Bill VA 68 NH

I sold mine to a neighbor a few years back and today I stopped and looked at it to make sure about the tine numbers I mentioned in an earlier reply. I did have 3 sets of the alum teeth. on the bar plus the steel rake tooth type on the very end. It made a decent bale like that. I bought the baler with my farm 40+ years ago and the first year I broke the hold down bar between the feeder teeth. Fought that as long as we used it. Thought for sure it had to be there. Neighbor is having trouble with it now. I told him that I had read here that it's better taken out. You gave a link to the post from the NH guy that told about it but I could never make it work. Would like to see it if you have time to recheck the link. Thanks Doug

Doug,

Here is the link:

http://ytmag.yesterdaystractors.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=implment&th=66416

On another note, I was window shopping new square balers over the weekend and looking at a JD 328, NH BC5050 and a MF 1835 inline baler. The NH baler still used the old style feeder forks/bar set-up similar to my old 68. The biggest difference I saw was the tines on the feeder bar only had one set of aluminum feeder bar tines and they were in the middle. The outer two sets of feeder tines were steel - like the ones on my 68 at the pick-up end of the feeder bar.

Definitely don't think it would hurt to have more than 3 sets of feeder tines. If the goal is to move hay out of the pick-up and into the bale chamber, then another set might help. It seems like the hay flows evenly up off the ground on my NH68 into the feeder tine area and is cycled into the bale chamber vs a constant flow. I think this may be where the JD's auger might be somewhat better in that it is feeding a constant - uninterrupted flow into the bale chamber - just a guess on my part.

Probably the two feeding techniques I found beneficial to using my NH68 was a steady feed of a "normal" windrow into the baler at the bale chamber side and the other was a larger windrow, two 7 ft windrows combined, slowing the ground speed and letting the hay fill the feeder fork area such that they were always moving hay into the bale chamber - but not choking it. I'm very anxious to refresh the plunger wood bearings on my baler this winter and get the knife set correctly. I want to see more brick like bales - like I use to see years ago behind a JD24T.

Thanks,
Bill

Thanks Bill. The link worked this time.