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12-Row Cultivator Built For $2,000
"It does a great job of controlling weeds and it leaves the ground level. Best of all I built it for only $2,000," says Eric Schmigdall, Mackinaw, Ill., about his home-built 12-row, 30-in. cultivator.
Schmigdall bought two old International field cultivators for $175 each and used their 6 by 6-in. sq. tubing to
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12-Row Cultivator built for $2,000 CULTIVATORS Cultivators (58C) 15-1-11 "It does a great job of controlling weeds and it leaves the ground level. Best of all I built it for only $2,000," says Eric Schmigdall, Mackinaw, Ill., about his home-built 12-row, 30-in. cultivator.
Schmigdall bought two old International field cultivators for $175 each and used their 6 by 6-in. sq. tubing to build the cultivator frame, then welded a 3-pt. hitch onto it. He used 1 by 1 1/2-in. flat iron to build parallel linkage for each row. A 9-in. dia., 4-in. wide boat trailer tire ahead of each row is used to adjust sweep depth. He installed four shanks per row, each equipped with 7-in. sweeps which he bought new. The shanks are bolted to 21/ 2-in. tubing salvaged from the field cultivators. A pair of 3-in. by 16-in. hydraulic cylinders mounted inside the square tubing are used to fold the 3-row wings on each side of the cultivator.
"I patterned it after a newer model International cultivator that costs about $10,000," says Schmigdall. "The cornpany uses the same shanks on both its field and row crop cultivators. I had been using an 8-row Case non-folding cultivator with three 10-in. sweeps per row. The problem was that they left big grooves in the soil that could wash out and made it rough at harvest. I mounted rakes behind them to level the ground, but it was just one more thing to watch. The four shanks per row on my home-built cultivator do a better job of controlling weeds without digging such big grooves. I can change shank spacing by simply pulling a pin, sliding the shank over, and remounting the pin in another hole. A crank connected to each tire makes it easy to adjust sweep depth. I installed new heavy duty roller bearings on the tires that should last longer than the bearings on my old cultivator. Th,; airless tires on my old cultivator always seemed to work off the rim when they betan to wear. The new bearings should help solve that problem too."
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Eric Schmigdall, Rt. 1, Mackinaw, Ill. 61755 (ph 309 359-8016).
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