Vintage Hay Binder

[Handstitched]

G'Day from Western Australia,

I recently had the challenging task of restoring the canvas components for a vintage haybinder.

I have never done anything this big before. The only canvas type jobs I have ever done is horse rugs. If I was asked a few years ago, I would have flat out refused. But I was up for the challenge.

I was approached by the client a few months ago.( it doesn't take long for people to know that I have industrial sewng machines....in fact, I think I'm the only one) Anyway, she said that she ( and the association she belongs to) got a quote from one person/company in the city, which she thought was too high....and so did I. After some number crunching, I was able to give her a price and I got the job.

It pays to look after the locals

For those who don't know what a hay binder is, I'll attach some pics. But basically, its a vintage farm implement which is operated and pulled behind a ( vintage) tractor, that cuts the hay , rolls it into a bundle,( along canvas conveyers) ties a piece of twine in the middle and spits it out the back...and 'hay' presto, you have a 'stook' . And just to point out, its actually 12oz loom state...not canvas.

The only part/parts of the binders that are leather, are the bindings that are stitched along the edges of the canvas, and the straps (with buckles) to secure both ends together.

It took quite a while to do, as I was asked to re-use the original timbers. Some were OK....some were not!! The client had some spare timbers....thankfully. But I still had to remove the old copper rivets, de-nail etc. and prepare them for use.

After a bit of blood, sweat....(and a bit of cursing), I got them done, they were fitted this morning and work well after a few teething problems with the old machine .But just needed a few additional eyelets fitted to the canvas..

You can have a look here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40990121@N05/8107780303/in/photostream/

Theres a few other pics too, have a look.

All the best,

HS

[katsass]

Handstitched: A little recitation of my younger days, just for the fun of it. That rig is newer that one i helped operate back in '53 and '54. At that time, my folks owned an alfalfa 'ranch' which I would work on from morning 'till dinner time. I'd catch a couple of hours of sleep then join a couple of friends and work for other hay farmers, either hauling the baled hay from their fields or, in this case, getting the hay from the field to the stationary baler on his property. We EARNED or spending money either way. i don't know how it's done 'down under' but in the U.S. the treatment of hay is done differently depending on the region of the country. In our area hay ended up in compacted rectangular blocks of field product (bales), held together by either a special twine or 'baling' wire (which could be, and was, used for all sorts of quick repairs on anything that we could imagine). For the job on this particular farm, the hay was cut by a horse drawn sickle-bar mower, with a bar of about 6 foot in length. We'd follow with wide hay rakes and rake the cut product into narrower snake-like mounds called windrows. The hay would then sit in the field to dry to the proper moisture content. When dry enough, we'd just fork sections of the windrow into a horse drawn hay rick (wagon) and transport it to the stationary baler. That thing was a mechanical monster, driven by an old hit-n-miss gasoline engine. The "POP, pop pop pop, POP" of it's sound set up a rhythm to which we worked. Hay was forked into a vertical chute, but you had to be in time with things because a ram (or 'Chinaman' as we called it) would forcefully stuff the hay down into a square compression chamber (I broke more than one pitchfork in my time from poor timing with the Chinaman) in which another ram would then force the hay against a pair of wires clamped to provide tension. As more hay was fed in, the wire was automatically released to allow the bail to grow in length. When the bail was long enough, the operation was stopped, wire cut and hand tied around the finished bale. This tying was always done by the farm's owner because if twisted too tight, the wire would break, ruining the bale - - if too loose, the bale would fall apart, again a ruined bale and lost effort. The final act was to move the 100 to 120lb bale to a different location, and stack it with others for sale. It was a bunch more work than when on our own place, to harvest this old man's hay. We had mowers attached to tractors, rakes attached to tractors and the automatic tying baler was pulled through the field by a tractor. All that was left for hand work was loading the bales from the field and transport them to a haystack, by truck. Things are different now, everything done by one machine, including stacking the bales, and I doubt that many on this forum remember 'the old days'. Mike

Edited October 21, 2012 by katsass

[BondoBobCustomSaddles]

I do Mike. I was a little young to be really helpfull on my Uncle's farm, but; he had a bailer that used wire also. His, however; had a board with two grooves in it that was put in between the bales and when it was time to tie it, you put two precut wires through the grooves and then it would continue on down the chute to the mechanism that tied them. Or at least that is the way I remember it. That was back in 50-51. I was about 7 and even though my dad had moved to the "city", he still went back up to the family farm to help the family during harvest time. As I remember it, a good time was had by all!

