Ran the power harrow tonight on bald or balding spots on my lawn. I set it for about 1/2" (12mm) depth and it made a good seed bed while not destroying the existing grass clumps. I am a happy boy! Easier and safer to use than my 30" rototiller. Rocks just squiggle out from underneath the Rinaldi without throwing.
Bill in NC
Bill, I'm glad that you found a deal on a used model, and are happy with the purchase. Having dodged a rock rocketing out of my rototiller more than once, I can also appreciate the increased safety that a vertical axis tillage implement provides.
But, do you really buy the whole 'reduced soil disturbance' & 'no hard pans' lines put forward by the power harrow advocates? While I have not yet seen a power harrow in operation, I can't really see how a knife slicing horizontally through soil (i.e.- a power harrow's operation) is substantially gentler than a knife slicing vertically through soil (i.e.- a rototiller's operation). Either way, that slice of the knife can create a hardpan if the implement is overused or the soil is too wet. But if used sensibly and in moderation, either implement can kill weeds and incorporate amendments without causing too much damage.
Yes, a rototiller will 'invert' soil within the tillage zone some, but I try to manage my whole root zone as a biologically-active, high-organic-matter community. So how much does it matter whether some of the soil that starts out at ~1" ends-up at ~4" or even ~6" after the rototiller pass? In fact, when I'm spreading lime and manure and compost, that's exactly what I want to happen.
I'm asking these questions not to denigrate your purchase Bill. In fact, if I found a deal on a similar used 29" power harrow I'd be all over it, since I have a love for multiple redundancies, backup equipment, and intriguing hardware. But at $2300 for a new model, I think that the machine has to be over-rated.
-otus