When a previous owner's weld breaks on your rake...

lastcowboy32

Well-known Member
Of course, it has to happen almost two miles from home on top of some hill in the field at 5PM, when you're trying to finish what you have down before it rains the next day.

Couldn't move the rake back to the garage for a weld.

I'm not proud of how this looks...but forty minutes to run across the field, get the car, go home, cut some scrap metal, gather some 14 gauge fence wire...

Oh well...you be the judge.

It worked for an hour to finish raking, and it's still holding.

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nice work mcgiver,
pat yourself on the back.
I like it. thats what makes the world go around
the next guy would be complaining of a $100 service call.
its neat to see someone respond to a major breakdown with a simple fix
just keep in mind safety first.
 
Cowboy,

I have a NH256 roller bar rake that I use on my hay. I had a catastrophic break on one of the beams a while back. I dragged the rake home, removed the broken beam, and took it to a welding/machine shop for repair. The guy did a good job repairing it, but what I didn't realize was that the other beam was twisted as a result of the break. I had to take it off and take it back to the machine shop and have it pressed back into shape. I still had a very difficult time getting the rake back together. I finally prevailed, but it was very difficult pulling things back together.

And, by the way, there are about 20 bolts holding the each side of the rake together. I had to remove all of them to get the beams off. I replaced all of them with new bolts when I put it back together, but I hope that I never have to do that again.

Hopefully, you'll be able to repair yours without having to remove the beams.

Tom in TN
 

Thanks...this is definitely temporary, though.

I'm trying to think of how to add more of a spline-type of patch metal to the weld that runs along the length a little more to spread the stress. Maybe a heavy pipe welded right along the backbone, along with welding the crack back together.

The previous owner put on a little scab plate. Just too short and it cracked right in half at the edge.
 

Should have seen the looks on my wife's and daughter's face when I brought back the metal and the wire and said....OK...daddy's gonna lift the rake frame...mommy's gonna adjust it so that it lines up...and you're gonna shove that sandwich of angle iron and tubing into the spine of the rake just under the lip...and then we're gonna wrap it with wire...
 
My self I probably would have taken a drill with me and drilled a couple hole in it and the piece and the rake and bolted it together. That way when I got it back to the shop it would be in place and ready to weld. I have fix and or built a lot of stuff tha tI bolted together then once I knew it would work I then welded it. Or if I did not have a way to drill it I would have used C clamps to hold things together. I still remember breaking a throttle cable on a motorcycle and setting the Idle up as high as it would go and limped into an O'Reilly's auto parts tore then bought a C clamp and used it on the end of the throttle cable to get back home
 
Wow, I mean it looks like it held an all,
but that just seems like it would have never
taken the stress of that frame and held! But
it did, so good job!
 
Wire is an amazing patch tool. It can do wonders with some creativity in a circumstance like this as a temporary patch when strategically placed.

The problem is too many people try and run those temp fixes far too long and never fix thing right.
 
in my area of the country everyone used wire balers until plastic twine came out. Lots of baling wire fixes. As mentioned below unfortunately a lot of them weren't just until they got to the shop but went on until the next time. My uncle's disc had so much baling wire on it I swore it needed it for the weight to cut.
 
That's why during hay season I try to have a spare mower,rake and baler hooked up to a tractor ready to go or at least have the spare equipment ready.When running old equipment backup
spares are a must for me.Also having a gas powered welder and gas powered air compressor comes in real handy some times too.
 
When you make your splice plates, make the ends of the plates come to a point in the center. A splice plate that is cut square on the ends encourages cracking. There's lots of info on the net.
An example
 
I'd be proud to stand beside you on that repair. I once used 2 short 2x4s and wire to 'fix' the suspension on a Land Rover where the spring shackle had carried off. Got him out. Unfortunately, I guess it was too good and the fool drove it around for another 2 months before replacing the 2x4s with metal. Again, I'm proud of you.
 
I knew that dog gone net wrap had to be good for something besides wrapping around the beaters on the spreader.
 

That was an interesting link.

It makes sense, how the diagonal beads would redirect the stress from the initial crack.

Good info!
 

Don't get me going on net wrap.

We rented the last farm that we were at, and they were crazy for baleage and round bales. The barn had a perfectly good haybarn and two silos...but instead they chose to put about 500 round bales in a muddy lot behind the barn.

When we got there, just about every time I drove the tractor out back, something got caught on an axle...either the tractor...or the wagon..or whatever.

One particular piece of net wrap got wrapped around the axle of my ground driven spreader behind the wheel. I didn't see it...but what it did was wedge the drive wheel and the sprocket out from the chassis about an inch or two. The next time I went to use the spreader, I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get the drive sprocket to line up with the chain.

The farm also had a huge manure pile. We couldn't pay anybody to spread it for us, because all of the locals knew that they weren't good about getting all of the net wrap off of their bales, which they just fed in round bale feeders in the loose housing coverall. Every day, they would move the feeders and use the leftover hay as bedding...so all of the pen pack that had been removed from that loose housing and piled outside was riddled with netwrap...

I hate the stuff.
 

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