Courtney, this is why I personally love your channel. I think it’s one of the best, if not the best, on RU-vid. You are unbiased, explain the good and bad of each product, and all of this is to help us, the consumer. Thank you for all you do!
As someone who's never seen one and never used one before, it seems it needs one additional feature: The panels in the back need to be doors that are hinged towards the center. This would allow you to divert the grass and such on the initial passes to the side where you could move it with the bucket, rather than having it fill up so fast and having to dump it or whatever. It is a rather application specific tool, but I can see where it would be ideal if you have a lot of straight ditching to do.
Hadn't thought about that, didn't seem a like a huge inconvenience. The sod piles could just be drug to a different spot than the soil piles? Sorta along the same lines, Chris and I thought it would be cool to have a panel to completely close the back off so you could have the entire back wall to push backwards with. Didn't make the video, but I spread out a couple of the piles using it like a box blade. Worked quite well.
It's more a matter of the sod seems to load up so fast that you're moving it to the spoils pile like 5x more often. By kicking it to the side, you could clear the sod, use the bucket to move it to the pile, and then once you're into the dirt, you'd close the panels and use it as normal. The back panel is a good idea. It might be able to be hinged so that it would automatically stay closed when pushing backwards, and swing open as necessary when moving forwards.
@@daveschmidt5713 That's a good idea, kind of like what I do with tilling up the sod where I want to put gravel lanes. That chopped up sod will decompose nicely and be reusable.
Around here were call that a gutter, a ditch would be at least 5' wide with say a shallow 10 to 15° angle about a foot deep in the center. Looks well made, though, thanks for showing all these different implements, very interesting videos 😊
Perhaps with a bigger tractor it would be possible to do in one pass, but I don't multiple passes are a big deal either. It's a pretty easy, satisfying job to do.
I like the concept of being able to clean up the sides as you go. If you didn't have the sod to deal with the best tool to use is what the farmers use. It's a v ditch plow one pass and done.
Now you need a heavy duty rear blade, use it with one end lower than the other, this will make a wider path for your ditch, this is a great idea...... Nice item....
Yeah, I honestly probably didn't need to go as deep as I did. In hindsight, I should have left them shallower and waited for a few rains to come through and see how they work. These are traversable, but a bit shallower would have made them easier to drive over.
Not sure if you ever saw or even heard of the Noble Blade. It’s a style of cultivator where each blade is 4ft wide or wider depending on the overall width. They were great for cutting weeds off at the surface or a few inches down for summer fallow on dry land before no-till farming arrived. If you put the horsepower to it you could work the soil deeper and really break it up without a really rough field when you were done. We had an 8 ft v blade from one that was curved on each side to roll the dirt out. There was extra steel added to make the blade thick enough to keep dirt from going over. We had a 80 hp front assist that worked great with that and we maintained or created more ditches as necessary. A fair bit of the land was “levelled” in the late 60s early 70s when that was affordable. Then we would flood irrigate the fields. The table of the fields would drain towards a ditch that would catch wastewater from the higher field and flow down to the next field/s and be supplemented by water from the main or other ditches. We used the canvas dams to stop the water & or open so the water would flow into the field. You fed a lot of mosquitoes 😂, and a fair amount of dirt until you got it figured out. I was not too bad at it. The ditcher, as we called it, was home built and lasted without repairs for about 30 years until it was no longer needed. It had set angles and went up & down with the 3 point hitch is all. The ditches would get to 3 ft deep. Enough to get really soaked if you fell!!😂😂. For our ditches we maintained in the farm home yards themselves that we pumped water out of for the lawns & gardens, this little fella here would have been excellent as we didn’t want or need the hilled up sides. For the flood irrigation you used those sides as part of the flow control & distribution. I like this ditcher a lot!! Looking forward to the larger model. I can see a way of leaving the unit 4” off the ground and pointing the cutter deeper to create small berms if wanted. After the sod has been cut first,,,,. That stuff is a PI the arse to work with!! 😊 Take care and see you in the next one!
I agree with JC Wren that the initial dirt needs to spill out to the side. Maybe the side panels could slide up by removing a pin, allowing the operator to decide if the dirt gets moved along or is diverted to the sides. For me, once I got into the "groove" of plowing the ditch, I want to keep moving.
Odd, I see that as completely unnecessary. 500' in 30 minutes. I don't think that level of incredible efficiency is resonating with some. The idea I liked was tilling the sod first. That makes it usable in the future once it breaks down.
Now this thing I really like. How many passes did you make? Would it have helped if you broke up the sod before you used this? Could you use this for cleaning and maintenance on the ditch? Love your videos, appreciate the work you do and the info you share, very entertaining and educational, straight to the point too
Morning Steve, probably 5-7 passes on average as I was trying to get them perfect. I don't think another tool would be required to break sod. This handled that sod well once I realized I should simply focus on slicing the sod on the first pass or two and not worry about digging down much. You could most definitely use it for maintenance down the road, good call on that. Glad you enjoy the videos too!
i see that top link lets you peel the dirt like an egg shell, very nice, i guess i'll have to finally get hoses to the top link i bought a year ago lol
It looks like its about the standard length of a box blade. I wonder if they make it longer would it work even better. Give it the ability to collect much more material and they could sharpen the angle on that plow reducing drag as it cuts through the dirt to balance it back out. A very neat tool. Would definitely be great for the guys who install and maintain gravel roads/drives. Not sure it would be worth the price vs the amount of usage most of us would get out of it. But BOY did it make quick work of the job.
@@GoodWorksTractors me neither but it would go from a very niche product to why would you buy a regular box blade when you could have a trencher scarifier or maybe even 2 scoops and it's also a hiller mounder for the garden?
I like how you use it without trying it out first!!!! Let’s us know what glitches or learning from your mistakes 😜that we would encounter if we just bought one and it wasn’t making a perfect xyz on first try. 🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸
Nice tool for such a specific task, but it does need some sort of redesign so that it lets the dirt/sod pass through as it digs. Very expensive implement too.
Letting the dirt pass is what this is designed NOT to do. For that kind of design a plow point is all you need. Then you need to drive along both sides of your ditch and collect the furrowed material. The Ditch Box is designed intentionally to trap and pull that removed soil as you dig the ditch.
Not sure. I probably hit 10-12 softball size rocks, a couple bigger. Rocks always make things tougher, but it dealt with the small quantity that I have. You guys with really rocky ground have it tough.
We have so many small rocks, we should go into the business of selling them🤣. Even our grader for the tractor shed said he’s never seen so many rocks in one property.
Two part answer... First, you need the rear remote to operate. JD sells a 4th/5th package. Typically pretty expensive and not easy to install. www.summit-hydraulics.com can set you up with the right DIY hydraulic kit and save another 5% with code GWT. Then, you need the top link. Measure the shortest length and longest length on your top link. Match up with the closest one here: www.amazon.com/shop/goodworkstractors/list/46M6Z6OWPONU?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_aipsflist_aipsfgoodworkstractors_TGST9T9GK5DFDV8SDMFM
Yep, that's what I said in the video. It's good for the right customer. I don't put prices in videos. They change with time. I still have guys that will get really upset that I won't sell them things for the same price as 2017 and 2018 when I mentioned price a time or two in a video. Never again!
