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Chisel plowing scrap iron treasures?

K

Kow Farmer

Well-known Member
A few days ago I finished chisel plowing my soybean ground. I was walking out in the field this afternoon to see how the chisel plowing worked. It worked great, even found quite a few old scrap iron trasures from decades gone by. I found a bent up Vise Grip, single water faucet, lawnmower blade, linkage from an old foot brake/clutch, 40 penny polebarn nail, old tin soda/beer can, lots of broken glass, old chimney bricks, 2 huge concrete chunks of an old building foundation and last but not least, lots of rocks. What have some of you been finding after you are done with tillage? Now if I can only find a volunteer rock picker/helper? LOL
Kow Farmer (Kurt)
 
Found about a half dozen golf balls combining beans near the house. I used to stop and pick them up for my sons, who put them there in the first place. No more, let 'em find their own.
 
The tough part is when you find them treasures sticking into your tires.....
I'd be going over it all again with a metal detector.
 
Like you say, lots of rocks and various broken plow coulters drag teeth and other scrap iron. Found this old spark plug this spring. Nothing special, I guess, but I cleand it up and put it on the shelf.
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You know the way I found some of these things today would have flattened a tire next spring for me. Especially the lawnmower blade, that was standing straight up on end. So was a 2' piece of angle iron I found not far from the blade. Sometimes I wonder if my farm isn't on top a scrap yard? LOL
Kow Farmer
 
I farm an old airport. Holy cow is there a lot of stuff in there besides soil. My favorite was an old mattress that was only the springs left on a new farm, incorporated it throughout my field cultivator, took an hour to get out.
 
Yesterday I was combining beans, looked over to the bare stubble I just did a 1/2 round ago, and there lay the plow coulter the wife lost last fall. We looked and looked for it last fall & this spring, I field cultivated that field, we got 12 inches of rain in May, tiled it in early June crossing that field many many times, I field cultivated it 2 more times to level it, planted and sprayed it, no sign of that coulter I assumed it was burried in the furrow and would take deep tillage to bring it up.

Was very lucky it was so flat, didn't wreck the header, the flange/bracket stub was down in the dirt.


When I started plowing dad let me go the 1st round alone, I had to stop and pick some stuff up, when I got back to dad & showed hime the big pipe and bar, he said oh, that's where that fell off! - Years ago, it was weight he had on his old disk, fell off in the field.

Was picking rocks when dad was harrowing I was even younger, I found a 1/2 an oxen shoe, that was my first big 'field find' and kinda neat, still have it, remember it.

--->Paul
 
Hi Paul,
I seen you were out combining the other night. How are things going? Doesn't it make you wonder how much stuff you have lost out doing fieldwork? What's even stranger is finding what you lost years later, such as the plow coulter you found.
Kow Farmer (Kurt)
 
Back in the 50s my dad plowed up an old plowshare that was pretty deep in the ground, in a new-ground field that hadn't been cultivated in many, many years. He noted that it had been made by a blacksmith, and that it was very old.

A few years later some historians discovered that Moses Rose, the infamous "coward of the Alamo", was buried about a mile from the old home place where I grew up (this is northwestern Louisiana). After escaping from the Alamo he came to our community and set up shop as a blacksmith, so I've always wondered if he was the one who made that old plowshare.

(For the record, Rose was not so much a coward as a practical realist, and he didn't care for the odds at the Alamo. He was quite possibly the most experienced soldier at the Alamo, having served all over Europe with Napoleon.)
 
Found the side piece of metal that goes on the horse collar in our garden. Lots of little prices of metal here and there.
My farm is 140 years old.
Walt
 
We live in a flood plain, we have more debris then you can imagine. Truly we have found pieces of bridges, old tools, dinnerware, you name it we have probably found it. Pretty neat stuff too.
 
I got myself out of kilter a couple days last week with 'odd jobs' that needed done, seem I'm out of step now with the big farmers. :) Only 15 acres left, no elevators open over the weekend - who would ever expect the elevators don't need to be open extra hours in the middle of October! Beans look pretty good for the late planting after the tile job on the big field. I was surprised the weed field went through the combine as well as it did - and yieded ok for the mess.... You know, you try diffrent things, you experiement and learn - I learned Liberty/Ignite doesn't work as well in a drought... Near the road, of course.

