Drill End Plates: The Ends Justify the Means

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Roger Eshelman's display of cast iron drill box end plates at a Waukee, Iowa, show. "They haven't made them with cast iron for 50-60 years," Roger says. "If it's cast iron, it must be at least 60 years old."

With more than 300 pieces in his collection, Roger Eshelman has a nice selection of cast iron end plates from wooden box drills and seeders. But even in his wildest dreams, he knows he'll never have them all. 

"My collection represents 102 different companies and 290 different parts numbers," he says. "But I'll bet there's another 400-500 plates out there that I've never heard of."

Roger, a retired teacher living in College Springs, Iowa, says that numbers like those don't translate into a widely available collectible.

"These days, I get the biggest share of my plates at swap meets, or sales of collectors," he says. "You can still get some from junk dealers. And in Nebraska and the Dakotas, there's still some out there. But in Iowa, there's been so many scrap drives, that kind of stuff has almost vanished." Once, though, the drill end plate was as common as the dandelion.

"They made hundreds and hundreds of different ones," Roger says. "Each company may have made anywhere from six to 20 different ones. Some were from press drills, some were from drop seeders, but they were basically from grain drills and seeders."

With multiple manufacturers came a wide variety of drill end plates.

"Everybody tried something different," he says. "Some were mounted on the disk. Most were on horse-drawn equipment."

The oldest piece in Roger's collection dates to 1857. In the space of six decades, though, the wooden box and cast iron drill ends had been abandoned.

"By the mid-1920s into 1930, almost all of them switched from wood to steel boxes," Roger says. "The design, the workmanship of the pattern maker was gone; that was the end of it."

Roger's collection started by chance. About 25 years ago, while doing salvage work, he ran across a machine with plates on the end.

"I thought they were neat, and I saved them," he says. "I'd always been interested in antiques and old farm machinery, and started seeing the plates at swap meets and shows."

The collection started slowly, but then he stumbled on to nine at one time.

"Back then, they were pretty easy to come by," he says. "Now they're harder to find. In wheat country, you find more, but they're more modern."

Compared to many farm collectibles, Roger says, most drill end plates are affordable.

"Drill end plates are not nearly as popular as planter lids and cast iron seats," he says. "I got into it because I couldn't afford seats. I saw one of those go for $7,000. The highest price I've seen a drill end go for was $320, and that was completely inflated: there were two people bidding on what was probably a $75 drill end."

The average, he says, is closer to $15 or $20.

"I got a pair for $5 at a flea market recently," he says.

Novice collectors, he says, should steer clear of plates that are cracked or broken.