rotory harrows anyone make one?

[BHD]

I have seen the rotary harrows, that some used for cleaning up arenas and such,

any one ever make one?

any tips, I think I have it all figured out, but

story, in my area we use a chisel plow with sweeps or blades on it to kill weeds, works great until the weeds are a little bigger, so many have gone to using Mounted Harrow sections, similar to what is in the URL below,
Gallery - 3-Bar Coil Tine Harrow HD for Chisel Plows :: Wil-Rich

the problem is if you have some problems like a lot of moisture and can not get them killed or have more than desired, the harrow will plug, all the harrow does is knock them down in the worked soils, and drags them out of the ground, so they die, they do a good job,
the problem is if you have a excess of the weeds they also work like a hay rake and plug up or drag piles of them,

my Idea, is to make a rotary units, to work behind the chisel plow,
Beaver Valley Supply Company - MK-Martin Arena Rotary Harrow
or
King Kutter Rotary Harrow — 6ft. Diameter, Model# RH-72 | Disc Harrows + Rakes | Northern Tool + Equipment
make (in my situation) make 3 or 4 of them, and some type of mounts to use behind the tillage tool, since they rotate they should be self cleaning,

all I was going to ask if there are any tips you have? or ideas,

 

[bobodu]

Hope you have a big honking tractor....

 

[jenkinsph]

Look into a Frontier field cultivator, should accomplish what you need for about $700 to
$800 dollars.



Steve

 

[oughtsix]

Yep, I helped a friend make one to manicure his arena. He had a pretty small Iseki tractor and it did a great job. He has since sold his tractor and rotary harrow so I can't give you any pictures. I can give you a couple of tips about what we found though.

1) The teeth do not go straight up and down. They protrude at an angle. The actual angle did not seem to be very important but you want the teeth to grab on one side and skim on the other side creating the rotary motion. I welded one piece of angle iron to another at a ~30 degree angle for a jig. We used a welding clamp to clamp the jig to the bottom of the angle iron hoop and the other piece held the sleeve at the proper angle.
2) The rotary harrow does not run perpendicular to the ground. It is tilted to one side a bit (The biting side). He was able to accomplish the tilt he needed to get it to run efficiently and rotate properly by adjusting his 3 pt.
3) The teeth invariably fall off!!!!! It doesn't matter how well you weld them and how big they are you are going to knock the teeth off of the harrow.
4) Welding to the outside of the hoop gives a lot more weld area and stronger weld than welding to the bottom of the hoop.

We copied a harrow at a local farm supply store and welded rebar teeth to the bottom. This lasted about three uses before too many teeth were missing for it to be useful. We adopted a different approach to tooth attachment that worked wonderfully!

We welded 1" pipe about 4" long at an angle around the outside of the hoop as a sleeve to hold the teeth. We put a 1/4" bolt through a couple of holes in the top of the sleeve and through a hole in the top of the tooth to hold the tooth in the sleeve. When he hit a rock or other obstruction the 1/4" bolt would break like a sheer pin. Teeth would bend as well as break. When the teeth bent they were very easy to remove and hammer straight or just replace. Just plan on bending teeth and having to replace them... so make them easy to replace and cut a lot of extras. I am pretty sure it was 3/4" rebar he used for the teeth but it might have been 1" and of course a bit bigger sleeve.

He paid some guy to roll the main hoop out of 3" angle iron (I don't know why he decided on angle iron instead of square tubing but it did work very well! We had a little more than 3" of surface to weld the sleeves too.) He went with 6' diameter and it worked well in his arena with his tractor.

I had a rear hub from a Cadillac Eldorado that I took when I junk yarded the rear disc breaks for my Scout. It worked great and saved him about $80 he was quoted for a suitable hub. He went through a lot of arena and a lot of broken teeth but never had a problem with the Caddy hub.

Before he had the rotary harrow he used a drag mat harrow (or what ever it was called). The Number One advantage of the Rotary harrow over the Drag was he could raise the rotary harrow and back up. He was able to manicure places in his arena that he couldn't get to with the drag. (He also trapped himself into a corner on more than one occasion and spent way to much time detaching the drag and dragging it out).

There is one more thing I will mention... clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank!

 

[oughtsix]

It seems like he found the teeth on the spokes were pretty inconsequential and the teeth on the hoop really did all the work. After the initial teeth on the spokes broke off he never replaced them and we didn't bother making sleeved holders for them when we sleeved the hoop teeth.

We live in Central Oregon... very dry very sandy volcanic high desert soil. I can't attest to how a rotary harrow will work in moist conditions.

The teeth were a loose fit in the sleeve. This gave them a bit of wiggle room when hitting stuff and the teeth didn't sustain as much damage. This is where the clank. clank, clank comes from. Noisy but effective. You could probably use a bigger sleeve and wrap a piece of inner tube or hose around the tooth before inserting it into the sleeve to decrease the noise and give a little bit more shock absorption.

 

[BHD]

Thank you all for the information gives one more to think about, I had never noticed any sleeves,

I was thinking of U bolts to hold the teeth on, and on page it looked like the teeth were made in pairs and were connected at the top a square top U shape, and I did notice the teeth were at a an angle,

my thinking is to just run it in the soil, a few inches behind the chisel plow with sweeps on it, to help displace weeds that keep there root ball intact, and it I would think be self cleaning and that is the feature I would most desired of, I was thinking of using three to cover the 16 feet, I figured the unit would have to have some tilt

the other possibility was some thing light like this unit, (the atv unit) and then a number of them,
http://www.countrymfg.com/rotaryconditioner.htm but all of them are similar

 

[oughtsix]

We went and looked at a couple different models before he decided to build one. All of the ones we looked at had the teeth welded on. Which is why we started that way.

I like the idea of the U bolts seems like it would give just a bit when a tooth took a really hard jolt. Another nice side effect is being able to change the depth of the teeth to get it to run how you like it. A lot less drilling required also. My friend cut the teeth with an abrasive saw and drilled them on my drill press. I did the fun part... welding.

All of the commercial rotary harrows we looked at the hoop was made out of square tubing. One of the pictures you posted showed the hoop made out of C channel. C channel or angle iron make a lot more sense to me than square tubing. The harrow is heavy and so you might as well maximize the mounting surface for the teeth out of the weight you have.

My friend bent several teeth and broke many retaining bolts but never broke a sleeve. I had a real hard time getting good weld penetration on the rebar in our first try.

The local steel supplier recommended some local guy to bend the hoop. 3" by 1/4" angle iron with the flange bent inwards. The guy did a beautiful job, I don't know how he got it as flat as he did. It seems like C channel might be a little easier to bend.

My friend would manicure his arena and his neighbors arena. He pulled all kinds of crap out of them, cable, pipe and a LOT of rocks. I am going ATV'n with him tomorrow I will ask him if he has anything to add.

It sounds like you have a pretty good picture in your head of how to make it and some of the problem areas. I have 5 acres but no horses, no arena and no tractor. My only exposure to tractors is helping my friend make implements for his tractor. We made the arm perpendicular to the wheel. He had enough adjustment in his three point to get the angle he liked.

He would cruise around pretty fast with his rotary harrow and get that sucker spinning at a mighty impressive rpm. I have no clue what horses like for a surface but it did a nice job at weed control and left a pretty consistent surface.

Good luck with your project and let us know how it turns out.