[lynas]

Anyone have a good design for a homemade Railway Iron soil Leveller.

 

[offroadnt]

Just five bars spaced a foot apart with a good smooth tractor at about ten to fifteen miles per hour . Those things work great . Ours is worn out now, I'd like to build the new one twice as wide in two sections so we can cover more ground with it.

 

[lynas]

Thx Offroadnt.
Which way up with the railway line. Upside down or right way up?

 

[blanchfarm]

Best one I've used Lynas was about 45ft wide and about 35 ft deep and the track was up side down bit the wheel runs on was on the ground.
Work amazingly well in our Qld melon holes.

 

[lynas]

Best one I've used Lynas was about 45ft wide and about 35 ft deep and the track was up side down bit the wheel runs on was on the ground.
Work amazingly well in our Qld melon holes.

So how many cross bars of railway iron on that, Blanch...just one at the front and one at the back, or several in between? Were the sides railway iron as well?

 

[offroadnt]

we put them upside down with five cross bars right side up tying it all together, we run big old chain from cross bars two and four to a large clevis and used to tie it to the three point hitch with a crossbar, that worked best with a good operator. We would either tow endwise field to field or pick it up with the loader. I love that thing, use it for floating yard, stackyards, fields to bust up lumps and fill holes. This year I tied it behind the scraper for filling sloughs, that worked great! Automatic bump and hill control, fills ruts, works like a dream

 

[blanchfarm]

Lynas I think we had them about a meter or so between them. And railway line on the top to to tie it all together.
We made it for levelling melon hole over 5 years or so.

 

[lynas]

I bet that took some pulling, Blanch!

 

[blanchfarm]

Lynas I think we had them about a meter or so between them. And railway line on the top to to tie it all together.
We made it for levelling melon hole over 5 years or so.

 

[blanchfarm]

Lynda's we pulled it with a 1370 case slowly but it pulled it all the same.
Would have been about 4mile hr I'd say it was 2 gear 3 power shift if you can look that up.

 

[offroadnt]

For us they work best at high speeds with well worked dry soil, used to pull it with a 500 Versatile with three point hitch in high two, had to be careful on the headlands as you could wipe out posts as you turned around. Left the field like a table top.

 

[lynas]

For us they work best at high speeds... had to be careful on the headlands as you could wipe out posts as you turned around.

That sounds a lot like an experience a young relation of mine once had. The Boss had just finished explaining to him in great detail, how to use the soil leveling bar, and that he had to be very careful, because it was a very wide machine and had a tendency to drift around. The Boss then set off in the tractor to demonstrate the procedure to the lad, who watched on in a sort of bemused horror, as the leveller tore up about 200 yards of brand new fence.

 

[blanchfarm]

5.2 mile/hr is what we pulled it at did a nice job after a couple year the first few goes weren't much but once you got the big holes filled in a bit it worked alright.
We then moved on and bought a d5b sa and a 14ft laser bucket that was much better to shift dirt.

 

[offroadnt]

Yep Lynas, management complains about the condition of fences and wire in the field then proceeds to wipe out several sections themselves, an interesting phenomenon...

 

[chompy]

Over here, they are called "Smudge Bars", and are used most often for incorporating clay.

I built some a few years back - just a couple 20ft lengths of railway iron, one behind the other with chains welded on joining the two together. The railway iron is pulled on its side, with the big side to the front. On both lengths, weld the pulling point at the bottom of the front face. This way the leading edge leans back a bit, which helps the dirt to 'flow' over the top.

This design is cheap, simple and quick, but a hassle to transport, and if you get stuck, you end tow out and leave a mess to clean up later. How well they 'bite' depends of a few factors (size/weight of the railway iron, wet/dry soil, soft/hard etc.). I borrowed a set made of heavier H iron and they moved a lot more dirt than my set did. Also got stuck a few times with them!

The best ones I've used, I borrowed from a contractor.
They were made from the frame of a gutted shearer 40 row wideseeder, with two rows of railway iron welded into the frame. It was great to use, because it had plenty of wheels, plenty of weight, hydraulic up/down, 2 sections for better contour following, and end tow for going down the road.

 

[Swoopa_au]

Over here, they are called "Smudge Bars", and are used most often for incorporating clay.

I built some a few years back - just a couple 20ft lengths of railway iron, one behind the other with chains welded on joining the two together. The railway iron is pulled on its side, with the big side to the front. On both lengths, weld the pulling point at the bottom of the front face. This way the leading edge leans back a bit, which helps the dirt to 'flow' over the top.

This design is cheap, simple and quick, but a hassle to transport, and if you get stuck, you end tow out and leave a mess to clean up later. How well they 'bite' depends of a few factors (size/weight of the railway iron, wet/dry soil, soft/hard etc.). I borrowed a set made of heavier H iron and they moved a lot more dirt than my set did. Also got stuck a few times with them!

The best ones I've used, I borrowed from a contractor.
They were made from the frame of a gutted shearer 40 row wideseeder, with two rows of railway iron welded into the frame. It was great to use, because it had plenty of wheels, plenty of weight, hydraulic up/down, 2 sections for better contour following, and end tow for going down the road.

That idea with the wide seeder is a good one. We just call them smudgers around here and use them for levelling paddocks out that have been pugged up by cattle and spread the cattle crap around. We have one made out of railway iron which is made in a H frame and we end tow it around and it leaves a horrid mess everywhere.

 

[Northern Farmer]

I've never seen such a device being used up around this part of Alberta, obviously offroadnt in southern AB is making use of one though. I had an idea which might work with enough ingenuity to adapt it for use as a tool carrier as it were. If an old set of harrow/packer bars were kicking around to modify as it seems in western Canada they are being used less and less due to minimum and no till farming practices and just sitting there in the corner of the yard. That way the harrow frame could be stripped down and use the towers to attach to the rail way sections and dangling off those towers so when backed up into field position, lay it down and pull chains also having been attached to the square tube of the main frame would become the pull point. So in theory anyway it would be as simple as raising up the unit into transport position and in so doing the railway sections lifting off the ground so the wings would now fold back and trail along down the road no differently then its original diamond or tine harrow equipped unit would have done. As well out in the field the tires of the frame would help keep it tracking better and maybe avoid taking out the neighbors fence in the process . Using a frame like that would even allow for lifting it up just enough to clear itself in the field if it bulldozed too much in front of itself and be able to undo a mess made. There is a lot of weight dangling off of a harrow packer bar so they have to be beefy enough to cart that around and may transform into a new useful land leveling tool fairly easily and become so much more user friendly then dragging around a unit that has no wheels.