Straw rake on mole plough?

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
Has anyone tried to fix some kind of arrangement to the front of a mole plough beam to deflect chopped straw away, to stop it balling up under the beam and lifting the mole? Ours is dragged round by an old crawler, so no front linkage to fix an acrobat wheel to (which I guess would be an option).
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Something like the row cleaner on a real no-till drill, is what you need.

@M-J-G 's idea is good, our deep subsoiler gadget has a skein, but it just doesn't do quite enough "sweeping" and stuff will build up on the leg and ride it out - learned that the hard way because I found every scrap of grass the rake left.

Maybe a spring tine with a wide sweep point, at a pinch, but it needs to clean wider than the leg, IMO
 

Bill Turtle

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Essex
We use a long drawbar pin which is long enough to engage in the ground by a few inches. This can be enough to clean the surface ahead of the beam of the mole plough. The front of the beam needs to hug the ground as well so that nothing gets under the beam in the first place.
 

David Bliss

Member
Arable Farmer
We used a spike welded to the front foot so straw road up it and I know others used to use the draw pin idea but would have to be quite long, tried discs but hit something and they used to break but never had any trouble when it was dry especially when the contractors said it was far to dry and the moles wouldn't hold, thats when we used to get ours out that used to move the land 8ft without heave and found moles still working after fifteen years when putting new drains in. our old 1941 7M serial 1962 did us well and now just used for fun. you tube bit with the Miles self lift at the end and going home by road.
 

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
Wouldn't a disc work
We've got a disc on it, but there's a few small balled up heaps of straw from drilling cover crop into the stubble with a tine drill.
We use a long drawbar pin which is long enough to engage in the ground by a few inches. This can be enough to clean the surface ahead of the beam of the mole plough. The front of the beam needs to hug the ground as well so that nothing gets under the beam in the first place.
We try and keep it hugging the ground, but damp and lumpy straw is sometimes too much. Ideal would be, as KP says, a row-cleaner just to flick it out of the way. If the cover grows up ok, straw will be gone, or rotten, by drilling time in spring.
 

David Bliss

Member
Arable Farmer
If you are doing for yourself and isn't absolutely important wait till it dries out as will do a better job, one year it was so hard a blade only lasted 3 acres a end where normally it did 10 and the old Cat used to lift up so it ran on the back roller and sprocket only for a few yards and drop down, no balling up under the beam that year.
 

Ruston3w

Member
Location
south suffolk
We used to do moleing for an old boy who was a convert to direct drilling in the '70s and bought an IH511 drill. He carried on after burning and the land just got harder and harder to work as he struggled with it. Between my boss and myself we tried just about every combination of straight disc, concave "straw-bury" disc, plough skimmer, forward facing knife, backward facing knife, Matrot beet harvester disc....all too fancy and either bent, broke or got wiped out by a dopey lad and a D6 having done too many hours. One day we started again, lets do something simple (like the drawbar pin)....made a shoe out of box just loose on the drawbar with a couple of inches vertical float, weld a lump of 1" plate on the bottom of the box...maybe 10" long so it has some weight , clip the corners off the leading edge......never welded/repaired it in the years I drove for him, any trouble, pull drawbar pin, slide shoe over and off you go. Not so pretty with little heaps of straw dotted about but it did work.
Richard.
 

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