Farmers have been busy in their workshops getting creative with clever tools and attachments to make life easier and save cash.

We round up some of the best of these inventions from this year’s competition.

See also: On test: We rate the latest battery-powered grease guns

Frank Henderson’s vice

With age and abuse having got the better of his long-serving Record No.6 vice, Frank Henderson briefly considered his options.

Spending north of £300 on a replacement certainly wasn’t on the agenda, so he rooted around under the workshop welding table to find the necessary bits to build his own.

The scavenging mission yielded a length of 80mm box-section, which provided the perfect sliding element inside some 90mm box (both 5mm wall).

The rest was made from 12mm mild steel sliced to shape with an angle grinder.

And there were rich pickings to be had from an old jockey wheel screw jack, which gave him an acme threaded bar – the sort that converts rotary to linear motion – and a female bush.

Handily, the screw worked out as five turns to the inch, as opposed to the Record’s four, which translates to a 25% rise in clamping power.

Better still, it included a thrust bearing to reduce the amount of effort required to lift its load.

All Frank had to do was track down a second on eBay – for a princely £8 – to mount on the opposite side of the bush, thus reducing the friction when releasing the pressure.

The replaceable solid aluminium jaws are attached to the steel frame with 6mm socket cap head screws.

According to Frank, it works well, with 13in of gape rather than the 6in of the oldie and a very positive feel on the final pinch thanks to the lower gearing and thrust bearings working their magic.

Harrison Bamber’s front weight toolbox

In need of both a front weight and some tool storage for his Massey Ferguson 8S, Harrison Bamber, from Preston, Lancashire, ventured into the workshop.

His solid-looking creation was fabricated using 10mm steel plate in the base and back, where the link arms attach, and 6mm for the sides.

In the centre, he added a box with a lockable lid that’s large enough to accommodate a Stanley tool bag, socket set and a series of power tools, with space either side of this that could be filled with concrete.

In total, the box weighs 1,150kg, helping keep the front of the tractor weighted down when carrying heavy cultivation kit.

He also fitted lights that are wired into a seven-pin plug, allowing the headlights to turn on with the tractor and the strobes to flash when the beacon is active.

The build took about a month and total material cost was about £1,000.

Freya Panniers’ mobile pressure washer

To save the hassle of dragging out the farm’s big pressure washer and setting up the associated pipe and cable to clean grainstores and cattle sheds, 13-year-old Freya Panniers came up with a design for a more mobile outfit.

Dad Mark was tasked with welding a steel frame for the front of the Merlo, which is roomy enough to accommodate a water-filled IBC and, on a square platform in front, a small petrol-powered jet washer.

This was the only expense (£300), with all the steel and the IBC already in stock on their Herefordshire farm.

Frank Anstee’s hydraulic bale spike

In a bid to ease the process of picking up round bales in the field, Frank Anstee built a double spike with a hydraulic lift function.

This allows the first bale to be raised slightly so that the second can be picked up cleanly without having to stop and reposition.

Each side of the attachment is mounted on a pivot and the two are connected by a simple linkage.

Extending a single hydraulic ram pushes this linkage sideways, thus lowering the left side and raising the right.

Conversely, retracting the ram causes the bales to draw back level.

For added security when lifting, it has two prongs per bale.

Arwel Davies’ steering wheel puller

As a vintage tractor hobbyist, Arwel Davies occasionally finds himself wrestling to remove steering wheels that have been in situ for the best part of 50 years.

After toiling one too many times, he assembled a universal wheel pulling tool that allows for far quicker extraction without resorting to cutting or heating, meaning the original fitment can be reused.

His eclectic mix of components included a scrap piece of plate, three bolts from a telegraph pole, a threaded bar from an automotive puller bagged in an auction lucky dip bucket and, as the only expense, a new nut to suit said thread.

The plate has seven holes that allow it to be aligned with different wheel assemblies; the four nearest the middle are good for most three-spoke wheels and a two-spoke Leyland, and the outer three are positioned to accommodate the bigger central section of a Ford Super Q cab wheel.

Zach McCarragher’s Euro 8 to pin-and-cone adapter

In order to lift pin-and-cone attachments with a Euro 8 loader, County Armagh-based Zack McCaragher built a neat adapter.

This was fashioned out of 8mm and 12mm box-section steel, with a bar to hold it in place.

To finish the job off, he gave it a liberal dose of hard-wearing machinery enamel paint in vibrant JCB yellow.

Iain Reid’s dozer

Isle of Bute contractor Iain Reid transformed an old sheargrab into a rudimentary bulldozer-cum-front weight.

The 1t outfit is carried on the tractor’s front links via an A-frame and is loaded with two 3.5m lengths of super-hard, super-heavy, 100-year-old greenheart wood salvaged from a pier.

The timber is braced with steel plate, with chunky box-section providing extra support behind.