I'm planning on building a 4-5' cultipacker out of at a piece of corrugated pipe. I'm going to concrete a shaft through it and use pillow block bearings. I'm guessing the weight to be no more than 700-800lbs. Will a 1" shaft be sufficient or should I go bigger?

Go bigger. Go cold rolled also. I would go at least 1 1/2" if not 2".

Planned on going cold roll. I know its expensive but how much can I expect to pay?

I really have no idea. I haven't bought any 1 1/2" in a while and have never bought any 2". If you can find a "drop" that will be much cheaper than buying a whole stick. A drop is just a left over piece from a shop. Check with machine shops and with metal fab shops and see if you can find a 6' long piece. I will look at the shop and see if we have any pieces and if we do, I'll sell you 6' to keep you from having to buy a whole stick.

I've got a set of ford 9" axle shaft laying around. I think I may nock the wheel studs out of each and bolt them together (reversed) and use that as the axle. Assuming I can find a pillow block to fit.

That will work! I can get you any bearing you need.

Are you going to pull it with a tractor or 4 wheeler?

Utv

A buddy of mine built one like this and it didn't last two trips. All the bouncing around started busting the concrete and it all fell apart. Good luck with your build.

I have thought a good bit out of building one. Here's my ideas. The corrugated pipe would need to be cut in half, the length that is. Turn one end around and weld it back together. Those pipes have continuous rings on them, meaning like a screw. I think they will try to pull to the side if not cut in half and welded back to keep it running straight.....

Also, it would need lots of rebar or something welded to the shaft to keep the concrete from falling out if/when it cracks, and it would need fibered concrete to fill it up, not sack-crete.

It would be easy to weld a cap over each end when it was filled. That would keep the concrete in place. Might could even fill it with sand if you weld a plate on each end.....

I'm going to use the abs plastic pipe. I'm going to cut a plywood disc for each end and take all thread and run from one end to the other to ct as reinforcement for the concrete. I think I'm going to add some sort of wheels to the top so I can rotate the tongue over and pull around on rubber wheels to eliminate wear and tear going from plot to plot.

The all thread will allow me to sandwich the concrete in and keep it contained if it does break up.

I think that will work, but if you've got rocky ground the pipe will eventually get cut all to pieces. IMO. It will definitely pull straight with that pipe though. I think getting all the air bubbles out of the concrete is the key to doing either one. I wasn't joking I've been thinking about how to build one for a long while. If I were to build one, I'm gonna find something to vibrate the pipe with once the concrete is poured in it to get the air out of the concrete.

We've got a machine at the shop that I'm going to try to roll angle iron into a circle to look like a cultipacker blade. If that works I'm going to roll angle iron circles and weld them to a 12" pipe. That would likely last until the end of time.

Josh

Not to rain on your parade but I had a friend that have the same thing happen as above.

I may make the disks to plug the ends out of steel. Use the same all thread design to pull them together. At that point it won't matter if the concrete breaks up it will all be contained. Most of our plots are pretty rock free so I'm not to worried about that. It's the transport between fields that will beat it to pieces.

That would help a lot I think. I bought a pipe intending to build one but busted my drag on my disk and had to rebuild it. I had a 8 ft 1/4 inch wall pipe and was going to build a frame for the coldroll, pipe and spoke the coldroll into the pipe. I was going to weight it with a peice of railroad iron I had so it could be taken on and off. I envisioned building a box frame for it to slide into to hold it in place.

Why not just buy a small pull type cultipacker?

Money. I can't justify paying $300-400 for one when I have most of the components to build one.

I was thinking of buying some of the old barbel lifting weights and seeing if that would work. IDK.

After running a real cultipacker and a home made one made from a solid steel 12" pipe, you can see the store bought out performs 100 times over. The independent disc on the real culitpacker make all the difference.

That same guy tried using the ABS plastic culvert first and it crushed the ribs pretty quickly. That much weight inside it smashed the ribs and all that was left was round black pipe. You are definetly gonna have to make it flip over on some wheels for transport. It's too heavy to try and load it.