Wife keeps having the plow break on her, think it's partially from last year, been tough going the last 2 years. Last year 4 coulter brackets broke (only lost the one), this year had entire bottom fall off the frame, had a bottom break off and slide up the arm, a trip-arm broke, and while setting the shims right for that today saw another coulter was coming off. I've gone through more plow lays the past 2 years than I have in 10 years! Met my neighbor across the road at the dealer this morning, he was getting chisel points - his are breaking off too.

Notice I did not say the wife is breaking the plow.... Not her doing, just very tough dry clay! :)

--->Paul
 
Oh just thought of it, probably my best 'lost & found' is hard to even believe....

Old 3 point Case corn planter, I lost a gauge wheel when I was in my teens plnting with it. You'd think you couldn't lose that in a planted field, but I guess I'm special. Took one off the parts planter dad had.

Two years later, was planting corn in that field, and suddenly the tractor got pulled over to one side, the frame of the planter actually bent a little - the marker (a spike tooth, not a disk on that planter) had hooked the lost depth gauge wheel and was dragging it hard.

Had to straighten out the frame - just 2x2 metal tube - and back at it.

I still have no idea how a whole gauge wheel could stay lost for 2 years, it should be a lump on top of the field when planting. But that the planter of all things refound it's own part.....

Like you say, makes you wonder what all is out there.

--->Paul
 
Cleaningout the little old pond behind the barn, I found a broken cast-iron monkey wrench in the mud. I know just what happened, Granpa Charlie or Uncle Bill or someone had gone to town, bought a new wrench,, snapped the cast iron putting a lot of arm into the first job, and threw the dern thingin the middle of the pone "Donggone cheap-busted worthlesss....."
Got it all sand-blasted and painted and hung up.
 
Lost but never found. Years ago my dad was pulling a springtooth harrow, turned around to spit and lost his partial plate. He looked for it for days, took a scoop shovel and sifted the soil where the plate was lost. It has not been found to this day.
 
I have to laugh when I see some of these crime shows where they search for a bullet in a field with a metal detector on my farm those guys would be steady digging I'd imagine.Plus it was a Civil War area so they'd proably dig up some bullets too from that era.
 
not near as interesting as some other things but I found a pair of shoes after plowing - i left them at the edge of the field and after a rain you couldn't tell they had been buried for years.
 
I was disking one spring, and I spotted something coming around the rear tractor tire. It was a six tine potato hook that I had lost the previous fall. Fortunately two of the tines were stuck in the lug of the tire, and that kept the others from penetrating.
 
I found an old ball hitch in a watergap after a chisel plowing a few years ago. Had been lost for 20 years, haha. Also, spun up the missing half of a pullverizer disc that had gone missing the year prior. Heard the "scrape" as I drove over it when using the same disc again the next year.
 
My son plowed up a lug wrench for my dad"s JD B that he lost about 60 years ago. I can never remember that tractor having the factory wrench - always had a hardware store replacement.
 
i found so much stuff i cant even think of when a where. i do have a couple flood plain fields. you find the usual light stuff that floats to the field like old rusty tin pieces and stuff nothing speacial tires and rims that you hit with the mower in deep grass. i always used to find golf balls in the field all the time i have no idea where they come from. i found a big rathet that my worker lost a about 8 yrs ago found it about 3 yrs ago and im still using other tools your misc scrap metal horeshoes disc blades rake teeth espicialy in tires found a log skidder chain link broke this spring and of coarse lots of rocks and other junk. and lots of garbage people throw out there windows.
 
Years ago, mother has us cultivate up a part of the back yard for an new garden. We were getting the sod pretty well broken up by the 4th or 5th pass, when the cultivator came out of the ground with the center section of a gold pocket watch case on a spike point. Later we found the inner rear cover. For years after that I searched that garden plot with a metal detector. An old lady who worked for the former owners, said that spot was where they used to repair machines. The ground is filled with bits of broken nails, pipe, fittings, bolts /nuts and other small scrap. The metal detector finds several "hits" per foot, when set on iron and nearly as much when set to produce a different sound for non magnetic metals like gold or brass. I have found brass door lock plates, brass shell casings and brass plumbing, but no more covers or parts from that gold pocket watch. Kind of a shame, as I hoped the covers might be engraved with the owners name. A clock and watch collector I showed the center case section to, said it was a "Lever set" pocket watch, which would date from 1860 or earlier. The steel watch movement was reduced to a ring of rust inside the gold case, so nothing there. I suspect the gold watch covers are either not there, or are hidden under some of the larger bits of iron that masks them from the metal detector.
 
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