Continued... From a metering point of view, the Cole was a fine planter, best of the plate planters for sure. It used TWO plates per row, mounted at the front of a square hopper that was divided down the middle into two separate halves. The front of hopper consisted of a cast-iron frame which the plates rotated in at about a 45 degree angle to vertical... with twin plate drive gears and bearings and cross-shaft to turn the two counter-rotating plates. The plates were slid in over the drive gears engaging drive lugs around the periphery of the gears, and then a 'spindle" was rotated down over a threaded bolt with a flared edge that overlapped the plates to gently hold them in place... not snug the plates slid round inside the flared edge, and then a divider metal plate with a hex hole was slid over the "spindle" to keep it from turning with the plate, and to act a standoff to hold the seed back from the plate, about a couple inches away. The divider plate was form fitting to the inside of the hopper, with a roughly 1x2.5 or 1x3 inch oblong slot at the bottom to allow seed to slide in under it to form a seed pool at the bottom of the plate while holding the rest of the seed in the hopper back. This was then secured to the spindle with a large "acorn nut" that spun down onto the same threaded rod holding the spindle... Having two counter-rotating plates meant that each plate only had to turn half the speed of a single plate, and the slower a plate planter turned, the more accurate it was. As the plates turned, seeds would slide under the edge of the plate at the bottom into the empty cells along the plate edge, filling the cells. As the plates continued to turn they'd rise up out of the seed pool, and any extra seeds would drop back. If two seeds happened to be in a cell, as the plate rotated upwards soon gravity would take over, and cause one seed to fall out, as there was only room in the cell for ONE seed to be held as it neared the top and the cell, which was nearly flat to the bottom of the hopper at the bottom due to the slight "cup shape" of the plate, was now nearly completely vertical near the top, and each cell had a tapered back cell from the front edge towards the back to cause the seed to roll to the back of the cell and remained trapped there... but there simply wasn't room for TWO seeds to be in there and one not fall out as the plate edge became vertical near the top... It was like holding your arm at a 45 degree angle with a cupped hand-- rotate your hand down and the fingers are nearly flat horizontal, but rotate your cupped hand upward and the fingers are almost vertical... so any seeds would drop down between your fingers, and 'wedge' between them... so only one could pass between each finger. Same principle... Anyway, just past vertical the plate rotated over a hole in the backing plate, which allowed the seed to drop out the back and down a V-shaped metal funnel that came from each plate's drop hole, and guided the seeds down a rubberized tube inside the top part of the sword opener, which vertically dropped straight down to the seed furrow. Now, this was were the problem was... for corn, the plates would alternate their drop, as each one was timed so the cell of one was aligned with the hole while the opposite plate in the other half of the hopper was between cells, so it dropped right, left, right, left..... and both seeds were dropping the same distance, but through a V-shaped funnel to the seed tube, which created a lot bounce and roll of the seed as it dropped and slid down the funnel to the seed tube... then the seed dropped VERTICALLY straight down the seed tube, telescoping up and down inside the sword opener tube, straight down vertically to the ground, where the sword opener have formed a V-shaped seed furrow as it slid through the soil with its V-shaped chisel point runner... this promoted a lot of seed bounce along the rectangular seed tube, and the seed hit the ground and rolled from the forward motion of the planter before it stopped. This all created some inaccuracy in the spacing. The plates and hoppers were mounted by separate brackets to the toolbar, so they rode nice and smooth, while the ground opener unit would flex up and down as the gauge wheel rods over clods and high or low spots, and the sweep ripped the soil open to expose moist loose soil for planting, but the seed was dropping STRAIGHT DOWN the seed tube into the tube welded to the top of the sword opener point making the furrow, so the seed rolled when it hit the ground. Then the following offset cover chisel sweeps threw loose dirt over the seed furrow to bury the seed at the correct depth. By this point, "Zero drop" planters had proved that accuracy could be increased by dropping the seed with either a vertical disk (as the Allis Chalmer's air planter of the time used, a disk running basically right above the ground, which dropped the seed from the rotating disk between the opener disks into the furrow with a near "dead drop" from the rotating disk down into the furrow close below. Deere had put a backward curved seed tube on their planters to drop the seed down the smooth inside of the plastic tube after a rearward slide that would fairly closely match the forward ground speed by the time the seed dropped out of backward curving tube into the furrow behind the disk openers, so the seed approximated a "dead drop" into the furrow... far less roling and bouncing than a straight vertical drop. Interstingly enough, the old Deere #18 blackland planter built in the 50's we had before the Cole used a similar backward curving tube from the plate bottom to the sword opener, only problem was it was one of the spiral steel strip "hoses" similar to the fertilizer drop or grain drill drop hoses on machines of that time, so all the overlapping spirals of coiled steel created a 'funnel" that the seed bounced around in as it dropped, negating any benefit of the recurved setup... Anyway, had the Cole planter incorporated a modern double-disk opener style row unit and recurved seed tube for "zero drop" accuracy, it would have been a world beater at the time... the slow--turning double plates could plant very accurately particularly since they were inclined and nearly vertical at the top and singulated far better than any other plate planter could, and the toolbar mounted hoppers isolated the plates from sudden movements as the ground row unit rose or dropped over clods or rough spots in the field, maintaining accuracy of the plate drops, but the funnel arrangement and vertical seed tube hurt accuracy before the seed hit the furrow... The twin plates had one other advantage... you could get a kit that swapped the single V-funnel to a twin V ("W" shaped) double funnel, then adding a second sword opener and seed tube and respace the covering shovels, and adding a third covering shovel between them, one could plant DOUBLE ROWS with the same planter... twin rows of corn alternating seed to the left and right as it planted the twin rows, or twin row grain sorghum or cotton or soybeans or whatever else... IF you wanted to set the planter up that way. That's something even modern planter cannot do without adding another row unit and meter for the staggered second twin row... Alas it wasn't meant to be. The 7000 had come out a few years before and took the planter world by storm. Plates were passe. We got the Cole planter thrown in when Grandpa bought a Case David Brown tractor, in a package deal they gave him in about 75 IIRC... the Cole planter had been sitting on the lot for quite a while and I think they wanted to get one out there in the field to show what it could do. We still have it in the barn. If it hadn't been for the 7000's superior row units, opening a narrow seed furrow with twin disks and then pinching it shut right behind the openers and seed tube, I'd not have bought the 7100... Conserving the planting moisture would have saved our crop in 96, as the neighbors with more modern planters all got a stand and managed to get a crop after surviving the drought until it finally rained after a couple months-- stunted crop, but a crop nonetheless, versus NO crop and NO stand withour old blackland planter, which taught me all I needed to know, twin plates or not. Course going tback to the same Deere plates as the old #18 built 30 years before, which were on the 7100, was a big letdown and visibly less accurate in the stand and seeding rates, so I converted it to plateless hoppers and drives and installed Kinze brush meters for the next season and got near vacuum planter spacing and accuracy... couldn't have been happier, it even blew the twin inclined plate Cole out of the water for accuracy...

