Posted by Richard Hare on October 05, 2012 at 15:45:41 from (199.243.31.19):
This is an update on the old McCormick-Deering binder I was working on last winter.
It was made it seems in about 1923 -25. For the last 60 years or so, it has sat in the bush at the side of a field, and had slowly sunk into the ground. The platform and cutter -bar were 4" underground. Dug it up and pulled it into the yard to see if it was fixable. Although this was the oldest binder of the four sitting there, it looked in the best condition. The others were later enclosed gear or PTO types, but were more mashed up, with a tree falling on one of them. It seems this one Wanted to be brought back to life. Nearly all the nuts undid quite easily after a shot of WD-40, and after a wire brushing nuts could be screwed back on with the fingers.
Some parts were pretty well rusted up, and these needed some heat and hammering /prying to get them working. The knotters held out the longest, as I didn't want to hit them! Anyway, in time they freed up, and I tripped the mechanism a couple of times and it tied both times!
Nearly all the wood needed replacing, except two top rollers, that just needed a splice to fill in where they had rotted. It was a bit like a archaeological dig at times, as I had to figure what the wood looked like by the stains on the metal! Anyway, I got all the wooden bits made in time, including four rollers. These I turned out of larch or poplar, and had them drilled for the stub shafts at a local machine shop. I was worried about the poplar, but it worked very well and seems like it will be fine for the small acerage I plan on doing. Canvases I got from Norm Macknair (Thank You!)and they were a very good fit, and nothing needed further squaring for them to run true. We were going to cut some wheat with it, but hail had chopped it down pretty well, so did a patch of oats instead. For a start, it was ramming far too much material into the bundle/sheaf before it attempted to tie, but after a few adjstments and getting the twine disc and tension right it, tied very well, It's an 8-foot ground drive, but was no problem at all, the knife ran smooth and didn't get blocked at all, even in a heavy layed patch with second growth. I had been warned that ground drive was a bad idea, but for the small patch I want to do, (4 or 5 acres) it worked better than I could have wished! The crop wasn't that heavy, as it too had been hailed, but going by what I combined, it produced about 75-80 bushels an acre. For some reason I got a lot out of gettint this old machine running again...very satisfying. Please pardon the long post.
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