Allis Chalmers baler

Small round baler? What size tractor would have run this? How big a bale? Anyone ever use one?

Picture?

When i was a kid, we had a neighbor that baled straw for my dad, they had a CA Allis Chalmers on it, I am sure it give it a load though! My brother in law baled hay with one,he's got movies of his Super 88 Diesel blowing a little smoke when baling heavy Alfalfa and Brome with it, so i would say any thing in between !

That is a smoking deal those White top balers sell high you need to get it.

pretty much a museum/"collection" piece. they were built starting late 40s. bale was maybe 30#, forerunner of the modern round baler, in operation. I presume they were introduced with the Allis WD (30 hp), the first Allis with live pto, because you had to stop forward motion while the string was wrapping around the bale and discharging.
neighbor farmer lost both arms in one about 1959. he lived for years with metal hooks in place of arms. drove a little F350 cattle truck/ became a cattle dealer.

Introduced back with the unstyled WC and You had to shify out of gear for every bale. And acording to sales lit they would make 80# bales. Never saw one actually working. Back in early 50's neighbor had one he used with the unstyled WC but I never saw it working Last year a friend had a sale and had one, put new tires on and did not bring cost of tires and scrap was high then and it was in working condition. Not a white top tho. There was a special baler disconect pto made for the WC so you did not have to shift either in or out of gear for each bale, very very rare and think was made br Sherman that also made an overdrive for the WC. His tractors did not bring the value of the tires on them.

I knew of a farm about 30 years ago that had about a dozen of those balers and a WD or WD45 to go with each one.

Found a video. Wish that thing was closer......lol. I bet I would buy it!!
Untitled URL Link

Had one. Used it for couple years. Probably work best with AC tractor with high low, power shift.

When I was in high school I worked for a neighbor who had one. We ran it with a WD.

After custom rd baling for over 30 yrs making rd bales over 5 ft in diameter I can't imagine how tiring/boring it would be to disengage clutch/stop then wait for twine to wrap on each of those little hay bundles. Not for me!

Actually, the "unstyled" WC disappeared with the introduction of the "styled" WC in 1939. Allis Chalmers didn't purchase the Lubben round baler patent until 1940 and then did the development on the rotobaler based on that patent. WWII got in the way somewhat. The first roto baler i remember was in about 1946. Both at the dealer lot and on our neighbor's farm. He pulled it with a WC. About two years later, the WD came out and we surmised that the main reason for the WD hand clutch was to make the Roto Baler so much easier to operate.

Had one used it one summer and sold it that fall. Big pain in the back sides to run but one good thing was you could pull it and bale with it behind an A/C B but it takes a lot of messing around and raking the hay just right to doa good bale plus th bales are hard to pick up and stack etc.

Not for us either! Our neighbor had one and we thought it ridiculous at best. Our New Holland 77 could bale 10 bales per minute
when free dropping. It could also push them up onto a wagon. Allis did come out with a bale pickup device that fit on the side of
the tractor pulling the wagon and those round bales would shed water and they rolled right out in front of the cows with no sharp
cut edges. Reportedly, the cows liked them better.

I?d only want one of those for a novelty

Had a few customers who used them here, one pastured some of his hay fields in the winter and he would not have string on them and drop them where they were made, his cows cleaned them up very well by spring, he used a hay head to sweep them up and never stacked them just piled them,, I passed on a very low hour last year production one that had been shed kept unless it was working,, maybe I should have bought it but I let the local ac collector snag it for 100 bucks at a neighbor auction a few years back,

Got one in the shed. My Dad bought it new in 1948, and made hay with it for 40 years. Some folks will tell you that they were no good and a small square baler was better, that?s a matter of opinion. My dad could cut , rake and bale hay till all of his hay was baled, then we would haul it in. Square bales never shed water, and needed to be stored away as quick as they were baled. The round bales shed water, and it didn?t matter much if they took a few showers. We could haul hay in whenever help was available, often on cloudy cool days. Unlike the small square bales, you hauled those in the blistering sun.

We had one in the 1970?s. The attraction was , if bales got rained on , they were still usable. That one does appear to be in great shape. They are very temperamental. Don?t think the bales would sell well. Need two hay hooks to pick up a bale. They don?t stack like a square bale does. The baler does not cross ditches very well. Dad liked it. Built a flat sled to haul and feed if of. That was nice. Ground level loading and unloading.

We baled close to 12,000 bales a year with one when I was a kid, dad bought a later model white top after he wore that one out. I inherited it, it is for sale in South Dakota.

The guy in that video has the hay raked all wrong,need a good size windrow that is raked as wide as the pick up on the baler to make the bale even on both sides.

