Home Made Drag Behind a Disc???

Bill VA

Well-known Member
Thinking about rigging up some kind of home made drag to smooth out the ground after discing and before I reinvent the wheel, I thought I’d ask what
you folks are using.

A couple of thoughts I have are chaining the remains of an old telephone pole (trimmed to some length) to the tractor drawbar (I’m dragging the field
after discing) or doing the same with a couple of old scrap 4 x 8 oak boards.

What are you using for a post discing field drag to smooth out the surface?

Thanks!
Bill
 
I mounted the Harrow to the disk kill two birds with one stone
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I have rigged up a couple different ones: a steel beam, a treated lumber 6x6 and the one that works best is this: 3 4x4’s layed on ground parallel with the disk and as wide as disk. Place them 2’ apart. Then spike nail several 2x4’s opposite direction on slight diagonals to prevent racking. Really levels things. Not too heavy, not too light. Easy to make and cheap. I was thinking about making one with 2x2 steel angle. That would probably be heavier than wood. The last alfalfa I planted, I plowed the field. Next time I plan to only disk it loose several times and late summer seed. I did that with a couple straight grass hay fields and it worked very well. I was coached years ago to smooth out the hay fields well and besides the furrow along the edges, they are very smooth. Besides that stupid ground hog hole. It makes cutting, tedding and raking very consistent so the drying action is too. Plus very little lost hay in divots or ruts. Easier on equipment and the axles, which do break at the worst time.
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yeah, ive done that in the past. Guess I didnt like it, as I got away from it. Course, I only do around 10 or less acres, so I just go after it with a harrow after discing.
 
Much depends on soil type and moisture condition. In clay, a spike tooth drag when moisture is high enough to allow breakdown of lumps, but not so high as to stick to the tires. In drier clay, clods are like bricks and nothing works. In sandy loam, a spike drag set with the teeth ata shallow angle is really good. These are old style methods. Today a cultimulcher type seed bed tool is far better. Dry (or wet) clay is still nasty. Jim
 
Your baler pic reminds me of my discbine on Saturday. Was mowing and looked back to see a tire laying in the windrow. Bad wheel bearing. At least it was 15 minutes before 12 so the local Deere dealer put the parts outside to pickup. We were back mowing in about an hour. Tom
 
Land-Lord I did fall fieldwork for pulled the larger diameter end of a 30 ft tall pole behind his M&W Earth-Master Disk-Ripper, leveled the ground pretty well, at least knocked down the high spots. There were still some holes you would sink into down to your knee.
If trying to smooth hay ground after seeding we always pulled a peg tooth harrow over the field once it was seeded. We would disk old corn stalks, disk 8-9 rows and leave a marker row to drive the tractor pulling the end gate seeder by, then disk EVERYTHING, and then pull the harrow over everything. We traded help with the neighbor. Could sow 80 acres in an easy Saturday.
 
If you are talking 6-10 ft disk, go to your local Hwy. Dept. and see if they have a wear blade off a snowplow or grader. They sell them for scrap, so you may need to pay. Rig up arms so it drags behind the disk on a 30 degree angle. Make it so you can swing it up and carry it on the disk.

Bill
 
We found out 40+ years those homemade drags DO NOT work, Where soil is soft in spots they just drag up a bunch to where you cannot even pull them any more and have that pile of dirt to lever back off, Then where the field is now worked as much they still will drag a pile in center of drag from action of disk Or if soil is a bit moint sticky it just builds up on drag. On the field cultivator that did not have the mounted harrow we pulled a old cultipacker shaft, sollid round 1 3/4" diameter hooked with chain to each end. The old wood drag went in burn pile. We did have spike tooth drag harrows as well. First wheel disk (Burch) we took a wood bar spike tooth section and put new wood bars on the full widyh of disk and mounted it on back of disk, second a Mccormick found a boughten harrow to mount. Withthose if you had corn stalks to bunch up under harrow you could just lift disk to get over the bunch, would do it at end of field so could throw those stalks into fence row. Now a drag type disk or the JD KBA wheel disk you could not mount a harrow on. And with any disk or field cultivator or even with a spring tooth harrow the soil is lose soft after you go over so you do not want to make a second trip with a drag of any kind as where the tractor wheels run it will pack those spots but not between tractor tracks. Those tractor tracks will not level out and later on you will have low spots where every tire track was. All experiance since mid 50's. All those wood ideas are way to heavy to work decent. People used to take 2x8" planks and just dail second to first overlaping second 2" and folloup 3 same was with 4th same way with max of 5 planks. But you had to have back end of disk carring the front ent of plank drag to work, you could not run them lever or they would flip clods up from in front to ontop of drag untill it would get to where it would no longer hold any dirt. Grandpa never could understand why it was digging fromt end of drag into ground and loading up. Plenty of good spike tooth harrows out there for to wast time trying to make something that will not be satifactory. Even a section of chain link fence fastened to a pipe for a drawbar and hold front of it up about 3" will di a way better job than any of the sujestions on here to make one. And it will be self cleaning.
 

It used to be common to drag a "planker" behind a disc to level things. It's just 2x12's, made of hardwood preferably, as wide as the disc bolted together in overlapping fashion. I've seen the disc followed by a spike toothed harrow followed by a planker too. Nice finish on tame fields.
 
I have built different styles over the years---Tee
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A rolling disc leveler behind our Soil Save--
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Rolling basket type behind our vertical tillage--
 
Around here we alled them a 'lap drag'.I still have an old one. Use it once a year in the spring to scatter manure piles.
 

For seedings I used the top of an old telephone pole. It was cut two feet longer than the width of the disc. I will never use it again. You can have it for $20.00 complete with chains. I think that the chains even have hooks on them.
 
I tried dragging things behind the disc. Even made a little harrow that would fold up onto the disc for transport. Finally bought a spiked toothed chain harrow with a 3 point hitch frame. It works great. I think its 6' x 5' as I recall.
 
I pull a ten foot weeder behind an 8 foot disc. Boy I like that. With the weeder just a bit wider than the disc, it works very well. The weeder's tines point straight down, so they don't pull up rocks and stuff, and they're light enough they don't till more than the top. It makes a wonderfully smooth bed. It cost me $100. Kinda oldish, but it works. Mine's an old horse drawn one I converted when I sold my team (shortened the tongue, removed the seat) but they made them later for tractors. Was it Allis Chalmers? I don 't know. They're fairly easy to come by.

I hope this file's big enough to see it. My daughter took it with her phone, so it's kinda itty-bitty.

My dad used to pull a telephone pole behind his disc. It came off forty-some years ago, and he just pushed it over in the fence row. It's still in the fence row. Maybe that says something about telephone poles.

Joel


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Get and pull spiked tooth drag harrows, preferably a little wider than the disks, behind the disk. To go over the ground again after disking you must be compacting and leaving wheel tracks which, I don't think you want. Work it, in the one pass if you can.
 

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