looking for info guys.

the only reason im saying about the smaller blade is for the weight, have you done the whole thing of lifting a sledge hammer by the end of the grip with your arm fully extended? if you have blades extended out to the left or the right of a cart the principle would be the same, yes your spot on balance is the way to over come it but in this case when you have a small pony that doesn’t have the brute force some of your guys big drafters have that extended point of drag is gonna mount up quick.

as for your own tool bar, ill do a little bit of research on it, see exactly how much i can do with it. are you really just looking for plans so that you can build your own?

@Countymouse 28360 wrote:

1. Something animal powered that would substitute for a chisel to allow for min-till with animals
-This is going to challenging because of high draft for tractor type chisels
2. Something animal pulled that can substitute for a brush hog
-I am not opposed to mounting a motor on this, but wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to???
3. Some type of simple reliable row marker system that would work for organic farmers
4. Small scale thresher that would be able to handle a wide variety of crops
-I expect to mount a motor on this, it would be great if it was light enough to be mobile
5. Something animal powered that would substitue for a tractor’s bucket
-Lots of room for creativity here, but would need to be relatively simple and reliable (slip scoops just don’t reach out in front!)

the chisel defo gonna be tricky, that is a big pull for any horse i would reckon, just how deep would this need to go? im thinking we might need a new idea rather than find a way to make the standard design work for drafters otherwise is gonna need to be just a big team pull to overcome that which is not viable.

the row maker shouldn’t be too difficult i dont think, more or less a raised narrow double sided plow to a certain extent, can you give me some dimensions for this one, width for the rows for crops i’d imagine you’d be looking at the same width for the gap between, and roughly how deep do you require the rows to be for a decent planting.

tractor bucket :confused: that one going to be different, can you clear up just what you want functionality wise, im assuming your looking for a degree of lift, tilt are you also from what your saying looking for telescopic abilities too? and just how much do you think you would need?

as for the rest, ive been trying to design a new gear box for the purpose of hopefully taking motors out of this completly. i have breifly spoke to JAC bout this before, i know the issues with equipment that require rotational parts is mainly maintaining a steady speed (or at least limiting the change in speed between a smaller rpm bracket) as the animal pulls. but i know basic gear boxes can be quite jerky as you shift and that can put the horses off, so again creating a smooth transaction between gears. with that in mind im thinking belt links would be too fragile for heavy farm work, and chain links can again jerky so im trying to find a way to impliment a direct cog on cog gear box but the main driving gear will be more or less cone shaped, that way the cog its driving can be moved along without lifting off, but there are still lots of flaws in my theory of this box. but if i can get it working i think that could be a big thing for maintaining speed for ground driven rotation machines. im hoping it will operate as simple as you more a bar left and right and have a basic speedo to see what speed the parts are moving at. but that i think might be a long time away, i am only still a student after all :p

@Countymouse 2836 wrote:

I have to admit I wonder if animals have the raw power to brush hog or thresh grain unless you get alot of them together… You might want to check out the power requirements of these types of things just to see how many horses (or anything else) would be required to do the work at hand. If the answer is 100 horses, for example, you will probably end up changing things…

this may seem nieve to many of you but im trying not to go by conventional tractor driven quota’s. in many ways what im trying to do is take power from ground only, using gears and other methods to generate additional power and torque and so on. One of the new idea’s that i personally feel falls into sustainable is things like HHO generators, where you will be able to make your own fuel on the farm, im not sure its quite ready for use on its own but more as a compliment to standard fuel systems but its making a lot of head way. so for all (abstract number coming out here) say it took ‘100 horse power’ to work a thresher for arguements sake, my attitude is more i need to keep the weight down so a 2-4 pulling team can move it!! where now am i finding ways to generate the rest of the power? i think for sustainable farming/forrestry/draft working on the whole to make a real go and compete with conventional farming we all need to really think outside the box. is there a different way to do it other than what we already have? if thats the best peice of equipment to do X job how do i make it better?

i do have an idea for your bucket though, im thinking a simple counterweight system, where you could perhaps use hydraulics or pneumatics to push or pull a counter weight ballist closer or further to the bucket, the leaver effect will do the lifting and so on. again this is just thinking out loud, i haven’t thought about how to hitch a team to it, or what kinda weights and so on and so forth would be needed to make it work.

Douglas