Trial of step cutter on single mouldboard plough
Forestry Commission copyright image of Forest Research photographs courtesy of Glenn Brearley, Roslin. B4840
Single mouldboard ploughing at Craik Forest where a step cutter in the peat ribbon was being trialled. Normally the peat ribbon in deep single furrow ploughing was too thick to plant trees directly on top as the tree roots were some distance from the vegetation sandwich layer. Planters had to manually cut out a step in the peat ribbon about 6-9 inched deep with their spade before planting the tree within that step. This slowed down the planting operation quite a bit and raised the planting costs. Photos by E baldwin
This is a trail of an L shaped piece of metal costing £15 on the plough sock and may have been called the Stinson sock after the originator of the idea. The series of photographs shows how effective it was in some conditions and less so in others. The problems with this design continued until a new design by Kenny Logan, workshop manager in Longman workshop, devised another system.
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Groups: Forest Research, Forestry Areas, Forestry in Action, Tractors Ploughs and Drainage Machines