Between 1961-1969 I baled many a bale with one and I really cant say that I enjoyed it....It was mostly alfalfa and the twine loved to wrap around the press roll...We first used a 1944 model B John Deere on it, then a 1947 model A JD, and then a 460 Farmall diesel...We mostly made 55-60 lb bales with...A WC Allis will pull one...A neighbor lady got caught in one and lost both arms..She was in it for almost half a day before her family found her..They were all at work or at school..

I currently have a late neighbors white top AC baler in the shed thats only baled a little over 1600 bales..

The plunger only ran 60 strokes
a minute

They don t take much HP to pull them but a live pto is really a must. When the pick up stops, you need to stop the tractor while the baler rolls and ties the bale. I worked for a guy that had all of his hay rolled and dropped in the field,we hauled it 6 miles to the barn(and livestock) when we had time. The guy that baled had a Ford (I think)tractor,the AC orange top and one of the first big wheel hay rake in the country. Kenny Ford was his name and he drove a Chevy truck,lifetime bachelor.

I can still hear that Wisconsin air cooled V4.

I never ran the baler, but I've picked up thousands of the bales. We used one hay hook in the left hand. There's a slight hollow spot in the center of the bale ends that your fist will fit into. You push with your fist when you throw the bale. Getting the hook loose from the bale as you pushed was the trick that you had to learn. The wagon needs a rack on both ends. They will stack themselves if you pitch them right. The farm I worked on pulled the baler with a WD45.

There used to be a couple setting in the trees not far from me.

Grandpa I go along with a collectable or hobby machine but they will work and once you understand it you will be good. There a little different. There were lots of options updates on them.

Those balers and a WD45 were a perfect match,I've baled thousands of bales with that combination.Rake the hay right with thick windrows and it would bale a lot of hay an hour.We used a hook in each hand but the hand where you were going to throw the bale the hook didn't have much bend to it.

I have two of those sitting in the fence row. One was a parts machine the other my dad used to use when I was a kid. They weren't that successful because I remember being small and watching my dad run it. That was the first time I ever heard profanities.

(quoted from post at 12:22:50 08/10/19) Those balers and a WD45 were a perfect match,I've baled thousands of bales with that combination.Rake the hay right with thick windrows and it would bale a lot of hay an hour.We used a hook in each hand but the hand where you were going to throw the bale the hook didn't have much bend to it.

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We ran ours behind a WD45 diesel, dad was real particular about his windrows. We used two hooks, used our fist (hook rotated out of the way) and one when picking and throwing, both hooks when stacking. Dad had bought these fancy aluminum hooks once that had a release button to let the hook pivot out of the bale...they worked pretty good. Later we stacked in the field, 13 x 4 on the bottom layer and built a pyramid, something like 304 bales to a stack. I would sweep them up with the hay basket on the Du-All loader and my sisters would stack. In the fall we hired a guy with a chain style stack mover to get them home, he put a chain around the bottom layer so they wouldn't push out...worked pretty slick, but pretty heavy loads back then.

The neighbor years ago was short on help so he square baled his hay on the ground, and then when out after milking and stacked the bales 3 high. Then on the weekends his kids would help him pick up the bales and put then in the hay mow. Unfortunately one time he experienced a long rainy spell before the bales were picked up. These bale DID NOT shed water very good. He later said "the middle bale wasn't too bad." I had an uncle who used a roto baler and an all crop combine, but he died young and I can barely remember him or his machinery.

Many ranches in the Nebraska sandhills use them today. One baled 20 to 30 thousand bales and leaves lay. Cows will dig through the snow and clean them up.

Then my little pea size brain would wonder why not utilize a rd baler that makes a lot larger bale with no twine/net applied to bale & then not have to stop that frequent & get a lot more tons of hay baled in same amount of time. I guess OLD HABITS die hard

We used to leave the last cutting in the field baled in the small round bales sometimes they can be baled very tight,usually when the cows got into a bale they would usually finish it off before
starting on another one.Made for very little wasted hay.

I have seen one with power unit on it so wouldn't need tractor with pto.

I ran a rotobaler for 6 years earlier in life. They were difficult to get set right but, once they were you could get along alright. Can't imagine running one without a hand clutch. The white top baler was a fast tie and used less twine than the orange top. We always used one hay hook. Hooked the tight end of the bale, pulled it up passed your knees, rehooked it in the middle of the bale and used your leg to help throw it up on the wagon. Always stacked on a wagon with the tight end out. Had to stack them right in the barn or they could push the sides out.

My Uncle pulled his with a Farmall H.

Here you go you can try it before you buy it. I have one of these somewhere

I also have the 1/16 scale version
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Nice toys! I'm slowly building a collection

I had both a Farmal H and John Deere B's and that H shur would have been a lot easier doing the clutch and shifting for each bale.

