Disk

[Ldwallace]

Good morning!

The pic is the disk that belonged to my dad.

Can anyone tell me what this type disk is typically used for and an approximate value?

It is 13 feet and has not been moved in at least 5 years.

Thanks

 

[Scott 730]

Deere model AW maybe???

 

[Ldwallace]

Yes I think it is Deere. Most green paint is gone. Mmm I guess there should be name plate data on it I
should look for it.

 

[Tx Jim]

(quoted from post at 09:52:51 07/14/22)
Deere model AW maybe???

Ditto model AW. Value depends a lot on location of the item

 

[cleddy]

Why don't pull it ahead about 10 feet and mow the weeds and brush down? It will look about twice as valuable!!! I have heard those are pretty valuable Disk if it is in good condition? Cleddy

 

[paul]

Old JD. Can be worth scrape iron value $50 as it looks in the weeds assume tires are shot, blades are worn down, bearings are rusted tight.

Get it working, shined up, tires hold air and could travel safely 5 miles down the road, bearings greased and turning nice, and could ask $750 here, might be easier to get $500 tho. Depends on the size of the blades they are usually wore out. You dont want to know what new blades will cost....

To be honest the green paint hurts it for those that want to use it for real. Several different shades of Red disks were designed better than what JD came up with. Usually JD made everything pretty good. Their disks, and their early plows were not near the top of the list tho. Likely doesnt matter tho for what we are looking at here.

Paul

 

[paul]

Oh, the hyd cylinder adds $50-100 to the deal, if included with the disk. You have it pictured with.

A lighter disk like this is used in places without clay soils to do secondary tillage. Smooth out dirt after plowing it.

In clay soils like I have, we parked the disk in the 1970s and went to field cultivators. Loosen and dry the wet clay with a field culitivator.

You chop up and pack clay with a disk. They have their uses here, but not an all the time tillage tool in wet clay soils.

So, you do primary tillage with a plow or chisel plow or ripper or offset big heavy disk. Deep work 8-12 inches.

Follow with a light disk or field cultivator to level things out. Shallow work 4 inches.

Follow with a harrow aka drag to smooth the ground for planting. Very shallow 1-2 inches.

Paul

 

[NY 986]

If ready for the field it would bring 1,000 plus dollars around here.

 

[E.B. Haymakin']

That is indeed a John Deere aw series disc. It may be a aw-s disc which has 7" inch some odd blade widths. Google John Deere aw disk and on you tube someone has posted an old Deere promotional video on them. I have a 10', and it was very informative.

 

[caterpillar guy]

Pull it out of the weeds grease it up and go to work. The blades will shine up with use. Polishing would be a waste of time and material. If the scrapers are adjusted tight to the disc blade so they work. It will not fill with dirt and if good and dry like this year here it would not fill without them.

 

[showcrop]

That looks like one that my friend has. I am pretty sure that they still use it for a lot of acres of row crops. Thy work a lot better than the KBA that I had.

 

[Matt(NEIA)]

In North Iowa that would be a 300-600 dollar disc. Condition of blades, scrapers, bearings, frame (a lot have been broken and welded), tires ect. I will attach a picture of the little jd disc I bought this spring. It's 10 foot. The tires were basically shot, no hyd cylinder (not really a big deal, u can buy them all day here) but the blades, scrapers and bearings were good. I put 2 brand new implement tires on it for about 200 bucks. I paid 600 bucks for the disc at a farm auction. Here is the thing though, these little 8-10 foot discs bring good money because they are better sized for us food plot/small weekend farmers. (In terms of most of us run less than 50hp tractors so we can't handle the bigger discs) The 12-16 foot discs usually don't bring good money, especially the old jd BWA discs. The only thing I want to do to mine is put a smaller blade on the outside, it digs a furrow now. Some of that could be operator error as I might not have it set 100% correct yet.

 

[Matt(NEIA)]

I forgot to answer your question about what it's used for. You can see in my picture below I was using mine to disc up bean stubble. It's not really a heavy enough disc to do much damage to 200 bushel per acre corn trash though, but when these discs were new they were following a plow. Farmer would plow in the fall, then disc once or twice in spring then drag/harrow it and then plant. I disced the bean stubble, drug it with a drag, used the old drill to put in oats, then dragged it one more time and then top seeded teff grass in. I let the rain work the teff grass in because the seeds were like saw dust. In my soil following a plow you would want a 70hp tractor in front of that disc. On bean stubble or corn I could probably pull it the first pass with my 40hp AGCO but probably not fast enough on any future passes to do any justice. The more the ground is worked up the harder the disc pulls. Hope this helps.

 

[Roger in Iowa]

The hydraulic cylinder nearly doubles the price or worth of the disk!

 

[DR. EVIL]

Where I grew up 20 miles East of Moline, I'll disks were RED, either IH, Kewanee, or Krause. Couple guys had Deere disks, neighbor I worked for had a 14 ft Deere disk pulled with one of his 4020's. It may have been fine disking corn stalks but it seemed to ridge plowed ground a bit. We normally went over disked ground with a Brillion Cultimulcher.
The 12 ft Kewanee disk Dad had was O-K once it was in the ground, but getting between farms on oiled dirt roads with quite a bit of crown in the road, it tended to tear-up the high spots in the middle of the road.
I always thought IH disks tilled the ground deeper, maybe pulled a little harder but that makes sense. I had 4-5 acres of old hog pasture I couldn't plow one fall because the hog houses were still in place, probably 40 of them. Wasn't till winter I was able to pop them loose from the frost and haul them out of that field. That next spring after the frost was out of the ground I pulled in with the big tractor and Kewanee disk to stir those 4-5 acres up. Even after 4-5 passes the ground was only tilled 4-5 inches deep. I thought it should have been deeper.

 

[Leroy]

That is normal for that type of disk as the angle of the gangs are not adjustable. They used to make an adapter that clamped to the outer end casting that held the blades on that you used a smaller wore out blade on to fill in that furrow. I don't know if they are still avainle any place or not. A wore out blade replacing the good end blade will help. Over time I had 2 non adjustable gang disks and did not like them one bit due to the fact I could not get the shallow cur straiter gang angle that I wanted. I did have those adapters on both the disks I had, They were a Burch and a Keawanee. I had a JD KBA in both a drag type and a wheel carried and they were a much better disk for finnishing work Now what you have is not good for finnishing work as the gangs are always set for heavy tillage where once you got the dirt tore loose you had to use somerhing else to make the final seed bed. The one you have is not liked here in Ohio and does not or did not sell at auction because of that non adjustable gang angle. The disk of that wight to have is a McCormick No 37 Or newer model numbers I don't know. I had that No. 37 along with the KBA disk and they both had their place, The McCormick for first time over tillage with the gangs set at half angle and the KBA for finnish with the gang angle set as straight as possible.Your disk will never work good because of the non adjustable angle and they pull harder because you are trying to move twice the amount of dirt in finnishing as with a straiter gang angle less dirt being moved.

 

[Tx Jim]

JD called the extra, added smaller diameter disk on the end of each rear disk shaft a furrow filler attachment.