Continued... I have to say that the Kinze brush meters were like night and day in the job they did over a plate planter... the Kinze brush meters use a vertical seed disk that looks somewhat like a seed plate, but with "agitation grooves" that stir and guide seed down to the pockets at the seed disk edge as the rotate around the bottom of the meter housing. A large black cutoff brush guides the seeds toward the edge and provides a cutoff so only the seed in the pockets can rotate past it, and then a blue brush around the periphery of the plate edge holds the seeds in the pockets as the disk rotates up and over the top to the drop point over the seed tube, where the brush ends and releases the seeds to drop down the seed tube one by one as they pass the end of the brush... basically the same way a vacuum or air planter works, but mechanically, without al the hassle of air or vacuum hoses, fans, seals, wipers, disk pickers, doubles knockers, etc... I planted everything from BB-size grain sorghum seed at 80,000 seeds/acre to teardrop shaped 1/4 inch long cotton seeds at 52,000 seed/acre to round soybean seed at 140,000 seed/acre with the Kinze brush meters, and since we were farming on 40 inch rows, that put a soybean seed about an inch apart, and that's EXACTLY where it dropped them! AND I planted at 6 mph, so that thing was churning out seeds and just did a marvelous job of putting out spot on whatever population I set the transmission for... As good as any vacuum or air planter! I had considered putting an air planter system on the 7000; the local dealer had an add-on unit that someone had either ordered or pulled off a planter than they had converted for additional row units or something that he had left over and offered to sell me the whole thing, fan, hoses, and vacuum meters for four rows, plus some other parts, the whole pallet for like a grand, but I didn't really want to spend that much. I'm glad I didn't, because years later working with my BIL and seeing how finicky the vac planter he has is, and the job it does compared to the Kinze brush meters, the brush meters do the same job but SO much simpler and with no problems, no air or vacuum level adjustments, no clogged air hoses or mouse nest problems, no hoses popping off the meter and it going dead, no wiper or seal leak problems that throw the population off by a huge amount, no overheated hydraulic oil and screaming orbit motors and fans, etc... PLUS if the air/vac system loses hydraulic flow even for a second while lifting, or the flow is reduced enough to drop the fan speed enough, ALL the seeds will fall off the disk when you raise the planter and turn at the field end, and then you lower the planter and take off, but it's not dropping any seeds for usually 8-12 feet depending on the seeding rate and disk cell count/speed, until the disk rotates nearly a full turn and brings pockets with seeds vacuumed or blown against the disk up over the top to the cutoff point and starts dropping seeds again. This will leave a huge blank spot in the field. The Kinze brush meters will keep the seeds trapped in the pockets by the brush bristles when the meter stops turning, overnight or over the weekend or if you're rained out several days, and when you drop the planter in the ground and it starts turning the disk it starts dropping seeds instantly again... The brushes last about 200 acres per row, but honestly I never changed mine and it planted just fine... I just followed the recommendation to remove the disks after planting season and vacuum out the brushes with a shop vac to remove debris that might attract rodents and I never had any problems. The Kinze brush meters were certainly an improvement over the old "controlled spill" of the "bean cups" they offered for planting crops with the plateless hoppers and drives back when the 7000's first came out-- their solution to planting other crops that the finger meters weren't designed to handle, like soybeans, cotton, milo, etc... was to make a plastic conversion housing to fit in place of the finger meters and install a "bean cup' which was basically a small plastic version of a double-run grain drill meter, that would "meter" seeds out for high population crops like soybeans and milo where spacing and precise population weren't a big deal... basically just a controlled spill... but of course seed was cheap back then so it wasn't an issue. Not anymore... now those bean cups are junk, and the Kinze brush meters make them so. So good in fact that Deere copied the design but over complicated it, with their "radial bean meters" which are more complex but inferior to the Kinze brush meters. Only problem with the brush meters is, they don't plant corn reliably, so you swap them out for finger meters to plant corn... i recently picked up a set of finger meters for about $120 bucks for six, they need a little TLC and some parts like belts, but they'll plant just fine once I rework them, plenty good for a patch of sweet corn or field corn for cows... maybe some sunflowers for the wife along the edge of the field for kicks... I only need four meters to now I have a pair extra for parts... and of course the Shoup catalog has all the parts I might need. SO If you ever decide you want to go back to plateless, you can easily convert your 7000 over, all you need is the row unit drive clutches, plateless hoppers, and finger meters for corn and brush meters for anything else, all of which can be found cheap as used parts... and anything you're lacking you can get from Shoup... I'd keep the plate hardware, though, you never know when you might want to plant beans or peas or watermelons or pumpkins or something LOL:) Later! OL J R : )

