Here's my circa 1930s Cockshutt "BlackHawk" planter. It was pulled out of a shelterbelt 23 yrs ago and put back into service after who knows how long a sleep in the woods. And the price was right, at the time it was free. Other than the kids had to supply the previous owner with sweetcorn each season.
It's planted between 2-3 acres of sweetcorn every year for the last 23 years. It had one set of seed plates in it (large) for field corn. The plates worked well for one of the varieties the kids grew. For the other variety that had a smaller kernal, I made a set of plates out of some HDPE plastic. that was pretty easy to do. I tried to find plates for this old seeder but they're next to impossible to find, especially in sets of 4. The originals were cast iron so I'm sure they were broken over time.
Some of the popular brand older seeders seem to be worth their weight in gold because of everone wanting to cut them up and make small food plot seeders out of them. Plus, seed plates for them are abundant.
With a little elbow grease these old timers can be put to use again without much trouble. and there's nothing complicated about fabricating some seed plates to match the large type seed your looking to plant.....corn, beans, peas, etc. If I was to do it over again, I'd make them out of something easier.....such as plywood, cheap plastic, etc. For the small amount of use they get they don't need to be extra fancy or heavy duty.' Here's some thumbnail pics to enlarge:
Look at those nice straight rows!! You'd think I had GPS steering in one eyball !!
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