Box blade tooth cableplow for wire

[wallysue]

To bury wire for a flagpole light I used my Yanmar and a homemade cable plow. This section is about 150 feet. The wire was laid out behind the starting point so it would not snarl and pull in as easy as possible. It was a lot faster than digging it in by hand. I see I have a lot of junk laying around.

[wallysue]

Here is an image of the plow. Already had a receiver hitch adapter so the plow was made to fit it.

[wallysue]

Here is an image of the tooth for the plow. I raided it off the box blade and welded an eye on it to hook the chain and mole to. The mole is a piece of 1 1/2 pipe. Still can use the tooth on the box blade. There is a 12 inch steel ruler in the image.

[wallysue]

Here is an image of the tooth buried.

[cedarranch]

Did you bury the cable as you plowed the hole? Explains how you used it.

[cisco]

Subsoiler is an alternative, and if you weld a hollow pipe along the rear of the blade shaft, with the lower end of the pipe gently curved to face the opposite direction of the subsoiler point (i.e., facing backwards), you can feed cable (use grease occasionally) off a spool as your tractor slowly advances along the trench the subsoiler is forming. If you're not too particular about filling the narrow (4") trench afterwards, just drive your tractor along the trench, with one set of tires over the trench (it'll collapse/fill with only a modest depression).

[wallysue]

Yeah, feeding the wire in from the tractor end would be better. I pulled it in from the starting end with the plow all in one go, figured this would be the simplest. It worked OK for this distance. The wire is 12-2 with ground type UF. The soil is clay with no tree roots. I did pull on the wire by hand after it was in and I could still move it , don't think it was pulled on hard enough to hurt it.

[radman]

Wallysue:
Nice idea. How do you hold/fasten the wire inside of the pipe? Vibratory plows I have seen use a braided device similar to the chinese finger traps I had as a kid. As the device pulls, the "trap" clinches tighter around the wire/pipe to hold it.

[Inspector507]

I made a cable plow..........poor design I might add...to bury wire for my dog's invisible fence. Buried 1200' in 5 hours. I had some sheet brass that I attached to my back blade. Only problem was, I never figured it needed to swivel when I turned a corner. The "blade was wide enough that it bent over when I turned the tractor ever so slightly. I ran a tube down the rear of the "blade" to feed the 18AWG wire right into the ground as I plowed. I have pics somewhere if I can find them. It left a 3/4" trench with wire installed. It would plow 16" if I buried it that far.

[wallysue]

Here is an image of the wire connection on the rear of the mole. The mole is 2 1/8" on the O.D. Nothing high tech just a 1/2 bolt with a pipe coupling around it to make the radius larger. The wire is wrapped back on itself and taped. It held for the pull.