A LOCAL INVENTION

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 358, 8 April 1910, Page 3

A LOCAL INVENTION

NEW SIDE-HILL DISC PLOUGH. One of the worst features about some of the steeper farm laud is that it is practically unplotighable. Even .with the hill-side ploughs there are many acres of land, easily negotiable by stock, hut quite impossible for cultivation of any sort. A man who can invent a machine to change all this will be hailed by the farmers as a benefactor. Now -Mr. L. F. Laurent, a farmer on the Carrington road, has had this in mind for a good long while, and he has not been content with wishing for a machine which would break up the steep hills on his place. He set to work to construct the machine. A "Xews" reporter visited the farm the other day, and was given a demonstration of what the present rough model can do. The only thing in the present.machine that will he found in the completed disc plough is the principle. The first remarkable feature about the demonstration that struck the "News" man wa» the ease with which the plough was drawn up hill and down dale, close by creek-beds, and along a face of a steep hill by a pair of light horses. The next was the temerity of the demonstrator to sit astride the machine in its experimental stage. There he was, perched on a little s'eat above about eight revolving discs, which would cut him frightfully if he fell. 1 Mr. Laurent explained, however, that in the completed machine there would be no danger, the whole of the discs being covered in. ' The maehins soon converted a rough piece of ton oountry into a ploughed and discnarrowed field, fit for sowing grass or the operator explaining that Wn with this little model he could prepare an acre and a-quarter in a day of eight hours. He demonstrated one very great advantage possessed by this machine over the ordinary plough—that it could be taken within a few inches of ft fenee or a creek. No one knows better than th" Taranaki farmer how th* prospective buyer from other parts of the Dominion "shies" *t a property with its creeks fringed with gorse and weeds. This machine rounds off the dip to the creek, and cleans up the bank right to the water's edge, that is, provided the bank is fit for a pair of active horses to traverse. Later, the reporter wan privileged to see the complete plans of the invention drawn by Mr. E. \Y. M. Lysons. In this the inventor's ideas, a« roughly incorporated in his bush model, are put into shape. There are twelve discs, eisrht 18 inches in diameter, -.roncing; in two sets of six each, and adjustable separately. Thus the "set" or "cut" need nob be the same on both sides, and the discs can be so placed as to cut only on one side. The value of the intention lies in the free motion of the bracket* carrying the discs, this allowing the discs to adapt themselves to ths contour of the country, dipping i:r . hollows and still ploughing its surrounding*. The discs "throw out" to both skies, and not in only one direction, as in the case of the ordinary discs. This adaptability and the gre.it' width of the machine give it its stability even on the steepest hillside. The ploughman is relieved of the necessity of guiding the plough by handles, and can devote the whole of his attention to the horses. He can either ride the machine or follow it on foot, using two 751b compensating weights instead of riding. As beforn mentioned, the discs in the perfected machine are to be covered in with expanded steel, thus protecting both the driver and the horses. It is difficult, of course, to describe the invention without using a diagram, but enough has been said, doubtless, to create interest in "Laurent's Side*Hiil Dine Ploueh," and the advent of the first completed machine will be eaaerlv watched for by farmers, particularly by those who have seen the remarkable achievements of the thing "in the rough." ,