John Amero builds a plow for Jethro.

I gave John Amero, metal artist and inventor extraordinaire, a link to my blog post about no-till plows and asked him to build one for Jethro. We went to an agricultural supply store where I fell in love with Danish Sweeps and bought ten to be the "chisels" for the plow; I asked him to mount them with the flat side sideways (90 degrees from the usual direction) so they would cut slits in the ground.

He designed the rest of it with no more input from me than a squiggly sketch on a piece of scratch paper.


Here you see John putting the finishing touches on the quick release mechanism he devised - he was worried about both of us, since he's heard so many stories about Jethro's unpredictable "Incredible Hulk" behavior and tendency to be both irresistible force and immovable object.


I can pull the lever on the handle and instantly detach the plough from the donkey so when Jethro takes off for the next county he won't have ten sharp Danish sweeps mounted to a heavy bunch of metal bouncing behind him.

He built the quick-release mechanism out of a piece of motorcycle sprocket and a bicycle brake.



Here is the bicycle which was the organ donor for the plow.


And here is John Amero, metalworker, modeling the plough.

UPDATE: It took a while, but we finally got the plow out into the field for a trial run.


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