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Implement names, Go Devil

G

greenbeanman in Kansas

Well-known Member
After reading the thread on an implement called a scuffler I decided to ask how many knew about this implement-----

How many here know what a "Go Devil" is?

No, it is not tractor related but is farm related as it is an implement pulled with horses.

My aunt used and told about the implement decades ago. Within months I visited the Har-ber Village antique historical museum at Grand, Oklahoma and they had several on display.
Go Devil photo shown here.
 
Around the '50s Popular Mechanics magazine had an article on building a "Go Devil". Their version was a bicycle "trailer" with an engine on it. It was a poor man's retofit motor bike.
There are likely very many applications of this name.

Areo
 
As a farming machine, I think it was properly called a "listed corn cultivator".

They've also been called a "go-dig".
 
OH WHAT FUN!!!Neighbor asked me a while back if i wanted one that was laying out behind his shed,Told him not no,but HE!! no!if there was every a more dirty dusty piece of equipment invented by mankind it would be outlawed as a torture device.LOL actually they did a pretty good job for what they were,every cotton farmer around had one,and you can still find them ( or their remains) around just about every old abandoned farm around here.I never talked to a person that i recall that remembered them fondly though!
 
In hilly NW MO where I went to college in late '50s, the farmers used a lister to plant corn, then the first cultivation was by a lister cultivator called go-devil. In southern IL, the same implement was called a cricket.
 
Helped out great uncle on the farm in the early to mid 1980's. All corn was planted with a 4 row lister.

He would then Go-Devil twice. I don't remember in what order, but on one pass he would throw the dirt out, on one pass he would throw the dirt in. Originally, he would have to change the shovels around between passes, but then he found another Go-Devil cheap, on an auction, and just kept one set to throw out and one set to throw in. He would usually also make a pass with a cultivator (no no-till there!).

I worked for several other farmers part-time in the neighborhood. Uncle was one of the last using a Go-Devil.
 
In this country a Go Devil was a sled with wheels in the back. Typically it was a hay rack. It was built so the rack nearly balanced on an axle with wheels. On the front was runners mounted on a turntable like a wagon axle. They were originally built to be pulled by a team. When the team pulled nearly all the weight would transfer to the wheeled axle and it would pull easy, loaded or empty. Going down hill weight would shift to the runners on the front and it would not run away going down hill. The one I recall seeing was used with a tractor for picking up shocked loose hay from a hilly hayfield. The go devil would transport the hay to the barn where it was unloaded with a harpoon and carried into the hay mow.
 
You'd throw the dirt out the first time, throw it in or "lay it by" the second. Third pass was a regular cultivator.
 
we always called the tractor mounted lister row cultivators, "monitors" . Basically did the same as a go devil.There were also horse drawn sulky type disc cultivators that we called ridge busters that did the same job. I think the name was originaly a brand name that just sort of stuck, like a brushhog.
 
A Go-Devil is a surface drive motor for a duck hunting boat.

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Thanks for posting about the Go-devil. I've always wondered what they were. On my G. Grandads 1911 auction bill, he had two of them for sale. I thought it was an Oklahoma thing - never heard of them in Southern Illinois.
 
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