a system locally that works consistently and gives reliable yields I will stay on the fence.

And I’ve just bought a fresh plough.

Click to expand...

I think that’s what the claydon is the “easy” way to dd

My main liking is the less diesel and ground you’d be able to travel on. You could go out on grass here with a 3000 tanker and not make a mark right now, on my ploughed crops I wouldn’t take anything heavier than my size 11s this time of year.

Nothing imo will give the consistency of plough year on year where I am (heavy, wet and cold)

Bloody nice to have a good sabre tine home build in the collection to make life easier and maybe it would work out better. £5k on a home build is an easier risk as to £40 on a bought, beg to believe what “buy British” firms profits are

BuskhillFarm said:

I think that’s what the claydon is the “easy” way to dd

My main liking is the less diesel and ground you’d be able to travel on. You could go out on grass here with a 3000 tanker and not make a mark right now, on my ploughed crops I wouldn’t take anything heavier than my size 11s this time of year.

Nothing imo will give the consistency of plough year on year where I am (heavy, wet and cold)

Bloody nice to have a good sabre tine home build in the collection to make life easier and maybe it would work out better. £5k on a home build is an easier risk as to £40 on a bought, beg to believe what “buy British” firms profits are

Click to expand...

See I would say some of our drilled in the dry arable would travel better than the majority of the permanent grass at the moment.

B R C said:

Interesting, I’ve just read through the thread, @Dave645 looks a cracking drill, I’d like to try some more direct drilling, did a small trial with CO4 with Dutch coulters and was fairly happy with it. No longer have much equipment as contractor does all the work but having seen the price of a 3m sabre tine £39500….I quite fancy building one. perhaps I could have a look at yours sometime? I only have JD6320 100hp at the moment though may not be man enough to pick up?

Click to expand...

you would have the power to pull it, have you ever had a combination drill on your tractor 3meters ?
my drill is similar full of seed, than a combination is when empty.

the trick is to mount the hopper as close to the tractor as you can.
View attachment Drill 2021 may mark2.pdfView attachment drill frame drawing 2021.pdfI will share some PDF files mark 2 is an updated file not the one I used its to make assembly simpler by linking what were separate parts that worked to adjust the packer arms for depth control, into joined parts to make it simpler to weld up. and a few refinements. the other is to give you an idea of layout, I had mine all laser cut in 15mm steel, and they bent the headstock parts to spec for me as well. note some legs are within the frame so spacing of frame parts was correctly to get leg placement perfect was worked out very carefully.


this is the A frame I used to link the hopper to the frame, (agrilink if I remember) the top link pin on the A frame fits into one of the holes on the headstock on my frame, I then had blocks made and welded to the headstock to capture the lower link pins on the A frame, this allowed me to get the frame galvanized dipped after it was welded up.
this could be done away with but the latch and pin the hopper uses would be lost. and set the A frame perfectly upright, my problem was I designed it all in cad around parts I didn't own or had seen so room for fudging had to be left.
and this is helpful. . if you have cad you can direct import it and just correct it for scale, which I what I did. (saber tine PDF below)
if you want to shed weight and cost go to a PTO driven hopper direct, not via a pto hydraulic pump which I did that added quite a lot of cost and added a hydraulic oil tank to the hopper I added an oil cooler over the air intake for the fan on the drill, so it always gets good air flow.

View attachment Sabre tine.PDF
if you wish to shed more weight and cost, use the wheels weaving use. and go for following tines like weaving do. the packer is actually the heaviest part as its mounted the furthest from the tractor.
moving to wheels mounted mid frame like weaving will likely shed weight overall.


image of a weaving depth wheel.
good luck if you go down the route of building one.

Dave645 said:

you would have the power to pull it, have you ever had a combination drill on your tractor 3meters ?
my drill is similar full of seed, than a combination is when empty.

the trick is to mount the hopper as close to the tractor as you can.
View attachment 1081334View attachment 1081335I will share some PDF files mark 2 is an updated file not the one I used its to make assembly simpler by linking what were separate parts that worked to adjust the packer arms for depth control, into joined parts to make it simpler to weld up. and a few refinements. the other is to give you an idea of layout, I had mine all laser cut in 15mm steel, and they bent the headstock parts to spec for me as well. note some legs are within the frame so spacing of frame parts was correctly to get leg placement perfect was worked out very carefully.

View attachment 1081338
this is the A frame I used to link the hopper to the frame, (agrilink if I remember) the top link pin on the A frame fits into one of the holes on the headstock on my frame, I then had blocks made and welded to the headstock to capture the lower link pins on the A frame, this allowed me to get the frame galvanized dipped after it was welded up.
this could be done away with but the latch and pin the hopper uses would be lost. and set the A frame perfectly upright, my problem was I designed it all in cad around parts I didn't own or had seen so room for fudging had to be left.
and this is helpful. . if you have cad you can direct import it and just correct it for scale, which I what I did. (saber tine PDF below)
if you want to shed weight and cost go to a PTO driven hopper direct, not via a pto hydraulic pump which I did that added quite a lot of cost and added a hydraulic oil tank to the hopper I added an oil cooler over the air intake for the fan on the drill, so it always gets good air flow.

