Using tooth bar for tilling?

[Highbeam]

Yes it can be used to rake into soft soil. It leaves a darn nice planting bed too. Do you also have use of a box blade? The scarifiers can be dropped all the way down and the box rolled forward to use the rippers as a chisel plow with very nice results.

 

[rdsaustintx]

I gotta agree with EVERYBODY here that you should not push or pull with the bottom of the loader bucket vertical. Yeah, yeah it's in your manual with a thousand other warnings, but just roll your bucket bottom vertical and look at the curl cylinder. The bucket has a HUGE mechanical advantage in that position!

If you're lucky you'll blow a hydraulic line first, but a few people have tatered their curl cylinders trying to use the bucket bottom like a bulldozer blade.

RDnT

 

[hz293]

Thanks for all the help. You guys saved me some trouble and I'm sure bunches of money.

A friend of mine has a box scraper that he doesn't use so he's going to let me "keep it for him". As suggested, I'll drop the teeth all the way and use it for a tiller. That's what my friend had used it for in the past. Thanks again from a newbie.

hz293

 

[texasjohn]

Everybody's comments above were what I expected and explain what you can and can't do much better than I could... I was rushed in my original post, but wanted to get the nub of the answer out.... A toohbar is not a push/pull plow... but us used to help dig.

 

[escavader]

Your gonna laugh at this.I tilled my garden this year with my backhoe!! Talk about over kill...but it broke up the packed soil[i plow snow on it]in a hurry,and i didnt shake my back to death with that ole front tine tiller i got.Tell wifey you need a hoe!
ALAN

 

[Tom_H]

I would consider doing it by backing up in soft loam. A small sub-soiler (or sub-soiler/middle buster combo) for the 3ph would be much less $ than a 'tiller and would concentrate all the inertia into one rip shank in contrast to the several teeth of the FEL, and without the stress on pistons/hydraulics.

 

[UPRAISER]

Interesting questions and even more interesting replies.

I have an old Mitsubushi or Satoh Beaver with a tooth bar, actually my father in law built it and he called it manure forks.

I know that he used the little tractor hard for 20+ years. I used the tooth bar to work up some really hard ground that had been a road bed for 30 years. I ramed the forks into the dirt and drove forward as slow as it would go and rooted all I could. The backed up with the forks all the way back into the same place. It took three or four trips to get it down to 4 ". I do not see any problem with that little old beast.

I have a new B21 Kubota that has just finished grading for a 3000 sf shop floor, a 1500 sf pad for a mobile office and 2500 sf for a new house. I used the FEL completly back to shave off the hard and high spots on each of them.

I spent many years in heavy construction with back hoes and big Cat and Michagan loaders, they are all used like that.

Perhaps some of the little light weight tractors will not hold up, but the little beaver is about as small as they get and I would not hesitate to use it again.

BTW, if you wet the ground down for a few days, it will make it all work better.

Curt

 

[SPYDERLK]

Curt. Yeah, and Ill bet that when you have a hammer you hammer with it. Me too.
Larry

 

[oldgoat2]

We slide the pallet forks to about 6" apart, push them into the soil 8 - 12", then lower the arms while curling the bucket (push the joystick toward 10:30) to loosen the soil in our garden. It prys the tightest soil up easily yet there is no stress on the loader or the tractor.