Pulling two disc harrows at once

[495man]

I've got two 24 plate tandem drag disc harrows from the 40s/50s. No hydraulic lift, just drawbar pull.

Toying with pulling both with the same tractor with a tandem hitch of sorts. I have more than enough tractor to pull both.

While a wider hydraulic lift disk would be the nice thing, these are paid for and have decent plates.

Anyone have a double hitch set up?

 

[Mike(NEOhio)]

FIL used to put either two 8-foot discs or disc and culit-mulcher in tandem, depending on conditions, behind a late A.

 

[caterpillar guy]

We had an old 3or4 x8 wood timber we used to pull 2 12foot drags with beside each other had 2 C shaped links to connect the evener(timber)to the drags with at the tongue on the drag. Then a triangle shaped rod of about 1/2or 5/8 with 2 legs or rods with hooks on the end to hook to the bolts in the steel bars bolted to the timber and had a bolt through the ends of the bars to hook the legs to going to the triangle. then the triangle was hooked to the tractor to pull them both. Used a D-4 Cat to pull them until later when we got the 830 Case and pulled them with it. It was set up to be able to tear it down easy for moving through 14 ft gates and set back up till the gates got widened. Was pretty easy lift the timber back onto one of the drags then hook up to one drag then with the chain looped over the end teeth moved to the middle you could then hook the second drag behind the first the C links would hook over the bars that controlled the depth and the triangle was hung on one of the levers. Pulled through gate /s to next field and set back up to work again. When the gates were wide enough we just opened and pulled it through them and shut gate again. Last gates made were a bit over 30 feet wide for combine heads. The chain was looped over the inside end teeth to keep the 2 drags from getting out of sync to far and causing a problem. Also held them together when turning. You could so some thing similar with a piece of steel tube and bolt to one disk then hook the second one to the end or use it as an evener. Big problem will be turning and keeping them from piling up in the turn and not getting ahead of one another as you go across the field. You will need some kind of a limiting ability for when they don't pull the same.the easiest one will move ahead of the other and as the space between them changes they will tangle up on each other. They may also leave a ridge between them as the dirt is thrown out and the other disk does the same and the back ones can't reach it to pull enough back. If dragging aftwards it would not matter much but if not it could be a problem for say beans when cutting on that ridge with the middle of the head.

 

[sandcastle1]

are you looking for a whipple tree? Wanting to run them side by side?

 

[495man]

are you looking for a whipple tree? Wanting to run them side by side?

Side by side would work, I thought about whipple tree set up. Also thought about pulling as a train.

 

[495man]

We had an old 3or4 x8 wood timber we used to pull 2 12foot drags with beside each other had 2 C shaped links to connect the evener(timber)to the drags with at the tongue on the drag. Then a triangle shaped rod of about 1/2or 5/8 with 2 legs or rods with hooks on the end to hook to the bolts in the steel bars bolted to the timber and had a bolt through the ends of the bars to hook the legs to going to the triangle. then the triangle was hooked to the tractor to pull them both. Used a D-4 Cat to pull them until later when we got the 830 Case and pulled them with it. It was set up to be able to tear it down easy for moving through 14 ft gates and set back up till the gates got widened. Was pretty easy lift the timber back onto one of the drags then hook up to one drag then with the chain looped over the end teeth moved to the middle you could then hook the second drag behind the first the C links would hook over the bars that controlled the depth and the triangle was hung on one of the levers. Pulled through gate /s to next field and set back up to work again. When the gates were wide enough we just opened and pulled it through them and shut gate again. Last gates made were a bit over 30 feet wide for combine heads. The chain was looped over the inside end teeth to keep the 2 drags from getting out of sync to far and causing a problem. Also held them together when turning. You could so some thing similar with a piece of steel tube and bolt to one disk then hook the second one to the end or use it as an evener. Big problem will be turning and keeping them from piling up in the turn and not getting ahead of one another as you go across the field. You will need some kind of a limiting ability for when they don't pull the same.the easiest one will move ahead of the other and as the space between them changes they will tangle up on each other. They may also leave a ridge between them as the dirt is thrown out and the other disk does the same and the back ones can't reach it to pull enough back. If dragging aftwards it would not matter much but if not it could be a problem for say beans when cutting on that ridge with the middle of the head.

This was exactly the type of information I was looking for.

I am now thinking to pull the harrows side by side with slightly less than a harrow width between them. Use a pipe spreader between the disk hitches and chain from each disk hitch running in a triangle to tractor drawbar. Adjust the length of chain to each harrow to balance the pull.

 

[caterpillar guy]

Since they are not liftable the chain pulling would work. If you ever got to lifting them with wheels to road transport you would want a more rigid tongue so it would not be able to tip forward and back nor run up on you. I think you will find you want an evener hooked to the tong so they are kept at a distance a bit better than piece of pipe between the tongues. You will need a way to keep them together so if one get in tougher pulling the other can't run ahead of it then get piled up on each other. Would be a pain to have to get the loader out to untangle them. I think a chain will need to be at a fixed length from each disk or they will also saw around the pin on either of the 3 place tongues or tractor drawbar. I would want to make a link from the tractor drawbar to the disk tongue on each disk thus no sliding around the pins.

 

[495man]

Since they are not liftable the chain pulling would work. If you ever got to lifting them with wheels to road transport you would want a more rigid tongue so it would not be able to tip forward and back nor run up on you. I think you will find you want an evener hooked to the tong so they are kept at a distance a bit better than piece of pipe between the tongues. You will need a way to keep them together so if one get in tougher pulling the other can't run ahead of it then get piled up on each other. Would be a pain to have to get the loader out to untangle them. I think a chain will need to be at a fixed length from each disk or they will also saw around the pin on either of the 3 place tongues or tractor drawbar. I would want to make a link from the tractor drawbar to the disk tongue on each disk thus no sliding around the pins.

I'd plan to assemble at field and tow separately between field and farm.

Evener would be ridgid and pinned/shackled to each disk hitch.

I figure if they are spaced almost a disk width apart ( about 6 feet) turning should be ok, you would just have an untilled strip in the middle to get with an offset pass next round. Should prevent them from piling on top of each other that way.

I have a leveling harrow that I use after disking so I don't worry about ridging from disks.

For the chain sawing around hitch point I would use a shackle/clevis at each point.

 

[caterpillar guy]

Since ours was done before I had any knowledge of it I suppose that was the reason grandpa made the rod links so it didn't saw around the pin. I also suppose it was designed to be torn down easy and reassembled so both could be transported to the next field. you could do the same with a chain on the back of one disk and looped through the draw pin of the second one and just drive ahead with it pulling one behind the other a bit apart. Just would need to swing back around with the front disk to align it with the back one then set up evener and hook up back to work. I think if you didn't turn to short you could space them about a foot apart without them tangleing up and be fine would save that over lap on next pass unless you really want to work it the extra time. Otherwise not much savings lapping half every other round.

 

[Texasmark]

I didn't have one with discs but had a couple of 500 series JD parallel bar (side discharge) rakes with 2 different numbers, for example 553 and 554 where one was left discharge and the other was right. The connection between the tractor and the rakes allowed you to fold 4 rows of crops into one huge wind row.

 

[Destroked 450]

Not 2 drag units but we worked up a rough field to reseed hay a couple years ago, to keep from having to go over the field twice we hitched a 7 ft drag disc to the back of a 8 ft wheel disc
We over lapped the cut about a ft to make sure everything got a double cut, followed up with a chain harrow after spreading seed