Caution, Man stuff.

When we last left our intrepid sodbuster he was struggling like a Girly Man to reassemble a simple tandem disk. Oooh, this is heavy! Owwy! This plow is sharp!

I blame the public school system myself. Not near enough toughening up and hardening of yoots for the harsh realities of The Real Word and I ain't talkin' about no MTV.

Actually, things were a lot easier in daylight. Funny, huh? I got the remaining bearing bolts installed, replaced the disk scraper and tightened the axle. I had to tighten it while it was elevated so I used 4x4 wooden blocks jammed in the new scalloped disks to hold the axle in place and snug everything up nice and tight.

Here's an exploded view of a disk axle. It's kind of deceptive because part 10 isn't a short piece like the picture implies. That's the axle and it's 5 feet long. You can see the other end at the far right. All the other parts slide onto it in a particular order.

Here's what I was dealing with in the dark last night.

You can see 2 bolts clearly installed in the 3 hole alignment. Certainly the third will just slide right in place with minimal effort... Right???

Hahahaha! Silly Rabbit!!!

Enhance!!!

What you can't see in the pic is the absolute reluctance on the plow's part to cooperate with what I think we can all agree is the best thing for everyone involved.


But with the grace of God and these two fingers!!!!!! (h/t Gene Tracy)

There's a bar of scrapers that bolts on top of that U shaped bracket. It was easier to take it off and replace it after the axle was in place than try to fit the axle back with the scrapers in place. Odd because it literally fell out as soon as I removed the bolts.

Parting thanks to PB Blaster. When you have to work on old rusty hunk of junk, don't act like a City Boy and use WD-40. Be a man and break out the PB Blaster! It's all about the penetration.

If you don't chew Big Red or use PB Blaster...

I got a late start putting everything back together because I had an errand to run before Noon. But I managed to get back in the field by 6pm and finished up by 10:30. The 15 acres I plowed was hard as a rock (and had it's fair share of actual rocks). I started going back over my rows 2-3 times and they still didn't look properly plowed. I needed to chisel plow this first to bust the ground up where a disk could chew it up. I have a chisel, but it's tiny in comparison to the disk I've been dragging.

I quit going back over the same rows in hope of going any deeper in the hard areas and concentrated on finishing the field before the thunderstorms hit. I figured any moisture caught would aid in loosening the ground for later plowing. True to form with the way my luck runs, the rain stayed in Montague County and all I got was a light show. I'm sure my neighbors were thrilled with the sound of a Massey Ferguson V-8 diesel ripping thru the rugged North Texas landscape.

Well, they should have been, because that's some awesome shit and I finished before 10:30. If I had to listen to that I guarantee you I'd have a stiffy. But then again it doesn't take much these days....