48-In Breaking Plow Digs 40 In Deep

48-In Breaking Plow Digs 40 In Deep TILLAGE EUIPMENT Plows 22-1-42 When Boris Horodynsky of Churchill, Ontario, decides to clear land for crops he doesn't think small. He recently rebuilt an old commercial breaking plow that weighs 6 tons, makes a 48-in. wide furrow, and can plow as deep as 40 in. The plow rides on a pair of 28 by 14.9 lugged tires and is equipped with a single moldboard that's 10 ft. long from front to back. A pair of staggered coulters, spaced 1 ft. apart, slice the soil ahead of the mold-board. The first coulter is 32 in. in diameter and the second one 60 in. A pair of 36-in. hydraulic cylinders, one beside each wheel, can be used to change the pitch of the mold-board on-the-go. Each cylinder is independently controlled. Horodynsky uses a 280 hp Challenger tracked tractor to pull the plow at speeds up to 5 mph. "We use it right after we clear trees and brush from new ground. It pulls up nice, clean soil from the bottom that buries sticks and debris," says Horodynsky. "Assuming it takes 50 years to make one inch of top soil, we're bringing up soil that hasn't been seen since the time of Jesus. Before we built it we hired a big crew to pick up sticks and debris by hand, and then we used disks and field cultivators to work the ground. However, it was impossible to remove all the debris and some of it later caused problems. The plow is built heavy enough to plow an 8-in. dia. tree right up. "We found the plow in a scrap heap. It was built in 1962 by a Quebec company. We used 1-ft. dia. steel pipe, 1/2-in. thick, to re-build the frame, spending a total of about $3,000. A new breaking plow of comparable capacity would sell for about $50,000." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Boris Horodynsky, Rt. 1, Churchill, Ontario, Canada L0L 1K0 (ph 705 456-2461; fax 0344).

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