IH Square Balers

[rmcshane]

The recent posts in the main forum made me want to tell about my experiences with the 60's-70's IH baler line.

First, most know I am from a small farm in East IA, near Cedar Rapids. We are not just dedicated IH Cub Cadet people, we also have many IH tractors that help cover our 500 acres. As most young farm kids, I was helping my dad sow oats out of the #5 endgate seeder at the age of 6. I had an ice cream bucket that I used to fill the hopper. We would always use the M or the F-20 to pull the flarebox.

Now, at age 8 it was finally my time to learn how to run the square baler. We have an 826 that we use to pull the 47 baler. Dad bought the baler in the late 80's at a sale for $150 and the knotters needed work (of course). IH balers are a very common machine in our family. My great-grandfather, who is 96, still has the first baler our family owned sitting in the weeds, a #46. My grandfather, 67 years young, started with a 46. He bought it on a sale and got it cheap because the needles were smashed by the plunger. He fixed the saddle for the needles using a flat piece of iron and a car lift. He is our IH baler mechanic, and has taught Dad and I the tricks to fixing these balers. Anyway, after he fixed the needles he got around 500,000 bales out of that baler before he bought a #430. Since then he has 2 #430's in operation and between Dad and Grandpa we still kick out around 3000 bales of straw and around 15,000 bales of hay a year.

A lot of people knock the IH baler knotter system, but in reality it is nothing different from the knotter on a 1940's era PTO driven IH binder. It was a design that was used up till the last series of IH balers (the 425 and 435?) Like anything IH made, it was never mainstream with the rest of the machinery market. The knotters on the 46 and 47 and some early 430's are a two disc design that are only able to run sisal twine. Then the 430's and 440's had the upgraded 3 disc design that was called the ALL TWINE design, which enabled one to use sisal or plastic twine.

It would be interesting to hear some other stories about IH balers anyone may have!

 

[dfrisk]

Great topic RYAN!

Dad got out of the Army in 1945, worked around for a year trying to scrape up money to buy farm equipment to start farming since his Dad and two older brother's all farmed. Spring of '47 he bought a brand new '47 Farmall H and a 50T baler with the CUB engine drive to do custom baling for people who didn't have balers. He drove his new H & baler the three miles home to his Dad's farm and got flagged down 4-5 times by neighbor's making him crazy offers to buy a new tractor & baler for cash since they couldn't buy new equipment but Dad as a veteran could. He declined all the offers.

He did custom baling for 5 years then got his chance to rent 160 acres 50-50 and had to give up baling spring of '52. I think the H got traded for the new '51 M he got Christmas Eve of '51. Dad reinforced the drawbar on that H to withstand the cyclical forces of the plunger of the baler bearing up and down, back & forth on it constantly by welding another complete drawbar under the factory drawbar and made a quick-detach swinging drawbar to match. That drawbar & swinging drawbar are still on the '54 Super H that Dad traded for in 1968 after having it on a '39 H for many years between 1952 and 1968. It's never been broken like was so common on H's & M's that pulled balers. Many have been broken, then patched with a section of a good drawbar, but I've never seen another one with a full drawbar welded on like this one.

Dad also did some work for the local IH dealer as their Baler trouble-shooter & mechanic for a few years back in the late 40's & early 50's too.

Around 1960 Dad was trading help baling with his one neighbor who ran a 55T IH baler with the A/B/C engine power. It was a lot like the 50T, only bigger for more capacity, but the knotters were still the weak link. Some days they'd work good, other days one side or the other would miss every other bale it seemed. Like Ryan says, they were finicky about what brand of twine you ran through them. Some brands just ran better than others.

But between Dad, the neighbor who owned the baler, and one other neighbor we only baled maybe 10,000 bales of hay and 2500-3000 bales of oat straw a year total. About 1970 the neighbor parked the 55T and bought a newer #37 baler, with PTO drive. It was smoother, faster running, but smaller and since it hadn't had so many tons of hay run through it, it tied better. I only remember running it once when Dad & I baled 10-12 acres of 2nd or 3rd cutting hay. We pulled it with the Super H and made about 500-600 bales of hay in an easy afternoon. Think we had three racks we could load up and baled them all full then unloaded them. We had HUGE barns on our farm so never had to mow or stack the hay, just let the bales fall off the end of the bale elevator and rest where they stopped falling. For straw we didn't have as much room so had to stack that but it still wasn't an exact science.

