Tiller How to be kind to your tiller..........

[RonR]

Rather than divert another post here, I'll start a fresh one.

Problem: Tilling hard clay without destroying your tiller or tractor with all the banging and hammering going on.

Solution: Set your skid shoes to the minimum depth the tiller will cut, like maybe 2 inches.

If you visualize the angle of attack, the angle that the tine enters the ground, when you have the skid shoes set for max depth, the tine is going into the ground at nearly a 90 degree angle--straight down. When it hits the ground and has trouble penetrating, it tries to bounce and hammers.

Now change the skid shoes to the min depth, and you will see that the angle of attack is very slight--the tine goes in at maybe a 45 degree angle. Much less bouncing and hammering.

But you say "I have to till deeper than that!" Fine. Do a second pass and you should notice your skid shoes are buried in the lose dirt from the first pass, so now you are 4" down. Repeat as necessary to increase depth.

Hope this helps you. I discovered this the first time I tried to till our clay. My tiller went from a clanging, banging, vibrating machines to running smooth as a sewing machine.

Ron

 

[RobJ]

I would think you could also run a subsoiler, disk, turning plow, etc over it first. That and do it a day or so after a rain.

 

[JJT]

I'll second that vote for waiting for some rain. No dust and that rock hard clay is gone.

 

[rswyan]

Do a second pass and you should notice your skid shoes are buried in the lose dirt from the first pass, so now you are 4" down. Repeat as necessary to increase depth.

Dunno about your tiller but on mine the skid shoes sit outside of the area that is being tilled .... the only way to get them (or more accurately, one of them) to drop is to offset slightly on the second pass.

 

[john_bud]

Rather than divert another post here, I'll start a fresh one.

Problem: Tilling hard clay without destroying your tiller or tractor with all the banging and hammering going on.

Solution: Set your skid shoes to the minimum depth the tiller will cut, like maybe 2 inches.

If you visualize the angle of attack, the angle that the tine enters the ground, when you have the skid shoes set for max depth, the tine is going into the ground at nearly a 90 degree angle--straight down. When it hits the ground and has trouble penetrating, it tries to bounce and hammers.

Now change the skid shoes to the min depth, and you will see that the angle of attack is very slight--the tine goes in at maybe a 45 degree angle. Much less bouncing and hammering.

But you say "I have to till deeper than that!" Fine. Do a second pass and you should notice your skid shoes are buried in the lose dirt from the first pass, so now you are 4" down. Repeat as necessary to increase depth.

Hope this helps you. I discovered this the first time I tried to till our clay. My tiller went from a clanging, banging, vibrating machines to running smooth as a sewing machine.

Ron

Ron,

That's a good idea if you only have a small area to till, but what about when you want to till 5 acres to a depth of 6-7"? That's a lot of 2" passes!

A few years back, maybe 4 or more, there was a post about a guy that put a scarifier bar on the front of his tiller. That way he could adjust the scarifier tooth depth independantly of the till depth. A benefit was looser ground for the tiller and he found the hidden rocks with the scarifiers and not the tiller. Always thought that was a pretty cool modification.

Did a quick search and found this picture, but not the original thread by "MChalkley". Probably a search pro could locate it!

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/...11344708-tillers-5-101325-37-56678-tiller.jpg

jb


On edit -- Ok, it took about 30 seconds and I found a reference to the originating thread. It fails to open on my computer...

http://www.tractorbynet.com/cgi-bin/compact/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=custom&Number=56678