Home build dd tine drill??

[Durt Burd]

Asking the view of the collective before spend money on the wrong thing. We plan to blow grass seed back to this upstack from a front hopper. The delivery pipe along the tractor is 5 inch. The upstack 4 inch. I need to buy 32mm ID pipe to go from the upstack to the rollers
Will we run into back pressure issues with the change in diameter on the pipes? I was hoping there won't be too much air needed to get the seed back, and by using all the outlets on the head unit it will be ok?View attachment 950894

Could you not put a boom on the front of the tractor a bit like this one that was on Twitter. Can’t remember the name of the chap who did it but they were from Co Cork

 

[Devon James]

Could you not put a boom on the front of the tractor a bit like this one that was on Twitter. Can’t remember the name of the chap who did it but they were from Co Cork

Oooh. Nice idea. Popular idea in France, Duro make something similar. We will see how we get on with this as have all the parts now

 

[Devon James]

Did you tell them to remember my commission

They hadn't heard of you [emoji23]

 

[Bob lincs]

They hadn't heard of you [emoji23]

Bugger

 

[Durt Burd]

Oooh. Nice idea. Popular idea in France, Duro make something similar. We will see how we get on with this as have all the parts now

The brother has made a boom and frame for an APV seeder to go on his front linkage after we mulled over how to go about it. Has the benefit that he can store some seed on the frame too. He is also using a Guttler rolls but they get used during the winter for another job and sometimes have to live out so having the seeder ticked away in the shed when not in use is advantageous

 

[Devon James]

First day out with my grass seeder yesterday. Pleased with it, thanks for the help on here.

 

[Frogpit]

I would save the cash from bout markers and put it towards an auto steer system instead. My experience of bout markers while direct drilling is not great at best. During a GD demo, I gave up using the bout markers as most of the time I was relying on lining up a bolt on the front mudguard with the outer row of the last bout to get me in the right place to find the illusive bout marker mark. I even had Guest on my tine drill at one point. Mounting them on a pig tail cultivator wasn't even as straight forward as we had hoped either.

I am quite pleased with how mine is working out, but it is still a work in progress. I finished rigging up zig zag harrows on the back of it and gave it a quick test today, ready for drilling beans. Not grate for trash flow, but finally got a harrow on it that really covers the slots well.

View attachment 916038

Personally, I think that even the commercial drills have their sort comings, so buying off the shelf won't necessarily work as well as you want.

Slot closing is an issue for all tine drills, no matter how low disturbance they claim to be. *Other peoples experiences and soils may vary. A tines natural instinct when direct drilling (even with very narrow points) is to move all the soil from directly in front of it and spread it about on top of the undisturbed soil between them. Some soil from the back rows get spread over slots left by the front rows, but the back row tends to be left very open by the seeding tines. I have tried a some different harrows mounted on this drill and nearly always ended up doing a pass with the stubble rake after drilling. The heavy chains on the Simtech didn't do a good for covering the slots it left on the Demo I had. One of this winter projects is to remake a following harrow using a lot straight tines like these ones linked bellow, with 2 or 3 between every drill row, arranged over 3 banks with adjustable rake angle. The KV TS harrow tines I tried on it weren't effective enough.

Following Harrow Tine (single) to fit Vaderstad Cultivation Equipment OEM: 400975 - Agri-Linc

Straight 12mm diameter tine

www.agri-linc.com

I am using Bourgault knife opener points and seed boots on standard 1" pigtail tines. They work well, but the 1" pigtails aren't really strong enough and I have bust my way through quite a lot of them now, I haven't kep a record to know exactly how many ha per tine I'm getting, but guesstimate I'm breaking 1 every 50 to 100 ha. You can see a couple of spare tines clamped on top of the frame in that picture. A lot of its direct drilling however has been putting in beans at least 4" deep and I had never bust a tine while it was mintill drilling they whole farm every year before we got into direct drilling. I'm planning on changing to 30mm pigtails, however as well as needing need frame clamps, the 1" pigtails seem to have different point hole spacing (60mm) compared to pretty much any other pigtail tine (45mm), so would need new seed boot holders and quick change point adapters. I would recommend getting 30mm tines for it before buying points and seed boots to suit. £145 each for complete Saber tines does look very attractive, but they won't fit this frame and don't look to have as much under frame clearance either.

This drill is currently on 214mm row spacing (16 tines over 3.43m) and I wouldn't want to reduce the clearance around the tines any. It has it's limits, but it has drilled through a tall cover crop that was bunging up the unidrill and even drilled beans through swaths of oat straw that got rained on for a month (pic bellow). That was only across the swaths though, not along them. The headland swaths needed a pass over with the flail mower before I could finish that field.

View attachment 916039

Go hydro fan drive, makes mounting a fan above a cultivator frame so much more sensible. Totally worth it and also gives you independent control of tractor and fan revs. Only downside so far was the first year after converting it and our main tractor broke down, which was the only one we had at the time with CCLS hydraulics. I would like a front hopper, but none of our tractors have front linkage and this way the drill could be used with or without a front hopper. Unlike the Simtech, a 6 cylinder 4wd tractor can handle this drill without needing front ballast, though a some does help when the hopper is full. I would prefer to use extra seed in a hopper as front ballast though, instead of just weight blocks.

When I first made put the accord hopper on that cultivator, it was as a min till drill and got used for everything at the tine, including on ploughing. It had a crumbler roller on the back then, though that was a mixed blessing. One issue with rear rollers is the long distance between the roller and the front tines meant that the depth could vary a lot on the more uneven fields. With those depth wheels in between the tines, that distance is kept a lot shorter and depth doesn't vary as much.

Power wise, I reckon it normally needs just under 5 hp per tine to pull it, unless going up a steep hill. Like a Simtech, if the tractor can pick it up, it can pull it.


Other things of note. My father originally got non-tungsten knife openers for it to min till beans into shakaerated ground. They were fine for that and our soil is not abrasive. A new set of plough points would do the whole farm before they needed turning. However when direct drilling the points wore rounded and they didn't penetrate anything like so well. This drill was actually trailed at that time, so it had the weight, but I think it put a lot of strain on the tines then. The tungsten tipped openers on it now are holding their shape so much better and will last me for many years.

Did you think about using the wheel kit for each tine as a means of depth control, or is the Guilbart tine wheel just a roller? Thankyou.

 

[clbarclay]

I'm not sure that wheels on every tine would allow better depth control with pigtails tines, not like drills which mount the tines on long swing arms or parallelogram linkages, which allow much greater movement between tines.

The soil here also likes to impersonate superglue when it gets a bit wet (and impersonate grease when it gets very wet). I deliberately put the depth wheels running in front of tines. If the conditions are good, I'll typically use a disc drill, so the tine drill needs to perform when conditions are too marginal for the other drill.

 

[Frogpit]

Yes, I am sure you are correct about the following wheels for depth control, and the problems in the wet.
Your description of build is very helpful, did you say you have a more detailed account somewhere?
I am hoping to build a 15 row custom drill (at 250mm spacing) using a heavy c-tine cultivator and air drill.
I need to drill into undisturbed turf and cover.
Starting with the bare C-tines, are the proprietary openers just bolted on?
I guess for beans there will be a longer seed delivery pipe.
I shall have to use leading discs, which should make it easier to pull?
Have you learnt which openers are best, please?
Thankyou very much.