Thanks I started in grade school and never stopped

The guy Dad worked for when I was a kid had one, so yes, I'm 'experienced'. First: I hope you are merely idly curious and not seriously thinking of trying to make feed for livestock with one. A Roto-Baler is a fun gadget to fiddle with IF you are baling someone else's hay on someone else's land and there's someone standing by with a real baler to finish up after you get tired of playing with your toy.

THE THEORY: It was about a half-step between loose hay and square bales. Cheap to buy (I assume, as all AC machinery was lightly built), cheap to run (used binder twine instead of the heavier baler twine), and you really needed an AC tractor with hand clutch and live pto to run one properly. Any regular tractor would destroy your clutch leg (and the clutch disk). Later models were designed so you didn't have to stop- the hay was sort of recirculated while the wrapping was in process, but that was very late and farmers had had enough of the whole concept by then.

You had to rake two windrows side-by-side or else try to weave on a single windrow to make tight, straight bales. Weaving was almost impossible with such an ungainly hookup. In decent hay you couldn't get side-to-side fast enough to get an even feed before a (cone-shaped) bale was made.

I guess the bales might shed water to a degree, but you have to make many, many more of them so I suspect the actual spoilage in tons was about the same. Perhaps greater as it was impractical to put the bales in a barn, so they were stacked outdoors, if at all.

You can see in the video someone else linked how the thing 'operates' when it isn't trying to eat its own belts or wrap twine or hay around the rollers (congratulations to the editor!). Another poster also correctly mentioned the hay in that clip is not raked properly. Getting the proper twin windrows meant raking one windrow against the direction the crop was mowed, which usually doesn't work very well, unless you had a mower and a rake that each cost more than the baler (but you're a roto-baler owner, so of course you had neither).

THE REALITY: This machine taught more boys (and probably not a few girls) more words than any other machine in the history of agriculture. I vividly recall coming over a hill and, just before tractor and baler came into view, seeing a ball of binder twine arcing up into the air. In the linked video, you see the pickup stop and the twine arm drop. The last of the hay was supposed to carry the end of the twine into the chamber to wrap the bale. You also see the operator tossing some hay in to 'help' the twine when this didn't happen- which was pretty often. We don't see that bale, but it would have twine on maybe half of it. Not real safe, having to quickly hop off the seat with the pto running.

Once your 'baling' was done, there was the small matter of getting it off the field and into some kind of storage. As others stated, some guys would leave bales for the cows to pick over, but I grew up in an area where we made more than one cutting per season and we also wanted to cut hay the next year in the same field. A small heap of rotten hay was no fun to mow through, so we picked up the bales- even if they got rained on.

The bales are comparatively light, which was a small advantage when our baling 'crew' consisted of Dad, scrawny 9-year-old me, and my 10-year-old brother. Dad worked for an old cheapskate- when Dad would mention maybe updating some equipment, he would retell his story of selling apples on a street corner during the depression. But I digress. The total tonnage of hay is the same, no matter what kind of bales you make, so actually more work because more bales. Over time, we developed a system that made it doable:

The key was doing the least lifting possible. Dad built a sled out of a couple tree trunks about 24 feet long. Some sort of backstop on the rear but I don't recall details. Driver drove the sled as close to the bales as possible. With a longer hook than used with square bales, you could stab the end of a bale and drag it onto the sled. Sometimes a step or two off, but a dirty look at the driver got you closer to the next bale. Stack 4-5 bales high. When the sled was full, you went to the stack, which was long rather than high. Way too much work trying to make a tall stack of such loose, irregular bales. Stack the bales about 4-high- whatever you could reach from the ground- then a layer of plastic sheet and another row on top. A grown man doesn't really need a hook to handle the bales- the centers are soft, so you just grab the 'harder' out layer and it's easy to do what you want. It was a bit less work as you were mostly moving the bales sideways, not throwing them up.

Best thing that happened was my brother and I got big enough to handle square bales- square bales from the horrible old IH baler we had. I don't remember what model it was, but it had a huge flywheel and twine boxes on either side of the bale case which was a handy place for a kid to ride and tie the (many) knots the baler missed. But that's another story...

That's a great story,well told too. Lucky for me ,I guess is that baler is in MO and I'm in Alabama. Too far to go for a project.... What I should do is print a picture of that baler and this story and tack em on my shop wall .......just is case!! Lol.

(quoted from post at 14:12:34 08/12/19) That's a great story,well told too. Lucky for me ,I guess is that baler is in MO and I'm in Alabama. Too far to go for a project.... What I should do is print a picture of that baler and this story and tack em on my shop wall .......just is case!! Lol.

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n video, it sure looked like it was leaving a lot of hay on the ground.

You run enough bales thru them you get good at fine tuning them...no matter what people think, AC sold a lot of them!

My Uncle taught me to kick the H out of gear without
using the clutch to finish each bale. Put it back in
gear and move on after it dumped the bale.