The illustrations on these pages come from an old J.I. Case catalog loaned to us by Judson Schrick of Decorah, Iowa. We reprint them here for you because, as in the past, there have been those of us who have been able to make good use of this information when we go to repair or restore one of these plows or whatever. For many of us, there is no other place to go for this kind of information but right here in the good old SFJ. Some of you already have this stuff in your shop library. Some of you don’t like this stuff and will never need it. Hope both of you will tolerate the rest of us as we go on preserving some great relic technologies. Remember, tractors may come and tractors may go but good horses are born, every day

Last Fall (1985) at Jonas Raber’s auction in Millersburg, OH, we met the folks from Iskcon Implements. They had a display of their horsedrawn equipment and I was impressed. I was most impressed in the riding disc-harrows and the sprayers. We offer you some photos and schematic drawing here for you to take a look yourself. They are very well built and the prices are reasonable. Nice folks, honest folks.

Small to mid-sized disc-harrows are a most useful tillage implement. Some farmers consider them indispensable. Discs such as the McD 10-A may be used with either tractors or big hitches of work horses. This tool will cut both plowed and unplowed ground. Ahead of the moldboard plow, the disc harrow is a valuable tool to cut up and free tough sod. When employed in tandem with spring tooth harrows, a great deal of work can be accomplished in much less time.

For best results, the draft angles (front frame) on the front harrow should be approximately level when the harrow is hitched to the tractor. If necessary, adjust tractor draw bar to obtain this result. In practically all field work the gangs should run level and cut at an even depth. Adjust the front harrow gangs to suit by raising or lowering the pressure plate at center of front harrow frame. The rear gangs may be leveled by raising or lowering the outer draw bar pressure plates. If the harrow ridges the soil between the rear gangs, the soil may be leveled by raising the inner end of the gangs, or by giving them less angle by moving the rear harrow frame forward at the three holes in the inner draw bars.