Can a Forklift Fork be cut down to make a round bale spear?

[Scook222]

Since you can do the work yourself, have you looked at the bale spear/ forks combos that some make. You could make 2 quick attach pieces for the bale spears and slide the forks off when not needed. If you have the pallet fork brackets and metal, all you would need is a quick attach plate and Spears.
You don’t see them as much now because of front end loaders, but a few places made a attach to the 3 point and spear to get more height. I think with those you could stack a bale on top of the other, but that’s about as high as it could go. The neighbor has one and the seem to like it well. They load a gooseneck trailer that is about as high as a dovetail trailer with no problems.

 

[aczlan]

Since you can do the work yourself, have you looked at the bale spear/ forks combos that some make. You could make 2 quick attach pieces for the bale spears and slide the forks off when not needed. If you have the pallet fork brackets and metal, all you would need is a quick attach plate and Spears.

I don't currently have pallet fork brackets, I do have some metal.
Would need to run to the scrap yard and see what they have available, but I need a tractor to mount it on first.
I am leaning towards making a dual spear front attachment to replace a bucket that has the spears spaced to be used as forks as well.

You don’t see them as much now because of front end loaders, but a few places made a attach to the 3 point and spear to get more height. I think with those you could stack a bale on top of the other, but that’s about as high as it could go. The neighbor has one and the seem to like it well. They load a gooseneck trailer that is about as high as a dovetail trailer with no problems.

Funny you should mention that, I build one that I use with our 3 point bale spear. It works pretty well, but it as you say it is limited on height. I can just barely stack two bales on top of each other and if the bales are heavy, the front end of the L3830 gets pretty light.
As I recall, I can get the bottom of a bale up to about 44 in off the ground.
I normally use that, I also have a forklift mast with the carriage and everything and 48 in forks on it. The problem with that is that it is very heavy and I need something better for the top link as the hydraulic cylinder I currently use is too short and when I use an extension on it, the mast can tilt backwards and get into the canopy if I push on a bale trying to stuff it into the pile (or trying to pick up a bale out of the pile).
I originally got it with the thought of putting it on the front of the L3830, but it is heavy enough that I don't really want to have to put it on and take it off when raking hay so I am not sure that will work and as such I have not gone further with it.
My tentative thought is to pick up a older 50-70 horsepower diesel tractor with a loader and put the forklift mast on the 3 point when needed.
I would then put the cut down forklift forks on the forklift mast and the double bale spear on the front.
Then one could move up to four bales at a time with one or two on the front and one or two on the back.

Aaron Z

 

[Scook222]

That would work. We had a neighbor that farmed sweet photo for years, when he retired he mount the forklift boom and all on the front of the tractor to stack hay in his barn. I don’t remember if he kept the pallet forks themselves but he put a bale spear on the mast and could stack 3 or 4 bales tall without any problems and could see where he needed to put it without having to turn around. We had a forklift boom that hooked to the 3 point on the tractor to move 20 bushel sweet potatoes boxes of the digger and load trailers with. With the farmall 560 we had the front end would get alittle light, but on the IH 806 you never knew it was there. Either way will work great.