Travels with Terry

Greens & Tees Spiker
Jeff Corcoran, manager of golf courses and grounds, and Rob Hall, equipment manager, at the Oak Hill Country Club In Rochester, N.Y., designed and built this greens and tees spiker. The Precision Easy Load Trailer ($975, model #730GMTJPGM22) was modified, as Hall cut off back to the axle and rewelded at an angle, welded on side plates for bearings, repositioned the pull bar to the right side so the spiker could be off-set, discarded the manual lift handle and welded on brackets to accept the actuator. The tires are OEM. The used drum is from a Salsco Roller and the 298 total spiker blades required are part #R201328 from R & R. They're 2.5 inches long mounted in a helical pattern on 2-inch spacing. Down pressure is created by the weight of the implement, which is approximately 380 pounds, by adding water for up to 20 pounds additional weight. The spiker is hooked up to the tow vehicle’s electrical system where a 1-amp power converter supplies 12-volt power to the deep-cycle battery. There is also an audible beeper located between the yellow stripes that lets the operator know that the spiker is all the way in the down position. Total cost is estimated at $2,729 and it took about 24 hours of labor to build.

Foot Aerifier
Corcoran and Hall also designed and built this foot aerifier that can be used on a green’s small, confined area only where it’s needed. It was made from a scrap piece of pipe welded together with two old "push rods" from a Ryan GA-24 aerifier, which accepts any tine holder for a Ryan GA-24, ½ inch, ¼ inch, quads and either solid tines or coring tines can be used. There were no material costs and it took about a half hour to build.