The Life of a Custom Mowing contractor

[Hay Dude]

The dew is so heavy here now it would keep hay to wet to bale till late afternoon, and anything that gets shaded early or late is likely to never get dry, silage time.

I, too am experiencing that drudgery.

 

[Hay Dude]

One of my larger field mowing customers needed to be mowed so I took precious time off hay and spent 6 hours cutting their fields. Really had to go fast to get done. September is one of those months where you really have to push.

 

[Hay Dude]

Hauled a load of biscuits in this morning, then made another 45 this afternoon.
Here‘s a baler code you’d rather not see on your monitor. Knotter motor fault. Luckily I was able to get it working.

Once I got going again, mostly a smooth afternoon. Although knotter #6 broke its’ twine and I had to re-thread the twine back to the knotter.


Here I am stacking bales at dusk.

 

[Rustyiron]

If those are your biscuits, I'd like to see the skillet you make your gravy in!
Gettin it done HD

 

[EddieWalker]

Has anybody tried to buy any of your giant square bales to build a house with? I think that houses built out of hay bales is a crazy idea, and crazy people are always looking for something crazier then what they did the last time.

 

[Hay Dude]

So today started off fine. Stacked a bunch of bales in fields baled earlier in the week. This is a way of keeping busy until the sun burns off the morning dew.

About 12 I headed up to our current customers site and began raking for about 2 hours. By 2 I was ready to bale. Made a few bales, then got an error code. All 6 bale strings broke on the tie cycle. This has NEVER happened to me with this baler. Usually this means the bar that controls all the twine fingers has broken or twisted.

Here you can see the twine fingers are not all aligned the same direction Under the knotters. They all need to be in alignment.

I tried to do a couple manual tie cycles and see if it would clear and watch the twine fingers at the same time. They were jammed. I spent the next 2 hours of precious afternoon sun messing with it. Each time it mis-tied, I had to manually thread the top 6 knotters and bottom 6 needles. I took out a pry bar and tried to manually roll the bar that controls the twine fingers back.
I was on my last few tries, said a little prayer and asked my maker for some help. Low & behold, the twine fingers reset themselves.

Below you can see the twine fingers are all in the “home” position and all swung to the right.

I still don’t know what broke, or what I fixed. LOL. Sometimes you get the bear. Sometimes the bear gets you, right?

Well, I ended up finishing with a nice 20MPH breeze and got the fields all baled. Thank the Lord because tomorrow we are getting a tropical cyclone (Whatever that is) with 6” of rain.

Here I am rounding up and stacking bales at dusk again. I need a beer (or 12).

 

[IndyIan]

So today started off fine. Stacked a bunch of bales in fields baled earlier in the week. This is a way of keeping busy until the sun burns off the morning dew.

About 12 I headed up to our current customers site and began raking for about 2 hours. By 2 I was ready to bale. Made a few bales, then got an error code. All 6 bale strings broke on the tie cycle. This has NEVER happened to me with this baler. Usually this means the bar that controls all the twine fingers has broken or twisted.

Here you can see the twine fingers are not all aligned the same direction Under the knotters. They all need to be in alignment.

View attachment 822812


I tried to do a couple manual tie cycles and see if it would clear and watch the twine fingers at the same time. They were jammed. I spent the next 2 hours of precious afternoon sun messing with it. Each time it mis-tied, I had to manually thread the top 6 knotters and bottom 6 needles. I took out a pry bar and tried to manually roll the bar that controls the twine fingers back.
I was on my last few tries, said a little prayer and asked my maker for some help. Low & behold, the twine fingers reset themselves.

Below you can see the twine fingers are all in the “home” position and all swung to the right.



View attachment 822815





I still don’t know what broke, or what I fixed. LOL. Sometimes you get the bear. Sometimes the bear gets you, right?

Well, I ended up finishing with a nice 20MPH breeze and got the fields all baled. Thank the Lord because tomorrow we are getting a tropical cyclone (Whatever that is) with 6” of rain.

Here I am rounding up and stacking bales at dusk again. I need a beer (or 12).

View attachment 822813


View attachment 822814

Wow, those knotters make me shudder! Is that 4 hydraulic motors per knotter? Suddenly the old round baler with the manually guided twine feed seems not to bad! But I think you might be still baling if your used that, as I don't think it comes close the tonnage per hour the big square baler does when its happy... Interesting though to see the insides of a big square baler.

 

[Hay Dude]

Wow, those knotters make me shudder! Is that 4 hydraulic motors per knotter? Suddenly the old round baler with the manually guided twine feed seems not to bad! But I think you might be still baling if your used that, as I don't think it comes close the tonnage per hour the big square baler does when its happy... Interesting though to see the insides of a big square baler.

You can climb down inside the baler to fix things, there’s plenty of room. You can stand up inside the feed chamber and nobody would know you are in there Lol
I spent 8 hours in the baler trying to clear a jamb.

 

[Hay Dude]

Wow, those knotters make me shudder! Is that 4 hydraulic motors per knotter? Suddenly the old round baler with the manually guided twine feed seems not to bad! But I think you might be still baling if your used that, as I don't think it comes close the tonnage per hour the big square baler does when its happy... Interesting though to see the insides of a big square baler.

When it’s running properly, you can rake 3 rows together and it will eat them at 5-6 MPH for several hours.
We can bale 40 acres easily in 6-7 hours and make 60 tons. There’s just a few more “uh-ohs” than I’d like to have.

 

[mrmikey]

I wouldn't even begin to understand how that works but looking at the linkage and the mechanics of it blows my mind. Being able to repair that is in another world for sure, kudos to you HD