Wedges in the wall of the bale chamber? NH 276

So,

I'm moving into the modern world. I called a scrapyard and found a wagon hitch assembly for my NH 276 baler. No more dropping bales on the ground and then walking around the field for hours to pick them up.

It wasn't so bad when we did 2500 bales a year.

It got a little onerous last year; when we did 4000.

We're on target to do about 10,000 this year...that's a few more than I want to walk around and pick up.

ANYWAY...

As I'm inspecting the bale chamber to bolt on the wagon hitch, I I notice that one side wall of the bale chamber has a vertical wedge in it. The wedge sticks out from the side of the bale chamber about an inch.

I looked at the other side and notice a couple of bolts holding onto the remnants of the wedge that used to be there.

Would this affect bale shape?

Would this missing wedge be part of the reason that, despite making other adjustments, we still need to run our baler with the bale tensioning cranks tighter on one side than the other?

Seems to me that a one inch wedge situated a few feet past the plunger can't really affect bale shape that much...but they are there...there must be SOME purpose for them.

Yeah, you need wedges. Turning the tension up or down on one side has almost no effect on bale shape compared to the wedges. I have 6 wedges in my baler IIRC, but all are well worn and need replacing/rebuilding. But bale shape has more to do with the way the hay is fed (forks, auger, whatever need to feed the hay right) and windrow size than almost anything IMO.

I agree with the windrow size and hay feed being large factors in bale shape.

I think that our baler may need its plunger knife sharpened as well.

My gut feel is that, this year, since we're baling a lot more hay earlier, it's not cutting this tender-stemmed hay into the slabs as well and sort of smearing the edges of the slabs too much to really get excellent bale shape.

Some of it is operator as well. I listen to the baler and adjust ground speed for about 13 plunger strokes per bale. My father in-law likes to bale as fast as possible. He's often pushing bales out after as few as four plunger strokes... Usually about 6 to 10.

But...I'm glad to have the help; so I'll just adjust the baler as best I can.

You need the wedges. If you don't have a manual, go to New Holland or Messicks parts diagrams to see how many and
where they go.

For bale shape - and I'm assuming you are speaking of banana bales, tension won't help. If there isn't enough hay
to one side or the other, the banana shape will occur. Wedges and good spring loaded hay dogs will help. Make
sure your hay springs are not weak or broken. Next, make sure your plunger to stationary knife is close. This
will help with banana bales too as additional hay isn't brought to one side of the baler - being dug into the bale
chamber rather than cut via the plunger knife. Make sure the knife is sharp and the stationary has a nice 90
degree edge.

IMHO, New Hollands like a full charge of hay going into the pick-up, but not crazy. Feed the baler on the plunger
side of the pick-up. JD balers are opposite.

If you still are not getting hay into (as an example) the left side of the bale, looking from the back of the
baler towards the front, move the feeder tines to the right. Counter intuitive, but per the manual and you will
get a bigger charge pulled into the left side of the baler. Also, if your feeder tines are aluminum, they ought
to be about 13 3/4 inches long as I recall. Over time, the aluminum can wear down several inches. If this
occurs, there is NO adjustment you can make to correct a banana bale.

We went from dropping our bales on the ground, then to wagons behind the baler - a great improvement. However,
this year we went to a pan kicker and holy smoke - that thing is a heart attack saver. For the bales you are
doing, I'd recommend either a kicker of some sort or a bale basket.

Good luck,
Bill

There called hay dogs. They hold the hay in place after the plunger moves forward for another bite of hay. Yes you need them and yes they will effect how the baler preforms

(quoted from post at 07:59:49 06/22/18) There called hay dogs. They hold the hay in place after the plunger moves forward for another bite of hay. Yes you need them and yes they will effect how the baler preforms

Click to expand...

I took care of my spring loaded hay dogs up by the plunger. They all have had new springs on them over the last couple of years.

I never looked at the wedges in the bale chamber, though; so I'll have to check the manual or some other documentation to see what I'm supposed to have.

