Steam Diggers.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 393, 14 August 1889, Page 6

Steam Diggers.

We believe in keeping our readers posted in the matter of mechanical inventions as applied to farming work. Most of us have heard of, and some have seen a steam digger, but as a writer remarks in an English paper, although the.«e machines have been exhibited at Agricultural Shows, yet very few people know much practically about them. With the object therefore ot explaining the merits of steam diggers as compared with steam and horse plough?, he (Mr Frank Proctor, U.E.) contributes to the Agricnlhiral Gazette the following und^r the heading of "Cultivating Farm Lands with Steam Diggers " :—: — Tn>: Ortect of Steau Diguisp. It was with the conviction that our farmlands could be made more productive by cultivating them with Jorfr* rather than with ploughs th<*t diggers were first introduced ; or, in other words, it was thought that if we could get as good a tilth on our farm lands by forking them as we get by forking our yardens, and provided that the other conditions as to manuring, &c, be the same, we ought to get as lax-ge a yield per acre off one as the other ; and this view has now been fairly borne out by the results. It is found that the moie the top soil io loosened so as to enable it to become freely "weathered " by nafcuie's elements of air, "sun, and wind, frost, snow, and rain, the better fertiliser it becomes. Another important feature in digging is that the forks bicak the "pan or basin" which has been formed under the top soil by continuous years of ploughings, and thus drains the land better ; this is particularly noticeable where the subsoil is clay. The Construction or a Steam Digger. For the benefit of those who may not have seen an agricultural digger of the kind to which I am about to x'efer, I will explain that it consists of an ordinary traction engine fitted with three or more forks at the rear, which are worked by a three-throw crank shaft from the ordinary driving gear of the machine ; each fork is guarded by a rocking under-leaver, which regulates the nature of the work, and which forms one of the claims in jNIr M. K. Pryor's English pa tentXo. 5,956, 1884. When this digging apparatus is in ge.^v, theground islef t forked up behind che engine wherever it travels ; the forks can, however, be thrown out of gear at will ; the tines of each fork ai*e fastened by ;•- grooved clamp, the seat of which is attached to the fork handle by a spring hinge, similar in action to those on a haytedder, so that they can be instantly raised and brought out of work when done with, or when the machine is required to be used for driving a threshing machine or any other purpose for which ordinary traction engines are used. They are made in three size* — 5, 8, and 10 h.p. ; the width over the forks of the 5-h.p. digger is 7 ft. 6 in. ; the width o\er the forks of the 8 and 10-h.p. diggers in 8 ft. 6in. ; and the speed at which all three are made to travel when digging is as near as possible one mile per hour. I will here mention that the fcized machine most useful for work on the vast flat 3 of the Argentine Republic and Florida 8 the 10 h p. ; and, as coal is very expensive in those countries, they should be fitted with an apparatus for burning petroleum instead of coal in the furnace, the cost of which is* not much extra. Directions as to Working a Dio<;j:k. To perform perfect work it i« desirable to maintain a positive even travel, and in order to ensuie this all the clamp.- or spuds should be fixed on to the driving wheels, especially when the surface of the laud i.-> slippery. There are two methods of "taking" a field— either steer round the headland and continue to work inwards to the centre, and then when finished dig your \vay out across your work, or up and down. A skilful driver will turn at the headland and get into the straight again very quickly when A-orking on thia latter* method ; this he does by locking round a quarter and then reversing the engine. In turning the corners, work with your fixed driving wheel on the inside and a loo^& wheel on the outside, cur\e, and steer "hard l'ound," or, for roundabout work you niav often dig round the corners with both wheels locked ; but do not steer round on your idle wheel when digging ; this is contrary to the object for which the driving wheel was made to lock and unlock, but it is obvious that if you steer round with a loose wheel on the inside, the fork behind it would approximately dig the same bpit over and over again, whilst the outside fork would, so to speak, make intermittent jumps. Avoid tilling land in wet v eather, as doing so is injurious to the implement, the land, and the farmer ; the only exception which I know of to this rule i« when the work is that of first breaking up grass land, and then itis not dug in the wet. from choice, but a.s it has to be knocked Lo pieces afterwards by cross-digging it does not much fcignify, The land need only be dug up once after a corn crop on u\\ ordinary soils, but when breaking up grass land or Htiff &oil it should always be cross-dug. In tho case where fields are in "lands" the bosb course is to dig the way of the Jands, and keep one of the travelling wheels along the edge of the furrows ; avoid digging across the lands as much as possible. When digging on a slope take it sidelong ; do not. dig up and down tho bill.

Concerning thk Compression ok the Laku by/vy /v Stkvm Digger. A very com in on error is prevalent that injury is done to the land by a digger passing over it ; injury is, no doubt, caused in this way by ploughing and threshing engines, the reason being that they compress the soil, and so exclude the air, but a digger does just the conti-a7 - y — it loosen 9 the soil and lets the ait* into it wherever it travels, as on every description of soil it breaks up and pulverises it below any point on compression caused by the travelling wheels. «—« — - —