View attachment 1081349View attachment 1081356
if you wish to shed more weight and cost, use the wheels weaving use. and go for following tines like weaving do. the packer is actually the heaviest part as its mounted the furthest from the tractor.
moving to wheels mounted mid frame like weaving will likely shed weight overall.

View attachment 1081360
image of a weaving depth wheel.
good luck if you go down the route of building one.

Click to expand...

Do you think the harriw will do as good a job of slot closure as your packer?

SJamieson said:

Do you think the harriw will do as good a job of slot closure as your packer?

Click to expand...

It’s what weaving use, so I would expect it’s ok, it will make a rolling pass more likely, where in wetter times with mine, I can skip that.
I do roll if time permits and it’s mostly to increase slot closure and level for pre em.
Every year is different, weaving use staggered covering tines, some use chains, nothing is going to work perfectly if the soil conditions are far from ideal, my best land which is silt warp grade one, after potatoes was one passed with a sumo pass (by the potato grower) to level and remove any compaction, and then direct drilled with my drill it was perfect, no rolling no nothing every seam came full row, and romped away.
a heavy field in the village was drilled in the window we got in late November with a weaving made saber tine the land had been worked, pre drilling then it rained a lot, they then managed to get a small window to drill it, but they never rolled it’s just coming up it looks ok for the conditions and time of year. The fact if left it light and not rolled was actually for the weather we had after it was drilled a good thing.

no drill is perfect, build one you can modify, in my design It would not be impossible to change the packer add or remove depth wheels as conditions change and use the packer arms to mount covering tines only, my design does allow me to add them after the packer but in some respects that’s self defeating and they would be better just before the packer roller, but if weight is my concern the wheels controlling the drill depth and covering tines at the back would work.
There was a guy on eBay selling drags with lots of options for packers nearly every type you can think of in steel, he said he would sell them separately, https://machinerysaleseu.co.uk/ you can get V ring packers from about £1500
I never did buy one from them, I managed to get what I wanted from a great guy, who owns this company.
https://www.erthengineering.co.uk/products/
He did me a deal for my packer. And shipped it direct to me. I had the frame and arms made he just made up the packer with bearing ends ready to bolt to what we made up.
Ps onesite laser are who cut all my steel.
If you want to reduce the cutting cost just get the parts with pin holes in them the ones with just frame holes for the main box sections, they can be cut on any CNC machine the accuracy of laser is less required.
Laser is like accurate to 0.2 of a millimetre which is great for pin holes link arm pin hole etc. but not needed for the main rails if you want to save money. Or go bigger and use weld in pin holes, I would note bending 15mm steel is not readily available even jones engineering that make equipment near me cannot bend 15mm steel, but onesite laser did.

I will add on the second pdf in the last post the notch in the headstock you can see behind the top link pin hole is where the A frame sits it uses the rear hole in the head stock to lock the A frame top link pin in place it fits inside my headstock snugly so it’s locked in place left to right and the pin locks it front to back. The closeness of the hopper to the tractor is similar to that of a fert spreader, as close as possible. This is key to a light weight drill. Getting mass as close to the tractor as possible. A tractor may have 4T lift but that’s at the lift arm ends maybe, the further away the centre of mass is, the less weight the tractor can lift.

tr250 said:

A gd? Our 4m gd doesn’t take any pulling but there’s more drag on a tine drill

Click to expand...

It's a big disc but we also have 4m of tines which we can use instead on the same drill. The tine is the easier pull because there is so much less machine in contact with the soil.

Pistonbroke said:

Pulling not the same as lifting

Click to expand...

Fair comment.

Humble Village Farmer said:

Fair comment.

Click to expand...

We rent some grazing off a retired farmer who loves tinkering with kit. Out of the blue he bought a 3m moore drill from eBay. It's an old ,heavy trailed and he's been experimenting with it behind a tl90 new Holland. Don't know it's there,but a mounted version would take some handling

Spud said:

There's a lot more to it than the choice of drill

Some people seem to think Regen or direct drilling means just skip the cultivation and riches will follow - with an inevitable 'i told you it wouldn't work here' a few months later

Click to expand...

To be fair, you have to skip the cultivation at some stage, and doing that does save money.

There is a lot more to it than choosing a drill. Ask any DDer if he has the perfect one.

There will always be someone to say "I said it would never work". That's what keeps some of us going!

I have a 4m mounted dd for sale

Humble Village Farmer said:

To be fair, you have to skip the cultivation at some stage, and doing that does save money.

There is a lot more to it than choosing a drill. Ask any DDer if he has the perfect one.

There will always be someone to say "I said it would never work". That's what keeps some of us going!

Click to expand...

Absolutely, the key is not to skip the spade stage

jack6480 said:

I have a 4m mounted dd for sale

Click to expand...

What's a 4m dd?

Spud said:

What's a 4m dd?

Click to expand...

I'm no expert but I'm guessing direct drill

jack6480 said:

I have a 4m mounted dd for sale

Click to expand...

Any further details?

Pistonbroke said:

I'm no expert but I'm guessing direct drill

Click to expand...

Me too, it's a bit of a guessing game as to which one though!

Humble Village Farmer said:

Any further details?

Click to expand...

Shall I pm you?