Home-Built Coulter Cart

Home-Built Coulter Cart CULTIVATORS Cultivators (58C) 21-2-11 When Bob Lamb began looking at commercial coulter carts to use to pull his grain drill, field cultivator and chisel plow, he decided he couldn't justify the price and he also didn't like the way they were designed. "The ones I looked at all had wavy coulters, which have a tendency to bury rather than cut stubble and are a problem to sharpen," says the Greenfield, Ill., farmer. So Lamb built his own heavy-duty cart and equipped it with straight coulters that cut stalks into uniform 6 to 8-in. lengths. He used heavy 2 by 6-in. tubing to build a bridge hitch that applies downpressure to the 12-ft. wide toolbar. He mounted a 3-in. hydraulic cylinder on each side so he can adjust downpressure as conditions dictate. The cylinders raise and lower a 4 in. sq. heavy wall tool bar on which Lamb clamped 22 18-in. dia. straight coulters that he salvaged off various plows. They're spring loaded and set for 7-in. centers to match Lamb's grain drill and 20-in. corn rows. He used stub shaft axles and hubs off an old Allis Chalmers corn planter and fitted them with 15-in. car wheels. He equipped the machine with telescoping axle mounts made out of two different sizes of box tubing. "That's so I can get the front hitch ex- actly level with the back hitch, depending on what tractor I'm using to pull it," he says. Lamb pulls his 12-ft. grain drill behind the cart in fall when seeding wheat and his 12-ft. field cultivator or chisel plow and sometimes a culti-mulcher behind it in spring. He generally runs coulters 3 in. deep and pulls the cart with a 140 hp tractor. Out-of-pocket expense was about $2,000, including $25 apiece for the coulters. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Bob Lamb, 516 South Main, Greenfield, Ill. 62044 (ph 217 368-2131).

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