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Ed
08-04-2004 22:45:07
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Re: 8' Chisel Plow in reply to Red Raider, 08-04-2004 11:20:14
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You have a Graham-Hoeme (high profile) chisel plow. Hoeme invented the chisel plow in the early 1930's to keep Texas and Oklahoma from literally blowing away during the dust bowl. His first design looked alot like a heavy duty cultivator. The Graham-Hoeme was ubiquitous throughout TX and OK during the 50's drought and thereafter and was known for years as "the plow that saved the plains". The chisel plow was gradually adopted in other regions of the country too, and displaced the breaking plow as soil conservation became a higher priority. It was originally designed to be pulled over hard, dry ground at a moderate depth, less than 6", and moving just as fast as the old tractor would pull it. Speed was more important than depth due to the special manganese alloy shanks which vibrate like tuning forks in hard ground, thus fracturing the hardpan (that vibrating will also loosen the set screws holding the shanks, so tighten them often). The chisel points brought up alot of big clods to the surface. Also, if there was any surface residue, it stayed on top and was not turned over and buried like with a breaking plow. The clods and surface residue keep the sand from blowing, and chiselled up ground soaks up sparce rainfall like a sponge. Using sweeps on your plow will require more tractor power than using the original chisel points, but more importantly, you will also need some soil moisture just to get the sweeps into the ground. Even if you weight down the plow, and somehow get the sweeps to sink in, they will just wear away real fast in dry ground, so you are better off waiting until after a good rain to use the sweeps. The advantage of sweeps over points, of course, is that you bust up more ground between the shanks (greater width of disturbance) and you can cut weeds down too. You will also turn over and bury more of your surface residue, but in your fallow field that's probably good. I'm assuming you will plant some kind of cover crop like wheat or sudan that will make a nice stubble to drill your grass seed in. As far as horsepower goes, I pull a 9 shank Graham-Hoeme just like yours, only mine is low profile, with a Case 830CK. I sometimes have to keep a hand on the hydraulic lever to keep from stalling out in tough ground though. I think a 3-point chisel plow would be nice to take advantage of automatic draft control.
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