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]

Re: Cableplow to bury wire

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

 

[wallysue]

Re: Cableplow to bury wire

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]

Re: Cableplow to bury wire

Here is an image of the tooth buried.

 

[cedarranch]

Re: Cableplow to bury wire

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]

Re: Cableplow to bury wire

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]

Re: Cableplow to bury wire

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]

up a moles rear- wire holding

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.

 

[RobS]

Very clever Wallysue /w3tcompact/icons/clever.gif I plan on doing something similar in the future for phone lines, cable and low voltage lighting. I was surprised that you could pull that length of cable underground until I saw your most recent picture of the mole's rear /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif That thing must make quite a tunnel /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[ns_in_tex]

I think your plow works very similar to what I have done in the past. We have buried many water lines & wires with our gopher poisoner. With the coulter on the front to cut the turf & the packing wheels on the back to close, you can put in a sprinkler system in sod & hardly see where you put it in. Also I have pulled in as much as 200' of pipe, then after disconnecting from the plow, you could slide the pipe through the hole by hand with ease. Sure does beat digging a ditch doesn't it.

 

[rocky2]

Pretty clever.

 

[wallysue]

Hey ns in tx do you have an image of the gopher poisoner? My plow was made out of what was available and something deeper would be better.

 

[ns_in_tex]

No, at the present I do not have a picture and the gopher poisoner is grown up down in the field with other unused equipment. Will look the first change I get, to see how hard it would be to get out & take a picture.
I did a google search, thinking I would find one to show you but no luck. 30 years ago we had to use them every year, but since fire ants invaded texas, we no longer have gopher problems.
It worked just about the same as your version, except it had a coulter in front to cut the grass & roots, a packer wheel (or closing wheel like on a planter) behind to firm any raised area, and a planter box above to drop the poison seed into the gopher run it made.

 

[ns_in_tex]

Dug out the old gopher poisoner today. The rear small wheels used to have rubber tires on them. After they rotted off & we only used it for putting in underground pipe or wires, I welded on a slide to control depth & compress the loose top dirt. Upper scrap iron is something I put on back when used it as poisoner to hold large rocks for weight, to keep it from jumping out of ground when it hit rocks.

 

[ns_in_tex]

Closeup of lower portion.
Hope something here is useful to you,
thanks again, everybody for sharing.

 

[wallysue]

ns, Thanks digging it out and posting pics of the gopher poisoner. Bet there isn't to many of them around. Wally