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Baler-Mounted "Scraper Blades"
"My Deere 535 round baler has a narrow pickup which sometimes makes it hard to get the entire windrow. I solved the problem by making my own scraper blades out of a plastic 55-gal. barrel and mounting them on both sides of the pickup," says John Hanson, Kaycee, Wyoming.
  Hanson cut a pair of 1 1/2 by 2-ft. curved sections out of the barrel. Carriage bolts were used to attach the sections to metal plates already on the baler. The scraper blades rub against the bottom part of the stubble, gathering any hay that would otherwise escape between the gathering wheels and the pickup and feeding it into the baler.
  A 6-in. wide, 1-ft. long strip of plastic bolts to the bottom edge of each curved section. When it wears out, a new strip of plastic can be bolted onto it.
  "The scraper blades work somewhat like road grader blades, windrowing hay back into the pickup," says Hanson. "The problem is that the Deere 535's pickup is so steep that in certain conditions the crop tends to just roll ahead of it. It's an especially bad problem with hay grown in high elevations, where the hay is often short. It tends to roll ahead of the pickup for a while and then gets kicked off to the sides. The scraper blades bring that hay back in. They help even in heavy crops.
  "The scraper blades also keep the wind from blowing hay away from the baler. As a result, I can now bale in higher winds than I could before."
  When making the blades, Hanson heats up the plastic and then uses strap iron to shape the plastic to the desired form as it cools.    In addition to the scrapers, Hanson replaced the original pickup tines with longer ones and bent the tips slightly forward.
  "The extra-long tines just touch the ground and catch more of the hay before it has a chance to start rolling ahead of the baler," he notes.
  He also added Deere net wrap. "It keeps hay from falling under the baler as it ties the bales and also during the bale ejection process. It also reduces my baling time by half, and the bales keep much better," notes John.
  Contact: FARM SHOW Followup,John Hanson, 1145 Mayoworth Rt., Kaycee, Wyo. 82639 (ph 307 738-2215).


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2002 - Volume #26, Issue #3