Bob

[Northmount]

There is a lot of confusion over what is hay and what is straw and the implements used for each. Hay is cut green, usually while the plant is in bloom, or just before, while there is lots of tender leafy green foliage. The plant most commonly used today is alphalfa. Some ranches/growers will use blends of grass, sweet clover and alphalfa. Soil and moisture conditions influence the grasses that may be selected. In the old days, the hay is cut, raked into windrows, allowed to dry, then forked onto a hay rack, then moved to a location to be stacked. The hay was then rolled off the hay rack onto the stack. Binders could be used in this process but was not typical in the North American west. Today, self propelled swathers are used to cut and windrow the hay in a single operation. A conditioner may be tagged onto the swather to help condition the hay so it dries better. Then it is baled and stacked.

The binder was used to cut and bind grain crops. The wheat, barley, oats, rye ... field is cut when the grain seeds are nearly or fully mature. Cut too late and the grain falls from the heads and gets left on the ground. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaper-binder provides a few of the details of the binding process. The binder cuts the standing grain, bundles it into sheaves about 8" in diameter and ties the sheave with one loop of binder twine. Binder twine is maybe 1/8 the diameter of baler twine since it does't have to hold any amount of tensile stress. Some binders had a small platform on the back or the side to collect a number of sheaves. The binder operator would trip the platform to dump a pile of sheaves when the platform was full enough.

That would leave a pile of sheaves askew on the ground. A farm hand would follow the binder, and set the sheaves up in a stoke so it could dry, and if there were rain or snow storms, the heads would not be on the ground and could dry out again. On threshing day, teams of horses and wagons and farm hands would pitch the sheaves onto the wagon and take it to the threshing machine, usually located near the center of the field. The sheaves are the pitched into the threshing machine where the grain is separated from the straw and chaff.

Hay is cut green and has lots of protein. Straw is the stalks left over after threshing or combining a grain crop. Straw is golden yellow and ages to a lighter yellow. Hay ages to a dark nearly brown. Straw has no protein and is nearly useless as an animal feed. It is usually used for bedding. During droughts, straw may be mixed with hay to make the hay go further, but you won't fatten your cattle this way. They will survive, hopefully long enough to get back to better climate conditions.

Anyway, whether you wanted to know or not, that's how a binder was used, and the difference between hay and straw.

Tom

[Northmount]

And back to topic, great job rebuilding the binder canvas. Used to see quite a few when I was a kid. People often stored the canvas in a shed or barn over winter, to the next harvest season. Saw lots of mouse holes and nests! So getting them ready for use often required patching if the holes were to big, and treating the leather with neatsfoot oil.

[Handstitched]

Thank you very much. I enjoyed making them, and I am happy with the end result..... for my first binder.

Theres some very interesting reading there too, I enjoyed reading it.. Theres not a great deal of difference in how crops are harvested here in Oz, and the US.

Harvesting started approx 3-4 weeks ago. Some start sooner, and some later. Most of the crops out my way are oats, wheat, canola ( some call that rape seed) and lupins. Canola gets harvested much later when its dry. But most of the harvesting is completed before Summer kicks in.Theres often harvest/machinery bans during Summer as it becomes too dangerous, because of the risk of machines starting fires. I have seen the end result of a harvesting during a ban, it ain't pretty !!

The hay is cut while its green, left to dry for a while , and then baled up when the moisture content is right. Theres the standard small bales (mostly sold & used locally and sold to farm/feed suppliers etc. ), large round bales, and the large rectangle, those are mostly for export. Its not unusual to see numerous B double sem'i chock full of large square bales heading to the hay plants.

We give them a wide berth. Some look like they're about to fall over sideways, they are that full.

But anyway, back on topic. To dye the leather bindings, I modified an old paint roller tray, no room in my workshop, so I did them outside. I pinned the tray down on the ground with tent pegs , and with the help of my Mother ( thanks Mum), I passed them through a tray half filled with dye, and then hung them up to dry in my workshop. I did the same for the oil. It worked great.

'Necessity is the Mother of invention'

Thank you once again, and I hope I get the chance to do another hay binder.

All the best,

HS

[Northmount]

Good way to do the dye job. Else you would need a vat or something like it, plus a lot more dye.

I've often kept tabs on the Aussie fires. My wife's family emigrated to southern Alberta, Canada in 1951. From Adelaide and Melbourne. She has really curly hair so I tease her about being an abo, even though all her ancestors hail from England.

Tom

[Woodyrock]

I rebuilt one of these rigs for the FerryMead museum in Christ Church, New Zealand about 1975. The canvas had been stored inside, so was in good order, but the machine had been in the weather for many years, and I replaced all the wood. It was a horesdrawn rig.

Woody

[Sharon Rosemary]

Welcome!In fact, some of the problems you can find the answer on Google.

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