By '71 Dad was getting out of the livestock business, didn't need hay or straw so the baling stopped. Instead of his Corn-Corn-Oats-Hay or HOG crop rotation, it was all corn and beans. About August of '71 I started fall plowing all our hog pastures & hay ground as the hogs came up to the buildings for finishing. By the time the ground froze that fall I had all but three acres of the 160 fall plowed. Those were the three acres where all the hog houses were sitting in the old hog pasture. Before the houses froze down solid to the ground for winter I pried them all up and set them along a fence row out of the way for planting the next spring. Dad was working full time hauling fuel and fertilizer for FS, Farm Services the spring of '72 working 5-6 12 hour days every week so we had to farm pretty fast and furious the day or two we could each weekend. By the end of the summer of '72 we didn't have any hogs and only 6-8 cattle for butcher plus our St. Bernard dog to feed.

The farm was auctioned off in August '72. Dad had 3-4 neighbor's picked out that he felt would buy the place. Somebody from well out of the area and farming bought it and rented it out to someone from out of the area. None of the BTO's, (Big Time Operators) he thought would buy it even bid on it, but they were ALL at the sale. It brought $735 an acre. And the 95 acres about 1/2 mile west of that farm sold for $11,500/acre two months ago.

Dad was working hauling fuel and LP gas for FS the fall/winter of '72 when we moved to the farm they bought a half mile from the home farm. I moved farm stuff my entire winter vacation from my freshman year in college days when Dad was working. When he was home we moved household stuff. His first auction for all his farm equip. was Dec. 10, '72. If you think moving from one house to another house is a lot of work, try moving a "FARM".

 

[rmcshane]

Very cool story Dennis, we have very similar farm backgrounds, only mine is 40+ years later!

Our "farm" consists of 7 small farms that are owned by either my Dad, Grandpa, or Great Grandpa. Great Grandpa graduated from Springville in 1935, and grew up 2 miles south of Springville IA (I grew up on this same farm). He then moved down to what he calls "the bay" (down by the Mississippi, roughly by the Quad Cities) and started farming there. He then moved back to Springville in 1939, bought the farm he still lives at and went to work on the Grand Coulee dam out west. Similar to your story, he had the opportunity to buy 160 acres a mile south of him (which is a 1/2 mile north of my Dad's farm) for $100/acre. This was in the mid 40's, and he was still farming with a team, an F-20, a B, and an H. I think the team was still around to plant corn into the 50's. He had his cows, a few hogs, chickens, the whole crew.

My Grandpa had a similar situation. He started in the early 60's, farmed with his dad on the shares. IIRC in the 1970's a chunk of 80 right next to Great Grandpa's farm was for sale and he bought that. From what I gather he used his dad's equipment until he bought an M that he overhuled, then at least by 1968 he had an 856 custom. He also had two 560 diesels that he bought inbetween there and used until they wore out.

Dad started in 1988 at the farm my GG grew up on. Dad had his Dad's 39 F-20 that he restored and used. '88 was a dry year around here apparently, and he always remembers that his first oats crop brought 100 bu/acre! A few years later he bought the 826 at a farm sale, eventually a 460, and the M. I was born in 1991 and we lived at the farm until 2000 when Dad bought our current farm north of Springville. I remember fondly moving almost everything off the farm, the tractors, the tools, equipment, etc. We still have some of our old equipment down there.

But, I have always told people that we have not technologically progressed like some people. Dad still runs a 915 combine with a 13 ft platform. We still plant 38" rows. Oats are still sown and harrowed in, along with grass seed. We still picked ear corn up till around 2000 with the M and a New Idea mounted picker. We had two building style cribs that we filled and a few wire cribs we filled. Unloading the wagons was fun for me since I was only around 10 at the time. All of our hay and straw we mow is stacked, and to most people that wouldn't be anything to think about, but that is a science in itself. I remember moving the cattle to our 160 for winter pasture and making a square bale haystack. We would line the bottom with barn tin and line the top with tin to keep the weather off. Great Grandpa's B was overhauled in the 60's, got froze up, and we rescued it about 8 years ago and fixed it up. It rakes most of the hay and straw with our #15 rake. We also still cultivate as much as possible with our #468 cultivator on the 460.

Like I always tell everyone, it's like taking a step back in time when you visit our operation! But, I really like it, because how many kids these days can say they have shelled ear corn, or plowed, or ran a square baler, OR say they are still driving the tractor that their Great Grandpa bought? (and say their GGpa is still alive and still FARMING?!)

 

[kmcconaughey]

Here's a few pages from some brochures that I scanned some years back. Steve Blunier owns the actual brochures.

The one above is from a Summer-Fall 1968 brochure. The two below are from a Spring 1969 brochure.

 

[rmcshane]

Kraig- Very cool brochures! The 27/37/47 balers were termed the "high capacity" balers. Dad and I like our 2 because they work perfect in straw. They can handle so much material and still make a nice bale.

The 430 was still the same basic design of its previous counterparts but it seems like it cant handle as much material as the 47.

 

[kide]

Ryan and Dennis: + 1 (Maybe 1000) for both of your posts... Great reading..

edit ... and you too, Kraig!

