Potato Harvester Converted To Heavy-Duty Rock Digger

Potato Harvester Converted To Heavy-Duty Rock Digger MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous “It works good and was relatively inexpensive to build ” says Leslie Shamburg of Monte Vista Colo about the heavy-duty trailing rock picker he built out of an old Grimme potato harvester and a 4-row Lockwood potato windrower Shamburg built the rock picker 17 years ago for a local potato farmer who is still using the machine “I owned a machine shop at the time and charged $10 000 in labor to build the rig The farmer spent $400 to buy the two machines for a total cost of less than $11 000 He would have had to spend at least twice that much at the time for a similar-size commercial rock picker ” says Shamburg The rock picker is equipped with 2 pto-driven 30-in wide hook chain conveyors that ride on top of rollers Each conveyor section is made up of 60-in wide sets of chains The conveyor in front came off the Lockwood windrower and drops dirt and rocks into the second section which Shamburg built out of new hook chain mounted on top of a channel iron frame A side-mounted conveyor on back raises and lowers hydraulically to dump the rocks into either a semi trailer or a semi dump truck It folds vertically for transport Shamburg used only the center 2 rows of the Lockwood windrower He hard surfaced a used flat snowplow truck blade and mounted it on front of the machine in order to handle dirt and rocks “The first conveyor is 5 ft high at the top The second section 9 ft high and equipped with small pitched chain so by the time rocks reach the side conveyor there’s no dirt ” notes Shamburg Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Leslie Shamburg 120 Franklin St Monte Vista Colo 81144 ph 719 849-0026; shamburgg@gmail com

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