Put the plow on the WD tonight and spent about an hour playing in the dirt. Here's a short video and some pictures:

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I just can't seem to get that front share to shine up well. Need to plow a few more hours with it, but may need to encourage it with my angle grinder and wire cup brush again...

THE RICH BLACK EARTH!  I am so jealous  Best we have here in my area is red clay rock.

Nice looking equipment.  Thanks for sharing.

Good Luck!

Bill Long

Dave(inMA) wrote: Enjoyed your video - something really satisfying about watching dirt turn over!

Thank you! I do enjoy a good time out with the plow and that smell of look of freshly turned dirt. I've probably only got 7 or 8 hours of using a plow under my belt, total, so I try to get out and play with it any chance I get, and when it's a bean year it works out great (it plugs up too much in corn stubble, I have found).

Bill Long wrote: One of our favorite combinations a 45 with three bottom plow. THE RICH BLACK EARTH!  I am so jealous  Best we have here in my area is red clay rock. Nice looking equipment.  Thanks for sharing. Good Luck! Bill Long

Thank you! This field is pretty decent dirt, but some of the other field area around here I can play in is more clay or even gumbo (as the old timers call it, anyway). Hoping I can get back out in the next couple of weeks for another day of plowing and maybe take some better camera equipment with me as well. The old girl really likes to run in the cool air, so I'd like to oblige!

Thanks for the plowing! Nice ground! Is that a log cabin in the video?

If you have some gravel ground the plow may shine up quicker?

Regards,

 Chris

Thanks! Yes, it's an old cabin that unfortunately has fallen into disrepair over the last 20 years. This is a pretty good field, the dirt turned over great. Glad they let me play around in the field after they do the bean harvest!

No gravel around or sand unfortunately. I may take a knob cup brush or something on my angle grinder (I had a flap disc suggested to me) to try and get that last share to shine up.

I could SMELL that soil , ahhhhhhhhhh.....

neat old cabin, you HAVE to fix her up, please.

around here 'they've' torn down ALL the old barns, sniff,sniff.....

coarse flap wheel, even angle grinder works GREAT at shining up the blade.When I'm done for the season, I spray paint the shiny parts as plow stays outside. 5 minutes with flapdisc next aspring and it's off to the field for fun !!!

jAY

Cup wheel, flap wheel, and more time in the dirt! I've had the same problem a time or two. Clean the offender off after every pass with a putty knife. Eventually it will shine and work right.

The 63 that I have been using since resurrecting took a LOT of work with the 4&1/2" grinder. It's plowed quite a bit of HARD dirt and still doesn't shine like I would like.

I really do hope the cabin gets saved. I should offer to help them if they want to. Probably needs taken all the way down and rebuilt. Such a cool piece of history.

Will have to pick me up a flap wheel and try it out!

Tbone95 wrote: Flap wheel over a wire cup for sure. Then as Jay says, you can paint it, or they sell a "soft coat" or back in the day Dad used to "paint" it with grease. No need to wheel the paint off the following year, just start plowing and off it comes.

Well, so many people have mentioned a flap wheel, I'm going to have to get one and try it out!

I paint mine with grease as well. I've got 2 or 3 gallons of old grease in a bucket that isn't good for much else due to contamination other than painting plow shares. First pass to open a field and she's already cleaned off!

IBWD MIke wrote: Cup wheel, flap wheel, and more time in the dirt! I've had the same problem a time or two. Clean the offender off after every pass with a putty knife. Eventually it will shine and work right. The 63 that I have been using since resurrecting took a LOT of work with the 4&1/2" grinder. It's plowed quite a bit of HARD dirt and still doesn't shine like I would like.

Sounds like the flap wheel is the way to go! It's pouring rain today, so gives me some time to go get some flap wheels for the angle grinder and then work on it in the shed before it dries up for another play date in the dirt!

ACinSC wrote: Enjoyed the pictures and video . Thanks for sharing

You're most welcome!! Hopefully I'll have some more in the next month or so!

