Corn planter

I have purchased a secondhand corn planter. It is an Australian made Mason 9550. It has 8 rows on 30" (762mm) spacing. The four fertiliser boxes hold approx 3/4 tonne. The fertiliser drops in the furrow in front of the seed, so we are limited to about 10Kg/ha of Nitrogen (9lb/acre). The seed boxes are John Deere vaccuum units and the double disc openers are a similar design to John Deere. It has 4 marks on the bar where it appears that fertiliser coulters may have once been attached, half way between each pair of rows. The planter came with full sets of corn, sorghum and sunflower plates. It doesn't have the little seed knockers that push the sorgum seed off the plate, so I might need some of those. It also came with 6 soybean plates.

Mason 8 row planter

We removed the marker arms and are relocating the gauge wheels further out. As you can see they almost touch the wheels of this tractor which has a 2m (80") wheel track. My other tractor is on 3m (120") wheel
track. Moving the gauge wheels means that we have to relocate drives, which is a bit of a job. My good friend, Stuart, gave me an older Mason 8700 planter which is coming in handy for spare parts. I have already taken some bearing hubs and a sprocket or two off it, as well as the rotary scrapers.

Mason planter ready for modifications

Here is a picture of my 5 year old son helping. He is pushing a shaft through a bearing with a 20 ton hydraulic press. My other 7 year old son reckons that "Grandad must like circles, because there are a lot of round things in his workshop."

Hydraulic press