 

[kmcconaughey]

I don't recall what IH bailer my cousins had but I do know I spent a ton of time behind it on wagons. Also spent my share of time unloading those wagons and stacking hay in the loft. That would have been back in the early to mid 1970's. Here's some more pages from Steve's brochures. The first two are Spring 1971. The bottom one is Summer-Fall 1971.

 

[kmcconaughey]

A better shot of the knotter.

 

[rmcshane]

Kraig- Again, great brochure pictures! That is a mighty fine looking 400 series knotter. It would be neat to find a super low-houred IH baler and see how it performs...or perhaps a 100 percent rebuilt one! (I highly doubt there is such a thing as a super low houred IH baler though...maybe there is in the JD's... )

The next thing of course is loading and unloading, as Kraig mentioned. I have seen many different styles of loading square bales on a rack, and I'm only 21 years old. Since most of our hayfields are in the hills, we have a unique 5-4-4-4-3-1 stack pattern we use to tie the bales together. We have a fleet of racks we use, varying from 14ft to 16ft long. 14 footers can hold an average of 80-90 bales, 16 footers an average of 100 bales. Over the years ironically we have never had an IH running gear for a hayrack. Most brands we tend to stick with are Electric wheel gears with the 5 or 6 bolt pattern, or JD gears wit the 6 bolt pattern. The only piece of equipment I will speak for John Deere on is their running gears. We have at least 6 with racks on them, and they are very heavy duty, pull down the road nice, and require little maintenence. (Like I said, I'm sure others will have opinions).

Since we don't have as many cows as we did when I was younger, we sell lots of our square bales, thus the reason we need good dependable gears for our customers to pull. If we don't sell it, it goes in the barn. I remember as a kid, Dad taught me the safety of running a PTO elevator and how to turn on the PTO on the M. We have a few Kewanee 500 elevators that we use on the farm for hay and straw. A good dependale elevator with little maintenence. A few times my Mom would be on the rack and I would help Dad in the mow. My first time in the mow, I was up there for about 5 minutes...I got stung by a bumblebee. Dad ran over because I was yelping and ripped it off, and he told me to go inside and put baking soda on the sting. Since then I have feared bumblebees, and I'm always alert in the mow for some kind of stingine, flying insect!

Another trick I learned in the mow was to stack properly from my Great Grandpa (who's name is Aubrey). When I was a kid, of course, he was well into his 80's and in the mow. I would let the bales drop from the elevator and push them to him and he would stack them. If we got behind I'd drag one over and push it against the wall-logically saving space. He would get all fired up and say, "Boy, pull that SOB bale away from the wall! You're gonna push the boards off the barn!" Now looking back it makes sense, because if you stack in the mow you want to keep the weight on the FLOOR of the mow instead of the SIDE of the barn...many people never realize that. That goes with stacking anything...wood, hay, etc. That way your stack will not be lopsided and fall over.

This thread brings back lots of memories/stories!

 

[bjamison]

I never baled any hay, but spent a couple of summers on the back of a hay wagon stacking the bales. The baler was a JD 24T and that was a great baler. If JD got one thing right, it was this baler. Later in life, I bought a 14T, but never used it.

I always heard that New Holland had the best balers, but it seemed that the bales suffered from a bananna shape and some ragged edges, whereas the JD (24T at least) punched perfect brick shaped bales.

In my neck of the woods, NH, JD, Ford and MF balers were pretty much the standard - as there simply was not much IH equipment in general around.

Now here is some interesting reads regarding IH knotters and how IH let NH (and others) have the design of their knotter design - if you can believe the threads.

http://www.ytmag.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=implment&th=51592

http://www.ytmag.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=implment&th=134640%3E

 

[dfrisk]

RYAN - It's great that your Great-Grandpa, Grandpa, Dad & you all farm close to each other. Nothing wrong with doing things the "Old Fashioned way". Some of the best ever articles in RPM magazine were written years ago by Brian KROG from up in MINN. who still farmed 600-800 acres with old letter and early number series IH tractors. He picked several hundred acres of corn every fall with mounted IH corn pickers.

Your comments about hay racks & running gears was interesting. Back in 1967 the neighbor bought a new Electric Wheel flare box wagon and some other brand of hyd hoist with two hyd cylinders that straddled the center reach of the wagon gear so the box could be set lower than with a Midwest wagon hoist with the Godbersen link. Dad liked it so well that he bought the same wagon box, hoist, but opted for a 6 ton EWC gear as opposed to the JD gear the neighbor used. Neighbor looked at Dad's new wagon and said he thought the EWC gear was much better made than the Deare. The wagon box was rated 150 bu, and was still able to have two foot of side boards added for picking corn, and the box was wide enough that no Bang Boards were needed, the sides of the EWC box were as wide or wider than a normal flare box wagon with bang boards. I hauled shell corn to town with it a couple times without any side boards and was able to get 10,000# of shell corn in just the wagon box. The tires were the weak link with that kind of weight. With the hoist not having the Godbersen link dumping loads that big was a struggle for the low PSI hyd systems on the old Farmall's, where as they would lift a load at idle with a Midwest hoist in the smaller wagons.