Well when I first started I could barely pull this plow in 1st gear at full depth without spinning out, but now that it is starting to shine up, it runs good at 2nd gear WOT. I think I have the draft control set right (no traction booster gauge on this old gal). I set the hydraulic lever about 1/16 or 1/8 above all the way down and I can feel it give me weight and power when I start to slip.

D14JIM14 wrote: Clean up with wheel and go to the hardware and get some muriatic acid . Take an old brush and brush the acid on . Removes all rust ! Then go plow ! When you are done paint or grease and it won't happen again . Did this to rusty 6 bottom i bought once and plowed in black heavy dirt and it shined on first pass .

That'll do it!

FloydKS wrote: Thanks for the video... and walking the length of the field to get the long shots, or maybe you didn't :)  .. brings back memories...

Thanks! Yeah, I did some walking around to take some action shots and drug a stool out of the shed so I could put the camera on a pedestal lol. I forgot my tripod and my nicer camera because I thought it'd be too wet to plow, d'oh!

Awesome, this is great information to have. I didn't read up on TB a lot other than how to set the hydraulic pump, and I kind of stumbled into that "thumb" setting myself after about an hour or two of playing with the plow on a decent day (all the way down would just bury it and spin me out, even sometimes in 1st gear).

I think that you might need to do additional adjustments on setting the plow depth? Was thinking about this after reading the comments. I would think that the lever all the way down would be the correct depth to plow. Then any upward movement of the lever would allow the weight to be shifted to the tractor using the traction booster system. But I could be totally wrong on that too.

Here is a shot of the old WD45 with a set of plows I redden up a couple years back. Your almost ready to have your WD's looking like that too!

Just realized this picture is looking at where my new shop is located. The view has changed!

I always enjoyed plowing. Keep up the good work with the WD's. Like Bill Long and the B's, the old WD series tractors are my favorite! I grew up with them!

 Regards,

 Chris

I should really block the rear wheel up and see how the plow sits on the ground to see how close I am to where I should be. It did seem odd to have to raise the lever a bit to engage the TB but the thumb distance has made it perform on this old gal with no gauge on it... Would love it if I could plow even deeper though.

Really thinking after I do some refresh on the WD paint jobs, the plow and the AC 172 mower need some fresh paint and decals as well. Yours almost looks too nice to get dirty, though! The WD is the only tractors the family had left by the time I came along, so I am doing all I can to make sure these tractors stay around for a long, long time!

     There appears to be an old log house in the background. Any story with that?

You're welcome! And hmmm... I never had anyone tell me otherwise, so I typically run at wide open throttle in 2nd gear when plowing, and at wide open throttle in 4th gear when on the road. Otherwise, I back it down (like my 172 mower I usually give about half throttle in 1st gear). I guess I could back it down a bit, I had just assumed these tractors were made to pull the plow at WOT, but I could very well be wrong! I could see a thumb up from WOT being acceptable and probably burn less fuel, lol.

The other is an old log cabin from the riverfront about 30 miles from there that a regular house was built around at one point, and when they went to tear down the house the log portion was moved to there probably 30 years ago. Unfortunately after being exposed, the weather has hit it hard and it needs several new logs due to some major rotting issues and probably needs rebuilt from the ground up at this point.

3rd gear plowing after M&W's and 45 manifold and carb.

....another thing,if plow is set proper,it should not bury itself with lever down. Extend your beaming screw. It should run level and straight. Don't tip L or R. To increase depth,screw in the beaming screw....a little at a time. One should always stop and get off and observe plow in the ground to access how level it is front to back and side to side. Seen too many riding front bottom out of the ground and rear trying to make up for it. Your "finish" will be full of high and low ground. Manuals for the plows I have are very good at telling how to set and check.

 Thanks again for starting this thread on plowing. Your doing good! With all no-till stuff out there now days, these boys with the big farms wont even know what plowed ground looks, feels, or smells like! Thanks again for keeping those nice WD family tractors working in the fields. 

You should have BarnWood Builders look at your log cabin. Would like to see you on their show!

