info on a 594 john deere hay rake.

I just picked up a john deere 594 steel wheel hay rake,I was wondering if someone could tell how they were painted up? was there any red paint on them?what year were they produced? what about decal placement? What is the going price for what they are worth? Its complete and still works.It does have a broken back caster wheel.I gave 75.00 for it.

I still have one that I use every couple of years and it works just fine. Pulled it out of the woods where a previous owner had stored it about 25 years ago. Paint colors on mine are RUST! Good old rake!

Paint: Yellow wheels everything else is green. Never seen one with still readable decals so no clue on decals. I have refurb'd a couple for my own hobby use - pics are on this site if you search altough my refurb's were more about useability than historical correctness.

Value is basically scrap value in most places which puts it in the vicinity of $100 or so give or take a bit range since they weigh somewhere between 1000 and 1100 lbs. No if you happen to live in Amish area you might get $400 (or even more) since yours has steel wheels.

That said, I would not scrap it as you will find it does an excellent job of raking hay as long as you keep tractor speeds reasonable to original design and try not to go too fast.

The 4 bar 594 was roughly produced from the mid-1930's up to the mid 1950's with various options and the 594LW (LW for little wheel or low wheel which has 15" or 16" tires on front instead of the big tall 36" )was the last evolvement.

Lots of info to be found with a simple search for the 594. If you get bored with that then search 553 which was the 3 bar version of same basic rake design and goes back even older. If bored with that then search under Dane whom Deere bought out for their rake line among other things.

Parts fiche is availble on JD parts for free viewing and you can roughly date your rake by comparing casting part numbers for the unique items that changed sligtly over the years. Of course this will assume notihng as been changed but you can usually find multiple unique items to support an approximate date, but it takes some investigation time to do this.