Building FEL hay spear, have a question

[mjw357]

For those of you who use these regularly to move rounds or large squares, how important is having some rollback angle? The way my loader works, the attachment point is pretty much vertical at full rollback when the bucket is on the ground.

 

[LouNY]

I'm not getting your question clearly;
are you mounting a bale spear on your bucket or making one on a ssqa plate?
If you are vertical (straight up?) with full rollback at ground level,
I would caution you to be carefull when fully lifted that a bale can not slide or tear of and come back on you.
Normally you want to be able to get the bale to slide off the spear when placing it in a feeder,
so being able to get it to point most of the way downward with your loader high enough to clear the bale and feeder
is the desired operation,
moving and stacking as long as you can get the spear level with the ground you should be OK.

 

[mjw357]

Hi Lou, I am building a spear that will attach to my loader in place of the bucket if that makes more sense. Unfortunately I have the Kubota quick attach so I have to design and build myself.
What I mean is the attachment point on the loader is vertical, if the bale spear were mounted the spear would be horizontal. At full rollback the end of the spear would point upward ever so slightly as the loader is raised.
I have plenty of range to dump, getting a bale off the spear won't be an issue.

 

[LouNY]

OK, I think I understand now.
The only concern that I would have is that you can get a soft bale,
you might like to have enough angle at full curlback that the tip of the spear is a foot higher then the base at grade level,
that way it would not have a tendency to slide off while carrying it low down a grade.
Also the smaller base spears will keep a bale from from rotating,
which can be a good or bad thing depending on what you are doing.
spreading a bale out for bedding it can be handy to get them started unrolling by rotating by hand.
Good Luck
Lou

 

[countrybumpkin]

I’d make sure you have plenty of roll back for the same reasons as stated above.

 

[Birdhunter1]

If you are building your own make it with two spears instead of one. I've use'd single spears while working for others and I built mine as a single spear, but I wish now I would have gone with a dual spear setup. about 24-30" apart.

 

[mjw357]

Thanks, I was thinking that traveling downhill with no rollback could potentially be an issue. Also, having rollback would help make sure the bale is seated all the way against the frame.

Birdhunter, I am considering a 2-spear side by side setup versus a big main spear with a single smaller stabilizer below.

 

[texasranger556]

I agree you will want some upward angle on the spear with the loader low. I don't use a spear but same concept for pallet forks I built. Without rollback, it would be tough to keep a log on the forks going down a hill. For my JD quick attach forks, I spaced the bottom of the frame about about 3-4 inches to accomplish this. At full height the forks dump to just about vertical, but not far enough they hit the hood, which is another thing to consider.

 

[Birdhunter1]

My reasoning for the dual spear would be to grab big squares if you have to use them, I am a horse owner not a hay producer so I may end up with big squares. A dual spear can handle both as well as carry fence posts, pick up (to a small extent) loose hay or sticks and other things.
I also have pallet forks for such things but sometimes I don't feel like swapping attachments.

 

[M5farms]

Build it 90deg , you will have plenty of curl . Fwiw when you weld in your spear receiver space them pallet width and you will hardly ever use the forks again.