And after 80 years they all work! Lots of grease zerks

Thanks Ron, I’m anxious to seeing it work too!

@@GeigerFarm thank you

@@stevangucu522 sounds like he raised some good corn

Thanks TJ. As my son and I were greasing and oiling the moving parts, I had to marvel at how all those parts worked so well together. There’s a lot of moving pieces

Was that a 2 or 3 row? I am too!

@@AnglesideFarm it was a 2 row.

I’m pretty excited to use it!

Bryce I thought about S2 row and then I heard my dad’s saying to me in his last video…..I don’t want to get done! Thanks Bryce

I don’t know about a restoration Brent, it runs really good as it is. Thanks Brent!

Memories are a great thing James!

Hi Evan! I’m pretty excited to use it Take care

Thanks Ed! We are doing ok, finished up the last of dads estate a couple days ago so I’m looking forward to getting back to normal Thanks for asking

@@AnglesideFarm back to the new normal anyway... It's a relief to have it all done!

I’m pretty excited to make a fall picking video with it. I was in my teens when dad had a setup like this Thanks Nelson, we will bring you along for it!

@AnglesideFarm Man yeah!! Back to the roots!! Thank you sir!!😁😁

👍

@@elmoreglidingclub3030 thank you for your kind comment

Congratulations!

@@AnglesideFarm thank you

That must have been a bit of a challenge

Yes sir, turned out good in the end.

I’d love to have a 4020, current prices are crazy for one

Love Bacon!

Those lights are magnetic and I use them on different pieces of equipment Good luck with your ground breaking, I’m sure it will go well.

We are about to find out. Thanks Bryce

Thank you Jan, the ole 3020 needed some exercise 😂

The ole girl does run nice. Thanks James

It was a beautiful day for some seat time! Thanks Evan

My wife said the same thing 😂

Thank you Aaric

It sure is black

Thank you Yep gates are never wide enough

I appreciate that sir!

Lots going in around here too Gary

I bet they do

Good morning Gary!

Afternoon sir!

I got the strips at my local Deere dealership I don’t remember the part number, just asked the parts guy to bring up the planter unit on his computer and a little searching he had the schematic on the screen and it had the part number

@@AnglesideFarm thanks for info !

I have sold this planter and bought a 7000 plate,hearing what you say i hope I don’t regret it being a plate planter

@@AnglesideFarm yeah I hope you don't regret it either. Best of luck. I'm sure you are busy, but it'd be cool to see a run down on your experience with the 7000. Have you used it yet?

@@dalethomas8866 thanks,sounds like a upcoming video idea sir! Yes I planted about a half acre with the 7000 already I’ve got some more yet to plant

Thanks Ron The auction, as my brother said, will be the last roundup…..I hope it goes well