The 6m Tine Drill.
Six metres of tine drill, bought in a fit of optimism in 2021 and used for about nine days a year. £340 a day, machine only, collected from here.
The specification.
The machine
- Working width
- 6.0 mFolds to 3.0 m for the road, badly
- Tractor required
- 260 hp minimum220 will pull it on our brash and will not enjoy it
- Linkage
- Drawbar, category IVNot three-point. People assume three-point
- Hydraulics
- Two double-acting spools plus a free returnThe free return is the one everybody forgets
In work
- ISOBUS
- Yes, and it is fussy about the terminalBring your own if you can
- Hopper
- 3,500 litres, split 60/40Seed and fertiliser, or seed and more seed
- Output, realistic
- 3.5–4.5 ha/hourThe brochure says six
- Weight
- 7.4 tonnes emptyWhich is why it does not go on wet ground
Figures are from the machine itself rather than from a brochure. Where the two disagree, the brochure is wrong.
What it fits.
A 260 hp tractor with a drawbar and three spools. Anything smaller is a long day and a burnt clutch.
If you are not certain your tractor will do it, ring before you hitch up rather than after. We have had two people arrive with the wrong linkage category and one with no air brakes, and all three of those were avoidable phone calls.
Who has actually used it.
Named because a machine with a history is easier to trust than a machine with a specification. Where somebody broke something, it says so.
Charlie Ireland
Agronomy trials, two days a year, and he is the reason it was specified properly
A neighbour at Lyneham
Nine days across two autumns, and the only person to have broken a coulter
A contractor from Enstone
Four days in 2024, drilling other people’s cover crops
Kaleb Cooper
Refuses to use it, on the grounds that it is too wide for our fields
What it is bad at. It is too wide for about a third of this farm. Six metres assumes square fields and headlands you can turn a fourteen-metre outfit in, and a good deal of Diddly Squat is neither. On the small awkward ground it wastes more time turning than it saves drilling, and the overlaps at the ends are visible from the road in May. It also blocks in wet trash, and nobody has ever cleared a blocked tine drill in a good mood.
When it is free.
Half days are two thirds of the day rate, because the loading, the walk round and the clean take the same time either way.
Tuesday8 September
Thursday10 September
Monday15 September
Pick a time and we will hold it for ten minutes. Hold that day
This is a demonstration build. Nothing here books anything, no deposit is taken and no card details are collected at any point. Prices are indicative and are published so the arithmetic can be argued with.
The terms, in four lines.
£340 a day
Machine only. No fuel, no operator.
Your insurance
Hired-in plant cover, shown before it leaves.
Owner keeps first call
If it is our weather, it comes home.
Back clean and full
Or it comes back with an invoice.
The other seven.
The Cambridge Rolls
Twelve point three metres of ring rolls. The cheapest thing to hire here and the one with the longest waiting…
The 3m Topper
A three-metre flail topper for margins, paddocks and the parts of a field a combine is never going to see.
The Bale Wrapper
A trailed round-bale wrapper. Nobody hires this because they want to. They hire it because the forecast changed.
The Post Knocker
A tractor-mounted post driver. The single most useful item on this list and the one most likely to hurt somebody.
The Subsoiler
A three-leg low-disturbance subsoiler. The most misused machine in British arable farming and we have misused it ourselves.
The 16t Grain Trailer
Sixteen tonnes, sprung drawbar, commercial axles and a working tarpaulin, which is rarer than it should be.
The Hedge Cutter
A six-and-a-half metre reach flail hedge cutter. Legally unusable for six months of the year, which is the most important…
Before you hire anything.
Insurance, briefings, and the two things we will not hire out at all.
