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Scott: One of the least expensive ways to get a 16 or 20 blade disk is cut a large disk down. I've had a bit of experience with this. I helped a guy with a 44 blade trailer disk that had 4 bearings per gang. First he built a 24 blade trailer disk, and since he had 4 bearings per gang from the original disk, that gave him enough material to build a 20 blade, 3 point hitch disk. Each of his disks will have 2 bearings per gang. He bought that 44 blade disk for $100. All he added to that in cost was his own welding and labor. I haven't talked with him recently, thus I'm not sure he ever built the 20, 3 point hitch disk. He was trying to decide whether to build a second one for sale or have his own parts dept. If you set out to buy new blades, spacers, bearings, arbor bolts, and scrapers, your going to put one heck of a dent in $800. and you will not have the quality of material going into big disks. To get that kind of quality and as heavy duty parts as in the big disk, you will probaby increase your cost to $1,200. One of the items that make big disks cut so well is the added weight of those heavy duty parts. I have an example of my own going on right now. I have a 16 blade factory disk that came with my Farmall 140, 7/8" arbor bolt and 15" disks, when new. I looked at putting on new blades, and the original 15" from CaseIH were $52. each. I can buy aftermarket light gauge 16" for $20.or heavy guage for $32. each. Then the question is, will the light arbor, bearing and frame stand up to the larger blade. I can already see places on my disk where frame is bending by side draft disk blades create. I've since bought a 24 blade MF 3 point hitch disk, 18" blades with 1-1/8" arbor bolts. I've pulled it a bit with my 140, but it's really too much load. I can very easily take one blade off each gang, cut and rethread the arbor bolts, and have a 20 blade. I don't have a $100. invested in this MF disk yet. It does have excellent blades and bearings. There is another little tip I'll give you about disks. If your going to do a lot of disking like 200 hours per year go modern sealed bearings all the way. If you going to do 30 hours or less go with the old type greasable bushing type bearings. they stand up much better when the use is not great. I farmed and had 20' disk with 20" blades and sealed bearings. Now that I'm retired it's old type bearings all the way. I only do a garden now. The problem with sealed bearing if parked long periods, less than perfect seals let water in, and water creates rust. The old bushing type bearing stand up to rust and corosion much better. They don't stand up near as well as sealed bearings on long hours of use.
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