Everything Attachments lawn aerator or core plugger is available in 36", 48", and 60" widths
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Extended Information:
Ted: Hi, I'm Ted from Everything Attachments and we are today with our new plugger. This particular one is made by Ryan Lawnaire, and this is a plugger that we've kept around. I did sell it to a friend about 15 years ago, but the agreement was I sold it to him really cheap and our whole family and most of our employees use this plugger twice a year. We do have another style of plugger, it's a drum plugger and it works really well and it's really inexpensive, but when you really want the professional job and you're charging for doing your plugging and you're doing fine lawns instead of big fields and things like that, that's when the penetration and the being able to turn and stuff really comes into effect where it's not tearing your hole [SP].
Now Ryan to me has always been pretty much the king of pluggers. There was a few things I didn't like about it and so we've tried to change that with our new plugger and we'll go over both of them. The main thing I don't like about a Ryan plugger is it is the adjustability of a category zero or a category one. Well this weighs 515 pounds, our same width weighs 650. So basically no tractor that I know of, the old lawning [SP] garden tractors have kinda gone away, the sub-compact tractors have replaced them and all of those are category one hitch. So what my employees hate the most about hooking this particular plugger up and down, are trying to get in these bushings into the lift to make it a category one while they're trying to balance this cage and all to install it.
So we simply just made ours a category one. If you've got a tractor that's a 0 that'll pick up 650 pounds, you've got a very small number of tractors that'll do that and we're just kinda skipping that group. These tines are spaced six inches apart in their own independent wheels and we're gonna go over that with our plugger. The difference here is, this is a casted piece, probably comes from another country because it's very hard to get casting done here in the U.S. So we've made ours a different way. They call this a 36 inch Lawnaire plugger, okay? But if you measure from the tip of spoon to tip of spoon, it's only 30 inches. There's six inch spacings.
So what they're counting on and I am also, when I say it's a 36, you're gonna have 31 inches tip to tip, but when you make your next row, you're gonna have a 6 inch spacing between this tine and the next one that you make. So you get 36 inches every pass you make even though it's only 30 inches from spoon to spoon. We're gonna go to our plugger. Some of the other things that are different, their frame is inch and a quarter, our frame is two inches. Their axle is inch and a quarter, our axle is two inches. Their axle is firm, it's straight, it relies on the...this particular one had bronze bushings in it when it was made. This was 15 years ago, they are greasable. Now they are what's called sintered bushings, that means they take powder, put it under extreme force and force it into something similar to light [SP] casted metal. It makes a good bushing material.
So what we've done with our extra width and axle, still being able to grease it and we're gonna show you we're letting the whole axle turn on huge pillow block bearings. We think we've just got a superior design all the way over, not to mention, the bad thing about the Ryan, it goes through several hands before you're able to get it. Ryan doesn't sell anything that I know of without a distributor, a dealer and a couple other people in the middle, so you got a lotta markup on this versus what we're building directly from the manufacturer to you. So now that we're back here with our own plugger that we've made in-house and we've made every piece of this with the exception of possibly some pins and a couple of bolts, I know they're coming off of the USA soul and we're making them here in Newton, North Carolina, even the wheels in the back and we'll show you how we make them. They're made here and they're made out of American steel.
We've made the adjustment for your...how wide you want your category one hitch really easy. We've put a carriage bolt in the top where you don't have to have a second wrench and we've only used two bolts that are a little bigger. The Ryan, you gotta have two wrenches, you've got four bolts for each one. This one's only got two bolts and it's easy to do with just one wrench. It does have two positioning holes here. The smaller tractor will actually probably use the top hole, so it'll have more distance, it's gonna curl it more and give you more lift. A larger tractor can use the bottom hole because it's gonna have more lift on your lift arms. These can be adjusted all the way in to make it really easy for a sub-compact to hook up with the center chains or all the way out to a standard dimension of 26 inches or whatever you like for a category 1.
On a Ryan plugger, when you get in, it basically comes in like an IKEA attachment, you've got to completely assemble everything, that's why these hitches bolt on and everything, all of the wheels, all of the spoons, everything has to be bolted on, where we assemble all of that for you. To start with, not only does each wheel roll independently, which gives you the ability to make some slight turning without tearing your hole. If you have a drum aerator, you pretty much need to stay in an almost an exact straight line because any turning you do is gonna tear the hole. If you turn severely, you're gonna bend some spoons, so you don't want either of those to happen. So with these being independently greased, independently turning it lets you make a little bit of turn without tearing the hole. So what we've also done instead of just it being able to roll independent on the axle and the axle being solid where it can't turn like on the Ryan, we've put a two inch pillow block bearing just like we used on our [inaudible 00:07:00]. So they're used to having a thousand pounds of cast iron wheels on them. We've had no problems and so now you can turn here and here and it's all greased.
As far as the spoons go, I've always really liked the spoons on a Ryan plugger and I haven't really been able to found through the sources I had earlier the type of spoon I liked as much as this. What's funny is that the Ryan spoon now, what used to come on them, like the plugger I just showed you, I'm not sure is still the same spoon that is coming in on them because on the new literature that I just got through reading on the computer, what it says is it comes with a big...with the thick spoon. Okay and the thick spoons are usually three to three and a half millimeter and they usually come from offshore, say China, India somewhere like that, course they're cheaper. And from what I can read, this is the spoon that is now coming on them. I could be wrong, but that's the way it looks in the literature.
