"Oz" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger writes

We also had a difficult time building the plow and getting it to work.
There
is more to one than there appears to be and modern methods couldn't do
much
to improve it either. The only thing we could do was use a wider point
for a
few days after a rain than they do. But the price of steel over there is
such that the sweep is about 5 times as expensive as the point they use.
The
point they use is not that much different than the narrow chisel point on
a
chisel plow. It is just not reversible.

This doesn't surprise me.
It has had an extended development period already.

Doubtless the point could be readily made from old truck springs.

They use anything they can find for steel. There has been a great deal of
research done on steels for tillage tools and it still goes on. That is one
place we can improve on over the guys that designed plows and tillage tools.
They spent a lot longer observing them than we do now. They walked behind
them all day every day and many of the resharpened them themselves and could
try anything that they could imagine. The R&D done by an illiterate farmer
that spends his life working with, walking behind and building tillage tools
is better than a Ph.D. with teaching duties, committee meetings and papers
to write.

One of the openers on John Deere grain drills is well over 100 years old
with no changes but ball bearings and better steels.

On the observation side of things I know more about what happens to soil in
high rainfall events than most hydrologist. I have been caught out in a lot
more of them and seen the results of a lot more of them than most
researchers. They didn't spend 20 years on a tractor seat doing custom
plowing on all kinds of soils.

Gordon