Books I have about balers & knotter design all agree with one thing, when Deering & McCormick, plus several other co's joined to form International Harvester back in 1904, Deering & McCormick both had different designs for their knotters, and IH took the wrong style of knotter, they used the McCormick design, and all the other companies that later made great balers used the Deering design. The McCormick design worked, but was fussy about the quality of the twine used as has been mentioned. To ensure consistent twine and also offer another product to make farmers more productive & profitable, Deering started and eventually lead IH into the Twine business eventually opening up the IH Twine Mill in Chicago, another one in Hamilton, Ontario, and a third one in New Orleans, La. plus one eventually in Sweden, France, & Germany. In 1934 the Chicago Twin mill alone had the capacity to make 30,000 TONS of twine, enough that if stretched into a single strand it would circle the Earth 180 times around the equator.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Twine 1

Twine 2

Twine 3

You know you all had the same thought...

 

[kide]

For those like me who are not as conversant as Dennis in the arcane in's and out's of wagon gear ..... In place of "Godbersen link" Google "bolster hoist", one design of which was designed by Byron Godbersen...

 

[rmcshane]

Dennis- Oh don't get me wrong, Electric wheel gears are very dependable. I would say the 5 or 6 we have are just as good as the Deere gear. A lot of our old flarebox running gears were Electric wheel. We did have one 4 bolt IH gear that was pretty light so it never got loaded to the gills. My Dad did have one Deere gear with a galvanized flarebox on it. A PO must have put 11L-15 tires on it because they were larger than our hayrack tires. It did ok...I'll put it this way...it was pulled behind Grandpas 175 bu Huskee gravity flow box every summer and fall with the 826. It had side boards on it but I think Dad removed them for fear of overloading and breaking the gear on the highway.

One of Deere's biggest flaws on their running gears was the tongue. It was WAY too light for heavy loading, and for the rough banging and beating it took if another was hooked behind it. That's another advantage to the electric wheel. That large thick C-channel frame tongue was very strong.

IMO, Case had the WORST running gear of all. That long spindled mountain top of a running gear was a scary POS in the hills. Grandpa has one...We were on flat ground baling straw one year. I was delivering racks and Dad had a partial load of straw on this Case gear. I noticed the reach was getting kind of low on it...(if anyone has seen a Case gear they know the reach was a very small diameter for a 6 bolt hub). The driver made the turn for the next windrow, and that reach snapped, the back half dug into the ground, flipped the rack up and knocked all the bales off the rack. Dad got bounced off a little bit but wasn't hurt. Bales were everywhere, and the running gear was toast...never have been a big fan of the Case gears, and after that day we vowed to never own another one.

(It was pretty funny to see it crash though, after I found out Dad was ok...)

 

[dfrisk]

GERRY - The Godbersen Link is even mentioned in Byron's obituary on the Midwest Industries web page. It WAS a big deal back when everybody was getting away from not having to shovel off loads of corn, oats, beans, etc.http://www.midwestindustries.com/pages/i_m_byron.aspx

The 1/2 scale hoist Steve B built about a year ago was patterned after the Midwest hoist his Dad has on one of their barge box wagons. At Dad's last auction back in 2006, I drug out a BRAND NEW never raised Midwest hoist that Dad had already bought to go on his new EWC wagon & running gear. I should have bought it. It brought FIVE Dollars.

RYAN - Every new running gear I ever saw had to have the tongue shortened about a foot. Dad always cut them off, over-lapped them and put a couple BIG bolts in them, like 5/8" or 3/4" by short bolts, flat washers, lock washers etc.

We never pulled two wagons at a time very often. With that BIG EWC flare box it was all my Super H could do to pull it around loaded. Back then Our BIG tractor, the 4010-D sat from the time we were done cultivating until it was time to start spring fieldwork unless we fall plowed some ground.

 

[kmcconaughey]

 

[rmcshane]

If only we could get some of that twine for our balers...it seems like the farm store brand we buy has way too much fuzz on it. You run about 500 bales and you have to take 10 minutes to pull the fuzz out of the knotters. Grandpa bought IH twine every now and then and said it never used to be like that...just shows how quality has really dropped off in the last 50 or so years.

 

[jbaker]

You guys need this for your baler twine

 

[kmcconaughey]

 

[aschumacher]

Ryan Mc, It's more than just twine that has had quality issues in the last 50 years ! <font size="-2">Sad but true.</font>