Home-Built Chisel Plow "Works Better Than New"

Home-Built Chisel Plow "Works Better Than New" TILLAGE EUIPMENT Chisel Plows (9) 24-2-20 There was nothing on the market that looked quite like the chisel plow Richard DeShaw wanted, so he just built his own. "I had a 12-ft. Sunflower with disk openers on it," he says. "It worked fine, but I wanted something bigger." So DeShaw paid $650 for an older model IH 15-ft. chisel plow for parts. Using the Sunflower chisel as a base, he built a 17 1/2-ft. folding, self-leveling plow. He started with an 8 1/2-ft. section from the Sunflower. Then he cut a 54-in. section from each end of the IH bar with lift wheels attached. He mounted the smaller bars on each end of the Sunflower bar with hinges from a folding anhydrous toolbar that he bought for $50. Finally, he moved the transport/gauge wheels from the Sunflower plow forward 15 in. for more trash clearance. This also allows him to raise the plow higher. He slid the chisels out to 15 in. spacing, so he had plenty of shanks for his new plow from the two old ones. "Originally, I was just going to buy square steel tubing and new shanks to extend the Sunflower plow, but I found I could buy the old IH chisel for quite a bit less," he says. DeShaw used extra steel from the old chisel to reinforce the extended toolbar and wheels. "I didn't have any of that old bar to throw away when I was done," he says. He liked the swiveling coulters in front of the chisel shanks on the Sunflower plow. Since the IH plow didn't have similar swivels, he went looking for more. When he found he couldn't buy the swivel mounts separately, he made his own. Since each of the end sections has its own lift wheels, they float independently of the center bar. The wheels can be raised or lowered hydraulically. In order to control all the lift wheels with one hydraulic lever, he had to make some changes in the hydraulic lines on the plow. He cut the return line from the two-way main cylinder on the center bar and installed a T. Then he ran lines to each of the end cylinders, also 2-way cylinders. The return lines from these cylinders run back to a T, which returns back to the tractor. DeShaw pulls the chisel with a 2670 Case-IH 4-WD tractor. "It's the best chisel plow I've every pulled. We have terraces and contour strips, and it's very maneuverable. I was worried those floating end sections might not go into the ground or would bounce out. But it has plenty of suction. It goes into the ground and stays there. It's great for breaking up compaction in end rows in the fall. It goes through corn stalks as well as any new plow I've seen." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Richard DeShaw, 10082 Slabtown Road, Bloomington, Wis. 53804 (ph 608 994-2656).

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