A repair project: disc

[Albin]

The president of my hunting club broke his $20 used disc this last weekend, so I offered to take it home and repair it. Since I'm not going to bother painting this item, here are pics of the disc with my welds unpainted.

The disc in these pictures are all shown upside down since I had to borrow a friend's digital camera and didn't have much time to "pose" it.

Comments and suggestions for improvement welcome!

Thanks,

Albin

[Albin]

Here's a closeup of the tube where it broke. The tube was held by 3/16" clips in front and 1/4" bolts in the rear. The 2" rear angle holding the bolts bent over (down in the pics, since the disc is upside down) and the tube ends came right out of the clips.

I rewelded the disc tubes to their end plates since whoever originally built this thing didn't spend too much time ensuring that all joints were welded.

[Albin]

To prevent the tubes from rotating, I installed some 1" square tubing to serve as gussets. All of the metal I added to the disc was just scrap I had around, nothing was purchased.

[Albin]

Here's a shot of the midsection structure. The 2 bar and angle iron are original metal. The 1"x 1 1/2" angle was added by me. The 1x1 1/2 angle used to be a single mattress bed frame that someone left on the side of the road. I used just one long piece repairing this disc.

The poor vertical welding on the upper tube was me trying to prevent the original tube form splitting. The original tubes were actually built out of channel then only tack welded in a couple of spots.

In the lower center and right you can see the 1x1 1/2 angle I added for additional strength and to add structure for weights to make the disc work in our rocky soil of our hunting club.

[Albin]

Here's a shot of the upper gusset (shown upside down since the disc is upside down on my bed rack). The gusset was added to prevent the disc tubes from bending over as they did during the original failure. There are 2 gussets, one for each side, and the material is 1 1/2" 14 ga. tubing left over from last week's jerry can rack project.

To the extreme right, you can see the end of the 1x1 1/2 angle that I added. The end that you see here was where the bed frame wheels were riveted to the frame.

All comments and suggestions for improvement are welcome!

Thanks,

Albin

[Albin]

Lastly, here's a shot of the tongue area:

[axehind]

I got to ask. What is that? My guess is that it's a piece of farm equipment.

axehind

[morpheus]

what do you guys pull it with ?

I'd extend the tongue piece out so that two bolts could be used to bolt it to the ball-hitch piece:

[astro]

Hi, I'm new to the forum.
Yes it's a small farm implement, used for making small food plots for deer. I also have repaired a few of these. I pull mine with a four wheeler.

[astro]

Albin,How does he transport it behind his 4 wheeler? Heres a pic of how I tote mine around. I made it with a wp 100. Yes those are hf wheels and load binder.

[Albin]

As someone said, its a small disc for plowing/turning small plots of land for planting, in this case, seed for deer plots. We used it last Sunday and it broke within the first 10 minutes, if that.

As far as I know, he hauls a trailer out to the site with the seed, then hooks it up behind the four wheeler.

I don't think we need anything more than a 1/2" grade 5 bolt, but I could be wrong. He originally had a 3/8" grade 2!

Now that we have this year's plots in, we won't use this until probably next spring. Oh well.

Any comments about the welds, good or bad? Or the reengineering?

Thanks,

Albin

[astro]

I can relate to the breakdowns. I did alot of repairs at first. After I learned to stop and tighten things every now and then and not try to go too fast, I found it made a decent food plots. I also picked up a really beat up set of discs and fixed for a friend. Your welds looked good to me.

[axehind]

ah ok. I havent seen much farm equipment before. Actually I dont think I have even been on a farm before.

Those food plots for deer are a big help I hear. I know this is kinda getting off topic but do you use clover or some type of mixture?

axehind

[Sberry]

Ya did a fine job and I also like that trasport,,,,, But,, I am going to shoot all those dam rats with hooves you been feeding. By the way,, that is not actually farm equipment,,, more correctly garden stuff.... hahaha

[Guest]

I noticed you welded all the way around...this is a case where too much weld will weaken the joint. By welding the backside, you reduce the strength of the angle. It's better to leave those welds off so the stress can flow through the angle. I see you did that also in the tongue welding too. Good looking welds BTW.