Now these are thicker, but if you notice when you hit them together it's kind of a thud, you know, it just doesn't have... Now let me show you what these tines. These tines are actually thinner, they penetrate the ground easier, Peanut and I did a test on them to try to bend them and they will way outperform that thick spoon. And when you hit these together, they sound more like a bell or a big bell, or kinda like crystal when you do it, but...and that's because of the tempering of the steel and it makes it easier to go in the ground because they're thinner because of the temper instead of being able to break these spoons, even if you damage this spoon, you might bend it, but you're not gonna break it, so you're not gonna have to look for the other half of it before you mow next time to get a flat tire. So these are a lot better spoons in my opinion, and believe it or not, we were able to find a company that was willing to make them for us in the United States.
So so far, basically all the main components are made in the U.S. These wheels here, because we've got a laser now, instead of using a casted wheel from China or India, we're using plate steel and just cutting round disk with all the holes premade in it. We cut a square hole in one side for the carriage bolts, which are on this side and the back sides where you can't see. This is... To make the hole, there are four different pieces of plate that actually make a round hole. Okay, as we were going through the video, I just wanted to explain to you with the parts so you could really see what you were getting in the video. When we talked about the laminated construction, instead of making that out of casted pieces, this is what we really mean.
This is the exact center plate that's a piece of three sixteenths, it's cut with the laser, and this port here is a port that comes from the grease fitting from one of actual plates and it will be led in from tube from all the way to the outside. So that's your center plate and then all of these plates are what makes the plates around the hole. Every plate is a different size and as you laminate this together it makes a semi round hole. So you've got several plates that have the slots cut in them. So that's what I mean by currently we have 8 slots them, by making it 16 we simply would make this a slot right here. It's super easy to do, but since we sell so few with 16 instead of 8, we're gonna leave this at 8, if we want a 16, we'll simply burn another plate, we're not gonna leave the majority of the pluggers with 16 holes in them because all that's gonna do is cut down on the weight and leave you with more holes to get packed with mud if you're not gonna have a spoon in that hole. So if you want a 16 plugger, a 16 spoon plugger, we will burn the other holes and you can have it your way.
So as you'll see, that random hole there is the grease fitting hole that leads to the outside where the grease will come into that slot into that one. So you get the idea how we make our round hole in the center of all the different plates. On the plate with the nut, then you've got the round holes here. On the disc that are in the center there, they're all the same and they've got round holes on one side and then your outer disc have square holes in the end of them so they can capture the square head on a carriage boat where we can push the bolt up flat and tighten it simply with a torque wrench on the other side.
So this is how many plates it takes just to make up one wheel. The Ryan plugger casted wheel weighs 73 pounds I believe is correct, and our assemblies are weighing 85 pounds a piece. So you're getting a little more weight and this looks a lot more labor intensive. It really goes together pretty quick because all the holes are perfectly aligned, but what you...the main thing we're getting is we're not having to buy a 48,000 pounds at a time in a container from India or China, which is what we prefer to not do even if it does cost a little more money. This is good American plate, old and pickled and then we put everything together so you get a 100% American made aerator, this is the only way I know to do it at this time. Instead of the center axle riding on an inch and a quarter, you've got a two inch, so you've got over double the surface area for the turn of the ware when you're keeping it greased. So that helps a lot.
You've got the full six inches and on the Ryan wheels, the center is hollow and the bushing doesn't go all the way through, and so you've got a little less weight, you've got definitely less surface area on your axle layer, so that should last longer. When you're pulling a plugger straight, and that's the way you're pulling it most of the time, even though you can make a little turn with the independent wheels, most of the time you're pulling it straight. So in that case, all six wheels would probably actually make the axle turn in this bearing instead of in the wheels. So you're double protected and double wear areaed [SP] on this, you've got wear area here and you've got grease roller bearings on the side. So we protected it in every direction.
Now, the Ryan does have the ability to put 16 spoons on each wheel instead of 8. So we only sell about 1 in 100 at the most with 16 spoons instead of 8. If you want 16 spoons, it may take a week or so to do it for the first one. It's easy to do, we simply are just gonna have to cut new plates in the center here, the bolt's already here for the spoon, we can do it, but I've done it before on Ryans and used them. The performance of the weight even though this will weigh more, I think it would do better. When I put them on the Ryan, it just seemed to have a lot more tearing of the holes and it was just so much holes so close together, I personally didn't like it, but if that's what you want, it can be done. Now we chose to only cover half of this with the shield instead of all of it just to keep it easier to ship since we're gonna ship it put together, and for safety, we covered the front in case you did happen to fall off your tractor. If you walk up to the back of it while it's working, I'd say it's kinda your fault. So, you know, they are dangerous, they're sharp spoons, just stay away from the back side of them.
So basically we've taken everything that we've learned from using the Ryan plugger for 15 years, incorporated it into our plugger, made it better, made it easier, made it 100% U.S. made, we've put the bolts in here where you can remove the carriage here if you want to. It's real easy to put it on your tractor, lift it up, you've got one bolt instead of two on those side clips, needing two wrenches to change these spoons, you've only got one bolt to do it. We've think we've come up with the best design to be able to make it here in the U.S. and I have to cast those wheels and use those clamps to hold down the spoon. There's no way that spoon can come out of that center of that plate metal there. This is rated the same way as a Ryan, even though this is called a 36 and the Ryan is called a 36, from spoon to spoon will only be 31, but your next pass as you come by will make it...is they've calculated it a 36. In other words, our 48 will only be 42 inches wide spoon to spoon, but when you make your next pass, it makes it a 48. So that's the way they've rated it and that's the way we're gonna rate it.
So this weighing 650 pounds, their's weighing 515, even when you've got some dry conditions and clay, you're not gonna have to wait for that extra rain to get that full good 3 or 4 inch plug out of this. So if you've got any questions about will this fit your tractor, will your tractor lift it, this will still go through a 48 inch gate, and so that's what we've tried to keep it down to. If you've got any questions or anything ,just give us a call or an email at Everything Attachments.
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Lawn Aerator- core plugger 
