Home made hiller project

[Eyecatcher]

My grandaughter has come to stay with us and wants to have a garden. It's just about time to plant tomatoes her in N. Florida, so we're gonna give it a go.
I just replaced all the discs on my old disc harrow, and have a bunch of 16" discs w/1 1/8" sqh I took off. Need to come up with a hub and axle for them to fit on. All of the ones I see for sale commercially have 4 bolts through the disc. Is it possible to drill thru them to mount this type of hub, or are they too hard?
I've got a couple of quills (I think thats what they're called) off an old John Deere mower deck that are in pretty good shape, Maybe I can modify them. I have a 3 point attachment with two arms that was made to tote citrus boxes. I cut the arms shorter, and mounted the rippers off my box blade to use for a sort of root rake. Haven't tried that yet, but I have room to weld a 2"square tool carrier behind that, would work well to mount the discs. Tractor is at the dealers, but as soon as I get it back, I'll post some pix. I'm open to all suggestions. I also have some 1/14 round bar for shanks if I can figure out how to attach them to the quills.

 

[Wyobuckaroo]

Will try to post a picture or two of my home made tool bar with two 16" hiller shanks from Ag Supply.
Good luck
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[boggen]

all a hiller is is 2 blades (discs, or flat pieces of metal) setup like a V with the bottom of the V cut off.

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if you wanted to go through the trouble. ((assuming you can adjust the angle of front ganges)) you cold pull all the gangs off your "disc" and then just install the front 2 gangs. with a single disc on each gang. and using spacers as needed on the front gangs to determine how wide you want the hill to be.

though you might want to add a couple gauge wheels. if you did above. so weight of 3pt disc. does not put all its weight down on 2 disc blades. and bend / crack them to pieces from pure weight / force being placed down upon them.

 

[Eyecatcher]

removing the blades from the disc is not an option. I got the disc with a tractor I bought about 12 years ago, and someone had worked on it prior to me. When I went to replace the discs, it was assembled improperly, spacers misplaced etc., and instead of figuring it out, the PO had used big flat washers to make it all fit. This implement has 4 sets of blades, 21 in all. I messed with this thing for 2 days until I finally got it right. I will never disassemble it. However, I've still have the removed discs, and am going to try to come up with a bearing/hub arrangement today. Big problem is going to be adapting the inch and an eighth sqare hole to a round shaft. May have to weld the disc on, but would rather make it replaceable.

 

[Eyecatcher]

Got the disc blades mounted to the hub and mounting plates half made to connect hub to the round shanks. Worked much better than i thought it would. The Deere spindles still had the stamped steel pulleys on them, when I finally got them off the shaft, I cut the pulley away from the hub, and set the hub centered under the square hole in the disc, marked with a sharp soapstone, and trimmed square to that line with cutting wheel in 4" grinder.
Mig welded them to the disc. Worked great. I've got inch and a 14 round bar for the shanks, need to look around for some pipe that will slide over to use for a mount, and go see if I can find a piece of 2x2 box tubing for the tool bar itself.

 

[WilliamBos]

Would you have pics of what the soil looks like after a pass?

 

[joshuabardwell]

I'm trying to figure out how tomatoes planted in August works. Why not spring?

 

[Eyecatcher]

Will, when I complete the build, I'll post pix of how it works. Josh, this is N Florida, time for fall tomatoes, plant again in the sping.

 

[Ken Pike]

I made my hiller using discs from an old ferguson disc harrow, welding up my own brackets/axel housings. It works great for making rows & hilling up potato rows after they have grown a bit.

 

[Eyecatcher]

Nice job - hope mine turns out as well