Cultipacker

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I was thinkin' about the learning curve.  It takes a while to pick up the tricks of good building.  Got to thinkin' about this machine I built a while back.It's called a cultipacker.  These machines were used, regretfully, quite a bit during the 30's.  They were responsible in part for the dustbowl in my area.  The purpose of the iron rollers/wheels is to pulverize any dirt clods when preparing a seedbed.  It wasn't a good practise then, and it isn't now.  It causes the land to blow during dry spells.  I use it only when I get in the field late and have to plow late in the Spring.  It works to break up large clods that the disc can't break.  I pull it behind the disc.Normally I plow down in the Fall/Winter, and let Winter precipitation mellow the plowed ground.This was a total scratch build.  I got the wheels at auction for $25.It was my largest project at that time.  It's about 12 feet wide, and weighs about 3/4 ton, or more, fully assembled.It's 100% channel iron.  The box beams on the end, and middle, which support the bearing standards are two pieces of channel welded to form a box.I learned 2 important things on this one.  1... How to handle distortion, and make it work for me.  It was my introduction to fully tacking the job, and then welding from opposite corners to the middle, thus equalizing the pulling effect of welding/cooling.  A ;good lesson in fit-up work to boot.  An older retired guy had told me about this method. (Also a good lesson to not make little namby pamby tack welds, stuff gets pretty heavy in a hurry)Second...... I learned to pay attention to all forces which the weldment might encounter in the field.  I made a mistake in designing the tongue.  It had to be slender in order to allow the disc to turn inside on a sharp turn.  But I failed to properly estimate the stress on the piece of channel which extends beyond the angle braces.  During use it bent as I made a particularly tight fast turn in the field.  It didn't break, and it made it through the rest of the day by babying it.  I had used a shape that wasn't designed for the stress it was placed under.  Channel was the wrong choice for the final few feet of the tongue.Was a simple fix.  Welded 4 x 1/4 flat to the top, and bottom, of the channel.  But it was a failure, none the less.All in all, it was a good experience builder.  I look to all axis now for possibility of failure. Attached Images
Reply:looks good!
Reply:nice rig.  No dust bowl here, but if you farm here in the red clay we have a cultipacker is almost a required implement.  We have dirt around here that when running a breaking plow it almost seems like you have a 1hr window from too wet to too hard.I'm a Lover, Fighter, Wild horse Rider, and a pretty good welding man......
Reply:Sort of the same here, but probably not as bad.  My place has a lot of what folks around here call Gumbo.  Mix of clay and loam.  Hard as concrete when dry, and bottomless when wet.I usually work ground in the Winter when it's moist, and the moldboard turns up big ol' shiny slabs.  Get like concrete when they dry.  A few months of precip. and freeze/thaw cycles mellows it so you can get on it and disc in the Spring.
Reply:We had a small 48" one of those when I was a kid, after the harrow or the plow we ran that over the garden. It smoothed it out like a tiller, nice pull behind.Disclaimer; "I am just an a$$hole welder, don't take it personally ."
Reply:CultipackerFarmersamm I’m looking to build a small cultipacker for food plots similar to the one pictured below. I have seen them before but the local farmers in my area do not have them. My question is are the cultipacker disk/wheels fixed to the axel or free floating? If free floating is grease all that is needed for the shaft? Are there bearings for each wheel? Attached ImagesLast edited by Reebs; 01-14-2012 at 04:24 PM.Dave ReberWadsworth Ohio