Regards,

 Chris

SteveM C/IL wrote: Your dad must have been trying to save gas? Never hear of running part throttle working in the field pulling a full load. There's a WD here that ran full throttle pulling 2-16's,discing & dragging from 1949 to about 1984. PTO speed was for the All Crop and bar mower. 3rd gear plowing after M&W's and 45 manifold and carb. ....another thing,if plow is set proper,it should not bury itself with lever down. Extend your beaming screw. It should run level and straight. Don't tip L or R. To increase depth,screw in the beaming screw....a little at a time. One should always stop and get off and observe plow in the ground to access how level it is front to back and side to side. Seen too many riding front bottom out of the ground and rear trying to make up for it. Your "finish" will be full of high and low ground. Manuals for the plows I have are very good at telling how to set and check.

I really should double check my plow and see how it is doing in terms of level and depth. I do have a plow manual, I should probably set aside some time to do some proper reading.

I can pull the plow with the lever all the way down, but sometimes I will spin out in 2nd gear and would have to go to 1st. Very rare for me to kill the tractor while plowing, I always seem to hit wheel slippage first. And I have ballast in my rears!

Sugarmaker wrote: GG,  Thanks again for starting this thread on plowing. Your doing good! With all no-till stuff out there now days, these boys with the big farms wont even know what plowed ground looks, feels, or smells like! Thanks again for keeping those nice WD family tractors working in the fields.  You should have BarnWood Builders look at your log cabin. Would like to see you on their show! Regards,  Chris

Hey I think I found a video of the traction booster setting in an old promo video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzxLw3SIcLw" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzxLw3SIcLw

The discussion on using the plow weight to gain traction starts at 5:10 in the video...

He sets the hydraulic lever to a "thumb" up from the bottom at 5:39 in the video to "engage" it...

So yeah, thanks for the hot tip about the flap disks. I bought a couple last week and spent about an hour today shining up the plow. Only almost wore out a single disk, and I am really happy with how the plow works. I took a test pass up and back in the field I was working on, and the front share works great now!

The little curl pieces at the top still hold dirt a bit, but a solid improvement.

Hopefully I'll get some more pics and video from another plowing session next weekend!

 Good job on getting the plows shined up! Thanks for the info on the thumbs up position for the hydraulic lever. I did not know that and learned something!

I have not tried the flap dics. Maybe about every other type of cleaning method, but not those. Would these be round pad type discs? I have used those but not sure they are what is called flap discs? Maybe a picture would help me?

I like your plow thread. There is a lot to learn about different plows. These have the vertical bar shank. mine have a more angled shank. different model. I dont have them all memorized. 

My guess is if the roll over portion on top would be removed the plows would shine  up quicker due to soil contact more. But they might not do as goo of a job rolling the furrow over without them?

We have a couple inches of snow this morning so I am thinking of a different type of "plowing" in the near future too.

Regards,

 Chris

GG, I took a worn anglegrinder wheel to my 3F plow when I got it, back in 99. Since then a 'cup brush' is all that it needs, though a 'flapwheel' would be safer ! I shine them up, paint them, then 'buff off the paint' come spring.

I removed/rebuilt  the coulters  couple years ago,lots of hard 'greasy dirt' in them, all better now, just looking for a field to be used.

Chris -- Yeah, that was news to me too. I think I just accidentally figured it out while plowing in 2018, but it was working good for me the other day. I hit some hard clay and I could feel it dig in and pull good. Hoping to get back out in the field this weekend.

Yeah, the "flap disc" is those round discs that are made up of multiple pieces of sandpaper on an angle stacked together.

It worked a little better than the knob cup brush, but it probably removes more material as well.

I know the one time I plowed some sod with this plow, it rolled it over nicely, I assume thanks to the cover board at the top? So many plow styles, and I don't know much about them at all. Wish we had some plow days this year!

jaybmiller -- Oh yeah, I am hoping from here on out if I keep it greased then maybe a cup brush would be all I need. I don't want to fight with a flap disc any more than I have to!

 Thanks for the picture. I have used those for sanding many times too. I just never called them a flap disc, not sure what I called them. That may be the correct name. I had something else in mind. Actual flaps spinning out from a drum like wheel, that might go on a drill.  These ones your showing work good but seem to clog quickly for me.

Keep plowing!:)

Regards,

Chris