According to the Messick's parts diagram, if I'm reading it correctly, I need six "stops" in the bale chamber. Two on each side just behind the knotter and one on each side at the end of the chamber. I'll have to check. I don't think that I have any of them, except for one at the very end.

In that case, I'm missing 5!!!

Messick's lists them as part number 32124 (old) or 86626431 (new equivalent), again...if I'm reading the diagram correctly.

I'm going to avoid the kicker and/or basket approach for now.

Staying with the flatbed wagons does a couple of things.

The flatbeds are easier to unload at the barn; since there is no obstacle to throwing off the side wherever you want.

We also have a steep earthen embankment (barn bridge) up into the barn. We generally haul loads with either our Ford 3000 or our 2N.

Both of those tractors get up the barn bridge nicely with a flatbed wagon and about 60 or 70 bales.

If you start to get up to 80, 90, or 100 bales; things get dicey. They start to spin, and such.

Right now, I would rather have more flatbed wagons and do more, smaller loads that are easy to unload; than to try to adapt to kicker racks or bale racks.

I had the same deal happen to me. I just made my wedges out of angle iron and flat stock. I ended up with
nicer harder more square bales. for next to nothing.

(quoted from post at 09:57:46 06/22/18) I had the same deal happen to me. I just made my wedges out of angle iron and flat stock. I ended up with
nicer harder more square bales. for next to nothing.

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I don't have the right size angle iron around. I just ordered six of them. They were eleven bucks each from Messicks. Eighty-eight dollars with shipping.

A small price to pay to rid our hayloft of bananas...

Thank you, gentlemen. I wouldn't have found this out, if not for noticing something odd and then asking the group here.

The troubleshooting guide in the manual doesn't have a row or column for "You bought a fifty year old, used baler with five of the six wedge stops removed..."

Well the guys have you covered on the wedges/restrictors. You do not need to run a set number. You add or subtract them based on what our baling. They stop the material from springing back into the chamber and making the bale looser as the tension would bleed off. In straw I usually ran all the chamber was drilled for, In alfalfa or clover I usually just ran two per side. In timothy grass hay four per side.

You can easily tell if you have too many in. When baling you will get heavy bales that loosening the tension does not make them much lighter. Remove a set or two of the restrictors.

On your banana bales. With an even number of restrictors on each side see how straight your bales look. The pickup side is always going to be a little tighter just because the hay is cut on that side and folded on the outside. on a NH 276 you can easily adjust how the stuffer fingers/arm move the hay into the chamber. Open the door above the twine box. You will see a chain and two sprockets. The chain will have one link with a pin on the side of it. This pin is what the stuffer arm is drive by. Turn your baler over so you can see the stuffer arm/feeder rack. Make sure all your stuffer fingers and springs are good on the stuffer arm/feeder rack. You can see that the middle fingers are mounted on a bracket that can slide on the arm. It has two bolt clamping it to the arm. Loosen the bolt and you can slide the bracket. Looking at the baler from the rear/direction of travel. IF you have too much hay on the right side and not enough on then left you need to move the finger bracket to the right. I know this sound wrong but you want it to get a bigger bit of the windrow to push to the left more. If your bales have too much on the left move the bracket to the left. This will put less hay on the left.

I have a bale loader to keep me from all that walking, which would likely be good for me, if it wasn't so hot.

(quoted from post at 11:58:39 06/23/18) I have a bale loader to keep me from all that walking, which would likely be good for me, if it wasn't so hot.

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Our oldest daughter helped us one day last year. We did about 475 bales. We started picking up at about 4PM and finished about 9PM.

She was wearing a fit bit fitness tracker.

After we were all done, my mother-in-law ran to the local pizza place to pick up pizza, wings and stuff.

We were sitting around in food comas; and our daughter checked her fit bit.

In the five hours of picking up bales, it recorded:

8,000 steps
1,400 calories burned
an average heart rate (for the entire time) of 120

If that ain't a fat-burning workout...I don't know what is...