Tractor Thread

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robert.
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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby robert. » Tue Jul 14, 2020 6:05 am

Not many around me use a traditional baler. A lot of farmers use on that makes hay rolls. A few make bales as big as a ford pickup truck. Then they cover them in plastic. Most of the guys never use their hay. It sits out under a plastic shrink wrap and rots. i'm not sure why they even bother to bale.
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healey36
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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby healey36 » Tue Jul 14, 2020 7:04 am

A number of dairy farmers around here use rollers, then wrap them and store them in a line along the field's edge; not enough barn storage space, and as long as they're wrapped, they hold up fairly well. As the number of dairy farms around here decline, you see less and less of the bales stored outside.

The farmers I occasionally get called for help are cheap bums that refuse to upgrade their equipment. One guy's still using an old McCormick baler that pushes out 100-lb bales bound with wire. I'm not sure where he finds parts for it. I know I've repaired the chute for him a few times, welding in new steel where the old had rusted to bits or was about as thin as a sheet of paper. I'm not sure what the model number is, but I guess as long as he can keep it running he'll continue to use it. He only does one or two cuttings each season, so it'll probably last as long as he does. The pain is each bale gets handled three times, once to pick it up off the field, once to offload it from the wagon, and again to stack it in his barn.

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healey36
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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby healey36 » Mon Aug 03, 2020 1:32 pm

I recall roaring up behind this fella in the Z one morning a couple years ago thinking "Should I pass on this hill...yeah, no problem":

Image

Wussed out though, but it coulda been fun.

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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby Rufus T. Firefly » Mon Aug 03, 2020 1:35 pm

healey36 wrote:......."Should I pass on this hill...yeah, no problem".........


I get behind Amish on blind hills and curves and knowing that people are driving at 70 mph on the road stay firmly in place waiting it out.
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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby healey36 » Mon Aug 03, 2020 1:38 pm

It's all about clearance, mate, and him having a steady hand on the tiller.

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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby Rufus T. Firefly » Tue Aug 04, 2020 6:56 am

healey36 wrote:It's all about clearance, mate, and him having a steady hand on the tiller.


The man with his hand on the tiller is the least of my worries; it's the clown roaring up over the hill towards me at 70-80 mph that I can't see that I worry about.
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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby healey36 » Tue Aug 04, 2020 10:10 am

Planting, May, 1939:

Image

One wonders if that's a commercially available planter of the era, or is it an ingenious contraption made by the owner?

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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby Rufus T. Firefly » Tue Aug 04, 2020 12:54 pm

healey36 wrote:One wonders if that's a commercially available planter of the era, or is it an ingenious contraption made by the owner?


I'd bet on a commercially available item that takes 1/2 a day just to get hooked up into place. Some of the widgets for my Cub look like Rube Goldberg designed them. :roll:

But I'd think I'd take that hand crank out before going out into the field, :wink: :wink:
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chuck
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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby chuck » Tue Aug 04, 2020 2:35 pm

http://www.davickservices.com/tractor_with_planter_go-devil_1939.htm

Same guy, same tractor, more stuff attached. Note the units in the background that have already spread out.

BTW, I found a number of photo's of that same model tractor and all of them had the hand crank "attached". A number of models AFTER 38/39 have different grills, etc, and NONE of them show the hand crank in place, just the hole where it would go.
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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby Rufus T. Firefly » Tue Aug 04, 2020 2:55 pm

chuck wrote:.......all of them had the hand crank "attached".


Makes one suspect that those photos are all staged.

Losing the crank in the field is not a good thing.
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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby chuck » Tue Aug 04, 2020 3:03 pm

Might be. There is a third "planter" hiding behind the left wheel. You can see the shadow on the ground under the tractor as well as the arrangements on the other tractors that have already driven off in the other photo. That probably did take at least a half day to set up/install.
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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby Rufus T. Firefly » Tue Aug 04, 2020 3:33 pm

chuck wrote:Might be. There is a third "planter" hiding behind the left wheel. You can see the shadow on the ground under the tractor as well as the arrangements on the other tractors that have already driven off in the other photo. That probably did take at least a half day to set up/install.


Makes sense - I'd expect there to be that third "planter". I remember helping my grandfather mounting the plow for raising potatoes onto the hydraulic system links on the Cub. Awkward, heavy, and a great way to mash a finger or 3. Have not used it in 40 years. My son dragged the disc unit out 2 weeks ago with the intention of restoring it to functional.......
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healey36
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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby healey36 » Tue Aug 04, 2020 3:56 pm

Hmpf, Texas, post dust-bowl...seems not much was learned from that "lesson". Amazing corroboration, Chuck.

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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby bob turner » Fri Aug 07, 2020 10:40 pm

Wow! You guys have a tractor thread? I cannot read all 145 pages, but I have a collection of Model road graders. If nobody has posted models yet, I could maybe help.

I mis-spent my youth on a Massey Ferguson. Did some scary stuff on hillsides. Smarter now.

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healey36
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Re: Tractor Thread

Postby healey36 » Sat Aug 08, 2020 9:38 am

Cut my teeth on a Ford 8N from the late 1940s. Stable as hell, I still managed to nearly kill myself a number of times on that Ford. Pulling stumps and scraping out the farm pond seemed to offer a multitude of opportunities to overturn it. The Ford handled mowing a slope fairly well, having a relatively low center-of-gravity compared to most tractors.

A mate of mine has an old Ferguson we still use to mow/bale at least once or twice a year. Finding parts for that is near impossible.


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