changing drops

[philkasza]

We are thinking on how to change drops this next year, we have some cv and some lapierre seasonals, when we go to replace them, do we take the double tool and cut the tee and everything out and replace with new or do we just replace the spile and drop and reuse the tee. In other words how do we do it? Thanks Sam

[Walling's Maple Syrup]

when we change drops, we cut everything out and replace, inluding the tee.

[DrTimPerkins]

...when we go to replace them, do we take the double tool and cut the tee and everything out and replace with new or do we just replace the spile and drop and reuse the tee....

If you're on vacuum, you should cut out the tee and replace the whole thing (tee, dropline, spout). If you try to cut out the tee, you'll make score marks in the plastic which will leak. Quicker and more effective to just replace the whole thing.

[Dill]

At the bellows falls maple school CDL had a new tool that I played with. It cut the drop right off the tee, and I couldn't see any marks on the tee. Pretty slick but its also 100 bucks. So only worth it if you have quite a few drops to replace.
Dr Tim your article in the last Maple Digest about the gains from replacing Spouts and Tees was very impressive. Talk about a small investment for a spout paying huge dividends.

[DrTimPerkins]

At the bellows falls maple school CDL had a new tool that I played with. It cut the drop right off the tee, and I couldn't see any marks on the tee. Pretty slick but its also 100 bucks. So only worth it if you have quite a few drops to replace.

Haven't seen that tool yet, so can't comment. If it works well (and again, I haven't tried it), it could be quite useful and help reduce the cost of replacing drops.


Dr Tim your article in the last Maple Digest about the gains from replacing Spouts and Tees was very impressive. Talk about a small investment for a spout paying huge dividends.

Thank you. That article will be posted to our webpage soon. Our goal in this line of research is to provide useful information to producers to enable them to make better informed decisions about ways to improve their yields in a way that is economically beneficial (to producers).

To that end, we're still in need of more participants in the 2011 Tubing/Yield Survey. It takes only about 10-15 minutes. You can find it at http://kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=KIONKG_c3f8cb68 Please spread the word.