Old baling twine

[turkish]

I am wanting to do some food plotting on a site with several old cattle feeding sites. There is baling twine under the grass -- lots of it. I assume this stuff will wrap up in a disk or any tillage/planting equipment I want to use. We've tried scraping up with tines of a box blade with only limited success. Is there a better way to get this stuff up and gone?

 

[SPIKER]

I am wanting to do some food plotting on a site with several old cattle feeding sites. There is baling twine under the grass -- lots of it. I assume this stuff will wrap up in a disk or any tillage/planting equipment I want to use. We've tried scraping up with tines of a box blade with only limited success. Is there a better way to get this stuff up and gone?

I would try burning it off if possible, that way can open up the dead growth and knock down some of the weeds to point maybe you can get at it better. Otherwise the OLD twine should degrade & rot up in a couple years, then that new poly crap wont.

Mark

 

[forgeblast]

Just wondering if a Dethatcher - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia dethatcher would work?

 

[BHD]

if you have a chisel of some type , and go in a few inches, 6" or so and see what you can catch and then go cross it the other direction,

I if a bale breaks or have some twine in the field the disk is not a problem but chisels or tined tools will catch it and cause problems keep a utility knife to cut it so one can wad it up,

 

[dusty3030]

Oh the joy. If it is the poly type you will be getting it up for some time to come. Chisel plow worked best.
Tiller got it up like a charm, but wore through many utility knife blades and busted knuckles (I invented 3 new swear words though, never heard this side of **** before I started working on that piece of ground someone had stacked hay on for the past eon)

 

[BHD]

If there is nothing to damage, like chisel shanks, and possibly rototiller tines a torch on the poly twine,

like on a mower spindle I have burn many a batch of twine off of the spindles.

it just melts it and many times is much easer than trying to knife it off,

 

[dusty3030]

If there is nothing to damage, like chisel shanks, and possibly rototiller tines a torch on the poly twine,

like on a mower spindle I have burn many a batch of twine off of the spindles.

it just melts it and many times is much easer than trying to knife it off,

Wish you would have told me that 10 years ago

 

[hddnis]

Torch to get it off, or if you have a lot on there and don't want the heat in the bearings you can use the torch to heat some metal rod to red hot and it will slice right through the poly twine.

For getting the stuff out of the ground I can suggest a multi-point ripper, it will work the ground up and collect a lot of twine, but still be fairly easy to clean off. Rip the soil good, walk over picking up any twine you see, clean the ripper, repeat until you are happy. Then maybe a tiller, but it will still find lots of twine.





Mr. HE

 

[turkish]

Thanks for the replies. I guess we'll keep after it with the box blade scarifiers. This stuff is definitely the nylon type stuff -- nigh on unbreakable.

 

[Qapla]

Nothing will get more out then a tiller - it is the best bet to actually remove the twine .... but, you will have to clean the tiller of the twine during and after.

As long as you keep the flame away from the axle shaft, using a torch to clean the twine from the tiller blades works just fine - just don't heat the metal, burn the twine.

 

[oosik]

My garden site originally had a lot of old baling wire and barbed wire. I'm here to say that my Troy Bilt rototiller found every inch of the stuff and you don't torch that stuff off. I'm fairly certain that I spent more time unwinding wire wrapped around the tiller than actually tilling. In hindsight, I should have gone over the ground with my tractor and my three point ripper. But that was 32 years ago and it doesn't seem so really bad now.

 

[SGBotsford]

Yeah this post is ancient. Maybe this will help the next guy.

Caught a huge wad of bailer twine on my grasshopper.

Box knife wasn't enough. Raised the deck and took off the blade. Still not enough. Ran it for a minute and the spindle got hot.

So:

1. Opened the top plate on the deck.
2. removed belt.
3. Removed nut hollding that pulley.
4. Used a puller and removed the drive pulley.
5. Single tap on the spindle dropped the spindle through the deck.
6. Removed thick crust of melted plastic from the bottom of the spindle.
7. Reversed the above steps, but while I had the deck open, pumped grease into all 3 bearings.