Baler wire to twine tie?

Found a decent Deere 214 square baler for my small equipment collection but it is wire tie. Would it be hard to change to twine? You would
need knotters, needles and twine box. Any other parts? I am going to pass on it but just wondered if it would be possible and how hard it
would be? I have never been close to any wire tie balers. Tom

Call Finger Lakes Equipment at 585-526-6705. He could answer all questions and most likely have any parts you may be lacking.

I'm thinking the biggest challenge might be where and how to mount the insulators in place of the rollers.

Dude, why wouldn't you want wire?
We run an Ih old wire tie, 47 ?, on the 880 Oliver.
Been rebuilt, but sure is nice to have wire around. no mice cutting here.
Just playing, adding my thoughts >GG Wes

I'm sure you could do it if you were serious. We have a 430W International, it will make a nice tight wire 50 lb.. bale. Never missed unless wire snarls at end of spool. Only downside is the wire cost. Out coop charges $180 per wire bale. Mite be higher this year.that worked out to be , $1.00 a bale
And a roll weighs 100 lbs. Hard to put in without messing up the box. And if box is to messed up you are sol.

I have an old wire tie 214 w/s. I was told the w/s meant wire/string. Dunno. I really like the wire tie bales. kelly

Tom, I sold one 30+ years ago to a good friend as a spare baler. I don't has been used since. I counld ask if he would sell the knotter. The sheep people here used wire balers until about 20 years ago.

In my area you could not give a wire tied bale away.

That's all Dad used in the late 50's was a wire tie New Holland Bailer. It seamed to work good. Wire may be more expensive now, Stan

I have a personal preference for twine tied bales as far as me using the bales. I don't know why, but wire tied bales seem to sell for a little more. If I was selling many bales, or handling each bale a bunch of times, then I'd rather they were wire tied.

Aa far as converting a baler over, there is to many balers of each kind around to do that. You want a wire tied, buy a wire tied. You want a twine tied, buy a twine tied. I'm not saying one couldn't be converted over. I just wouldn't mess with it.

I had a wire tie IH 47 baler. IH always knew how to make a wire tie baler work but until they went to the All Twine knotters on the 440 and 430 balers their twine knotters were problematic at best. To the point a lot of 37 and 47 balers had All Twine knotters retrofitted. My 47 baler was worn out - lots of slop in all the bearings and even the wedges were worn near smooth in the bale chamber - finally replaced them when I couldn't get a heavy bale no matter how much tension I put on it - everything was worn so smooth the hay just slid through. But in complete reversal of most IH balers I've been around - that thing ALWAYS tied. The only issue I would had was it was very picky about splicing the rolls of wire together - if you take the bales broke by the splice not feeding through I would run a couple thousand bales a year through it and not break a bale.

We eventually sold it - should have kept it as a backup. The 47 and older models were SLOW going through the field and some of my brome fields put out a lot of hay - to the point even with windrows less than a rake's width apart they were so big they barely fit into the pickup - and then you had to creep along riding the clutch to allow the baler to keep up - my old 350 farmall just wouldn't go that slow at PTO speed. It worked much better with an Allis D17. I would imagine a John Deere 214W to be similar to the 47W in capacity and operation.

I hauled some wire tie out of the field as a kid, No different from string. Some old timer told me he was happy to see the wire baler go. It seems no matter how well he kept the cut wire gathered up some still found its way onto the field and pieces into cows. I haven't heard of hardware disease in a Long Long Time, thanks to String tie hay I am sure. I suppose the modern day equivalent would be plastic net wrap. I have read of Rumens being found full of it.

Some did work good and some John Deere were known for when tying to leave a cut 2 inch long piece at each end of bale and many a cow ate that piece of wire. That is why here in dairy country at that time everybody quit using wire and went to twine. Even the hay buyer that would by standing hay in field and cut and baled it switched over to twine.

Leroy
JD sq balers that were notorious for leaving short pieces of wire when tying bales were the model 114W & 116W balers that used tying boxes instead of twister hooks to wrap the wire.

(quoted from post at 22:24:45 03/01/23) Dude, why wouldn't you want wire?
We run an Ih old wire tie, 47 ?, on the 880 Oliver.
Been rebuilt, but sure is nice to have wire around. no mice cutting here.
Just playing, adding my thoughts >GG Wes

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My experience is baling wire today isn't as good of quality as of yrs gone by. I've owned several different model JD wire tie sq balers in the last 35 yrs of custom baling hay. Plus last I heard baling wire had escalated in price to $165 per box.

Tom
Yes a JD wire tie baler can be converted to twine tie if all parts needed for conversion are readily available.

(quoted from post at 15:30:11 03/01/23) Found a decent Deere 214 square baler for my small equipment collection but it is wire tie. Would it be hard to change to twine? You would
need knotters, needles and twine box. Any other parts? I am going to pass on it but just wondered if it would be possible and how hard it
would be? I have never been close to any wire tie balers. Tom

Click to expand...

What's a 214 baler look like? My next door neighbor has had an old junk Deere baler with the knotters intact sitting by the road for about a year. He put it there in anticipation of scrapping it. I'm in NY986's neck of the woods (Western New York).

That reputation has killed the market for any wire tie. I
don't know if Moline or McCormick did the short piece or not.
I just know for years if a wire tie came up for auction it
went for junk price.

Thanks for all the replies. I have to many part done projects to take on this one but wondered about if it could be done. Soon I hope to post some pics of the 95 combine project. Tom