Wheel barrow seeder

[Agman1]

Hey all - I picked up a wheel barrow seeder. It has Universal painted on the side. The seed box bolts to the barrow arms and an arm wobbles back and forth off the wheel driving a set of ropes against one another in the bottom of the box. Does anyone have any experience with these? I'm not going to seriously use it but I can't leave it alone.

 

[johns48jdb]

I have one built by star seeder company. It was made about 1900. I found some printed literature about it printed in 1905 and the drive mechasium was totally enclosed in the seed box. The ropes your refereing to run inside the box, on mine, and are driven and hooked to a 3/4 square piece of wood that runs on the outside of the box. This rope moving back and forth inside the box pushes the seeds out. Mine has a double set of holes for the seeds to fall out of. One side is for lots of bigger seeds and there is a board inside the box that you move from one side to the other to stop that side up. Then you just reverese the box on the handles to which ever side you want to use. One side as some round holes in it that are fairly small and spaced about every 8 inches. I would think this would be for clover seed. Mine is 13 feet long and i can't imagine pushing that thing in plowed ground and keeping it balanced. It wouldn't hold a lot of seed and if i were doing it i would have tied it to a wagon in front of me and let the old mules pull the seeder. You'd have to have the wagon along with you to keep seed in any way.

 

[valley77]

I've got a Star also. I hung mine up in the shed rafters with the ends and middle supported so as to not bend the box over time. Pretty neat old machines but I also can't imagine pushing it but I would be that the ground it was used on was probably firmed and harrowed a lot as that seems to be the way a good seed bed was prepared years ago. Looking at old pictures some of the fields were plate flat and crumbled into fines.

 

[Tim(nj)]

My grandfather actually rigged one up to pull backwards on the 3-point behind a 9N to frost-seed clover. Used the hydraulics to pick it up on the ends to turn around. I didn't think one of those seeders could take that kind of stress, but this one lasted quite a few years being used that way.

 

[Leroy]

The fields were fairly solid as the wheat was sown in the fall and then in the spring the grass seed was sown, usually while the ground was still frozen. Would have been as easy to use as the seed bag that hung over your neck with a crank operated fan to spread the seed.