"Poor Man's Accumulator" Drops Six Bales at Once

"Poor Man's Accumulator" Drops Six Bales at Once BALE HANDLING Bale Handling (31B) 26-1-19 Ron Zumberger, Quincy, Ohio, didn't have enough help to load a bale wagon behind his baler, so he decided the next best thing was a bale accumulator. Trouble was, he couldn't justify the expense of a commercial unit so he built his own. The result is what is calls a "poor man's bale accumulator." Zumberger bought eight 16-ft. lengths of 1 by 3-in. steel tubing and put together a 16-ft. long frame just the right size to fit over the 14 by 18-in. bales from his New Holland baler. "It's long enough to hold five bales," he explains. He put an axle at the center of the frame, taken from an old Ford corn picker. On the axle, he mounted the rear wheels and tires from an Allis Chalmers WC tractor. "I wanted the frame to be about 2 in. off the ground and these wheels and tires, mounted on top of the frame, were just right for that," he says. He says his initial plan was to put stub axles on the sides of the bale frame and use smaller tires and wheels. "I decided, though, that making it heavier and putting the axle above the frame would help assure it wouldn't break down. And since the WC wheels were available, I used those," he says. At the rear of the bale frame, he mounted a door, made of tubing and steel plate. He made a spring-loaded bar latch for it that he can trip with a rope from the tractor seat and a hinge that allows it to open easily and completely out of the way of the bales. "When I pull the rope, the force of the bales against the door pushes it open and the bales slide out," he says. He welded extra weight on the door, so it would be self-closing. When he made the accumulator, he figured it would need flotation wheels at the front to keep the front of the frame from digging into the soil like a plow. "I put them on, but after I had used it awhile, I noticed they weren't needed and I cut them off," he says. Another change he made after having used the accumulator for awhile was adding a flare to the front opening, made of sheets of 1/8-in. steel. "Occasionally, a bale would get crossways in the opening and I'd have to stop and straighten it out," he says. "Since I added the flaring, I haven't had any problems." The rope from the tractor seat to the back of the accumulator runs through a couple of holders on the baler and one on the accumulator. "When there are five bales in the accumulator and one ready to drop from the chamber, I open the door and leave six bales in a line," he says. One tug on the rope opens the door and the weight of the door closes it tight again. He goes through the field later to restack the bales and pick them up with his Bobcat skid loader to stack on wagons or trailers. "It saves a lot of work in picking up bales," he says. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Ron Zumberger, 1353 Co. Rd. 23 N., Quincy, Ohio 43343 (ph 937 585-9147).

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