It seems that in Oklahoma, everyone raises wheat, corn, soy, hay, cattle, or some combination of the above and if you need tools or parts related to anything else your are out of luck. That is always the case with vegetable planting and cultivating equipment. The Ford 309 seeder never worked worth a darn, even after my many hours of tweaking and rebuilding, so I finally broke down and had two Planet Jrs. shipped in from Roeters Farm Equipment in Michigan. They were expensive, but they are the right tool for the job. Seeders come as individual units that you have to put on a toolbar on your tractor. Normally, you just go and buy one new or used, but around here you can't find them because we don't have many vegetable farms. I'm sure if you visit auctions around Southern California or Michigan or Alabama you might find some toolbars, but that doesn't help me at all.
I decided that it was high time I learn to weld so I could build a toolbar myself, and what better way to learn to weld than by building my own toolbar? My dad showed me a few things about welding when I was younger so I figured I could pull it off. Now I'm just talking about simple stick welding, not MIG or TIG or anything fancy. Low voltage and lots of current can stick some metal together. Making the joint hold, and look good, is a whole 'nother story.
It worked surprisingly well for how little experience I have had. The only welds I had real trouble with were places where I had not fitted the metal together real tight or where there was rust or paint. Any gap in the joint would cause pitting in the weld, and pitting is bad because it can cause a joint to fail.
Chelsea hasn't had much experience with this kind of thing in her life, so I showed her how to use a bench grinder and an angle grinder. She cleaned the metal up for me and I welded it together. This is a picture of her cutting out some steel in July that we bent into another contraption. It is just the two of us at the farm, so we don't have any pictures that include both of us.
The toolbar turned out to be more expensive than I had anticipated. The cost of steel has gone way up. I probably spent around $150 in steel for this one project. That's not even counting the labor which was probably around 20-24 hours. The good thing is that we finished it. I'm not providing close-ups of the welds, because they aren't pretty. I think they will hold (we'll see).
Chelsea was really proud of her safey glasses, and say, aren't they stylish as well? We try to be safety conscious as much as is practical, because farming is one of the most dangerous occupations in the US. When you work around heavy equipment there are numerous possibilities for really horrible injuries so you have to pay attention! Today, the only real threat was having red hot metal sprayed in our eyes so we wore our dorky safety glasses.
I decided that it was high time I learn to weld so I could build a toolbar myself, and what better way to learn to weld than by building my own toolbar? My dad showed me a few things about welding when I was younger so I figured I could pull it off. Now I'm just talking about simple stick welding, not MIG or TIG or anything fancy. Low voltage and lots of current can stick some metal together. Making the joint hold, and look good, is a whole 'nother story.
It worked surprisingly well for how little experience I have had. The only welds I had real trouble with were places where I had not fitted the metal together real tight or where there was rust or paint. Any gap in the joint would cause pitting in the weld, and pitting is bad because it can cause a joint to fail.Chelsea hasn't had much experience with this kind of thing in her life, so I showed her how to use a bench grinder and an angle grinder. She cleaned the metal up for me and I welded it together. This is a picture of her cutting out some steel in July that we bent into another contraption. It is just the two of us at the farm, so we don't have any pictures that include both of us.
The toolbar turned out to be more expensive than I had anticipated. The cost of steel has gone way up. I probably spent around $150 in steel for this one project. That's not even counting the labor which was probably around 20-24 hours. The good thing is that we finished it. I'm not providing close-ups of the welds, because they aren't pretty. I think they will hold (we'll see).Chelsea was really proud of her safey glasses, and say, aren't they stylish as well? We try to be safety conscious as much as is practical, because farming is one of the most dangerous occupations in the US. When you work around heavy equipment there are numerous possibilities for really horrible injuries so you have to pay attention! Today, the only real threat was having red hot metal sprayed in our eyes so we wore our dorky safety glasses.
