Binder Cord ??

Got my AC Roto Baler home yesterday, came with 3 brand new bundles of "Binder Cord" the Allis Chamlers Bundle has 4 balls, and the Co-op ones have 6 balls in them. They are all like 40 lb test I think, and all say "Binder Twine (or) Cord". What is a current cross to twine? Can I run poly twin in the machine, or is it not feesable? Would like to be able to use this thing a little each year just for kicks, but, don't know exactly what to do!

Bryce - can't answer your question, but would assume you could use poly twine or maybe worse case sisal.

Wow - I went over the AC section and saw your posts on the Roto-Baler and All Crop, totally missed those.

I've read a couple of books on Allis Chalmers, one is the Plow Peddler and the other is An Industrial Heritage - both great books. It's amazing the diversity and IMHO brains behind R&D/innovation at AC. The All Crop harvester was such an advancement in it's time and a fine machine and dominated the market - from what I have read. Really helped make a small farmer independent and the cost was affordable too. As I understand them, they were GREAT harvesters in their day. If I had more space, time and $$$'s, I'd consider one to refurb/rebuild - just because. One would think that with the emergence of the anti-monsanto, Et al movement, along with organic, non-genetically engineered anything that machinery like All Crops would be sought after. Harvest your own seed, use it and sell the extra.

The Roto-Baler - looks interesting. Again, if I had the $$$'s, time and space, I'd give one a try. Someone correct me, but I think I read in some AC literature that the bales are wound so tight that they can survive a splash of rain, so the farmer could bale, not necessarily worry about the coming thunderstorm damaging his bales.

Better get a nice WD-45 to go with this stuff..... ;-)

Good luck,
Bill

Again Bryce. Traditional Farmer is the go to guy for this question. Maybe he will chime in on this also.
Richard in NW SC

By the way, binder twine is still available. An old hardware here still orders it and keeps it in stock.
Richard

Neighbor used 20,000 plastic twine that is used in big round balers, but I believe he had to replace the original twine holding tube with a larger diameter container to accommodate the bigger ball of twine.

I actually use a binder. Have had good success using 1600 baler twine in place of binder twine. Very available, just drop it in a 5 gallon bucket, run thru a hole in the lid, and wire it to the back of binder. Thread as usual.

Binder twine is what the Roto Baler was designed to use.

The Roto Baler was designed for binder twine. You can"t afford to use 7-9000 foot balls because the baler wraps so many feet on each bale. They don"t tie a knot- just multiple wraps, and then cut off. 16,000 foot big bale twine is fine to use. The round bale sheds water very well. Dad would continue baling until he got totally rained out, saying the hay was better in the bale than in the windrow. Baled with one from 1948 to 1964, only broke one cast part, twice. No other repairs. Key to making a good bale is to make a double windrow, two curls, side by side.

Ya, I can tell already that for practical use the current twine holder is going to need to be replaced, it is just too small for any modern form of twine. For show though, it is perfect!

I think I am just going to do some research, and find out what the lightest weight, longest roll of twine is, and what the cheapest price I can find is, and go with it, just try a roll and see! One roll would last me for years considering the small amount of bales I plan to produce with this thing.

In other news, I made note today that the original owner has replace the PTO end of the drive shaft yoke, with a SMALLER splined piece, like the 1 1/8 size Ford's use. I couldn't imagine trying to use one of these things with an N series Ford??