Flat belt hay baler

[bob ward]

This flat belt drive hay baler resides at Laidley Pioneer Village, its in sound condition but we've never done a demo with it, never put any hay through it.

Recently the stars aligned and we had at the Pioneer Village a supply of hay AND Barry who spent a lot of time working one of these balers in his younger days. It was pretty cool to watch it work, its a 3 man operation. One guy forking the hay, the other two stand one each side of the baler and tie the bale.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff28/sirrobertthegood/IMG_0275_zps6peqmce4.jpg (http://s237.photobucket.com/user/sirrobertthegood/media/IMG_0275_zps6peqmce4.jpg.html)

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff28/sirrobertthegood/IMG_0270_zpsbjvoep16.jpg (http://s237.photobucket.com/user/sirrobertthegood/media/IMG_0270_zpsbjvoep16.jpg.html)

[wheelinround]

Bob looks good! Should rent it out to those wishing to build a hay bail house 🤣

[Retromilling]

Great photo would have liked to see a video of it working . You can see from those bent backs that the person who invented the Hesston round baler used one of these first and he cried out in pain , there must be a better way ! and God smiled on him and said , " think round not square ".

[Oldneweng]

Bob looks good! Should rent it out to those wishing to build a hay bail house 🤣

Straw Bale! Houses are built from straw, not hay. Straw is just stalks, no leaves. Just saying. The bales are also pressed tighter than normal from memory and I am not sure if hand tying would cut it.

I looked at it and thought it would be handy until I realised how much work it takes. :rolleyes:

Dean

[maxp1]

vintage machinery always looks great!

[.RC.]

Yea, provided you do not have to use it. :D

I have old 8mm video of my father loading square bales back in the 1960's. Pick them up off the ground and throw them onto the truck. When I was young there was a ground driven hay elevator that bolted onto the tie down rails on the truck tray and that at least picked them up off the paddock and bought them up a few feet above truck tray height. You still had to stack them on the truck. You still had to remove them from the truck and stack them into the hay shed by hand, although there was in those days a newish square bale conveyer there as well. You would put one end on the truck and the other where you wanted the bales to go.

Then along came the square bale accumulators and if your truck tray was the right length, you never had to touch a bale. We never had that equipment and only saw it when we were buying hay but carting it ourselves. We still had to unload by hand. Good fun unloading a semi-load or two of square bales by hand.

We went straight to round bales and tractors with front end loaders and been there ever since. I feel sort of lucky that I have seen two worlds. The world that when I was young most things around were still done by hand or with antiquated machinery. Now we have all sorts of lifting and earth moving equipment, although it is nearly all old (as in 40+ years) thus affordable, but was unaffordable as it was newish back in the day.