Swather Forklift Makes Great Bale Handling Rig

Swather Forklift Makes Great Bale Handling Rig BALE HANDLING Bale Handling (31B) 25-4-19 "I like the maneuverability and the up-front visibility," says Robert Sallee, Coffeyville, Kansas, who converted a Versatile 400 swather to handle both small square bales and big round bales. Sallee mounted a forklift mast on the swather. He can fit it with either a 10-bale Farmhand bale grabber or a 48-in. long bale spear. He also bought a pair of used forks for the mast. "I can quickly convert from handling small square bales to big round bales, or just use the rig as a conventional forklift," he says. He had to build a frame to mount the two-stage forklift on the swather. He also narrowed the front axle width from 10 1/2 ft. down to 7 ft., and replaced the single rear wheel with a home-built 2-wheeled walking axle. He added 900 lbs. of weights inside the swather's rear bumper to counterbalance the weight of bales. He made a bracket for the grabber to fit onto the mast just like the forks do. He also made a bracket to accept a 48-in. bale spear. "I use the hay grabber to pick up 10 bales at a time and carry them into the barn. I had been using the grabber on a tractor front-end loader, but I didn't like it because I had to slip the clutch a lot in order to position the load. Also, the bales were too far out in front and I couldn't lift them as high as I wanted. The swather's hydrostatic drive eliminates the need to constantly shift gears and it'll turn around in its tracks. The machine is only 20 ft. long from the nose of grabber to the back end of the swather. "I chose the Versatile swather because it seemed the simplest to convert. The hydraulic pump system on the machine proved adequate for all the added cylinders. All I had to furnish were control valves, hoses, and a cylinder to oscillate the bale grabber." All hydraulic controls including the up and down tilt, movement of the bale hooks, and side movement are hand-controlled using four levers. All ground movement, including steering, is controlled by foot pedals. "I made a pair of levers that can be inserted into sockets on the side of the foot pedals so that I can use my hands to control movement if I want," says Sallee. "This gives me more precise control when loading the machine onto a trailer and also lets me rest my feet when going down the road. "The bale grabber mounts on a 2-in. dia. pivot pin so it will swing to either side. "That way I can drive up to a hay pile without being perfectly lined up and I can slam the bales over tight against the pile when unloading. I can store bales a lot tighter together than I could if I did the job by hand. The two-stage mast will stack square bales 14 ft. high and the spear will raise the center of a round bale 15 ft. high." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Robert D. Sallee, Rt. 1, Box 296A, Coffeyville, Kansas 67337 (ph 316 251-3463).

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