Tuned in my 8" Brinly plow

[sgt.porter]

Purchased this plow in 2012. Used it once, went down hard with health issues, it's been sitting on a fence row for the last 4 years.
Sorry I didn't get a before pic, but you can imagine how rough it looked.

The 8" plow is small, but still way more than the 10lb weight limit I'm supposed to have. I just move it around a little at a time, and had my wife help me lift it up on the bench so I could work on it. Took me one full day to get it conditioned and another day and a half to tune it in, but as they say, "Slow and steady wins the race."

Got the coulter wheel and plow share sharpened, and polished the moldboard all using 2" grinding, sanding and buffing pads on the drill along with copious amounts of WD40. Didn't get a good reflection pic, but it's definitely nice and shiny now.

Stacked my trailer ramps and drove up on them to set the tractor for initial setup. The ramps get me right at the 4" I'm shooting for and I used another piece of 2x scrap to gauge the height of the coulter.
This pic was an afterthought, took it late this afternoon after I finished plowing, but shows how I did it.


Even with correct initial setup, I had a terrible time getting the plow dialed in. I would run a 60' row, adjust, repeat over and over till I got frustrated and gave up. I know the subtle plow is not meant to turn virgin sod, but I also know it can do much better than what I was getting out of it. I had no traction in the front end, the tires kept sliding way right and over the previous furrows, and very little sod actually turned over.
Pic from today, but shows how bad yesterdays plow work was. It will still be tillable but it's not going to be fun...


Went back to the barn, loaded the front tires with 2.5gal of fluid each, and went to bed.
Woke up this morning and had a "DUH!!" moment. Realized I never checked the landing alignment. The front end was pulling hard right because the plow was pulling hard left and trying to take too wide of a bite...
Went out and put the tractor back up on the ramps, went back through the initial setup, and adjusted the landing. "Eyeballing it" took 6 full turns in of the adjusting bolt till the landing was parallel with the beam.


And oh what a difference it made!
I had a little bit of help from a light rain this morning that made the bone dry soil perfect for plowing, but with the plow now finely tuned this little 8" started cutting perfect furrows and turning all of the sod with no flip back! I had no pull left or right, and no more loss of steering traction. It was actually quite enjoyable.
Honestly, I'm very surprised with the results. I expected better performance than yesterday, but I didn't expect near perfect results.


And yes, I know that I can't plow a straight line, and yes I am stupid enough to plow myself in. I grew up farming and my first "job" was plowing. I'd get tarred and feathered if the family saw what I did here... It's just been a long time and I was excited to make things happen lol. I'll plow the next plot in the right direction, and maybe get the Mrs to take video.

What's the good, bad and ugly with everyone else's plowing experiences?

[ACecil]

Looks like you had fun with your cub!

[Dirty Steve]

Your adjustments certainly showed much improvement. Way to work it out