Clothes Rack Bale Mover FARM HOME Clothes 28-1-17 Rodney Smith moves hay bales with discarded clothes racks. He got the idea after watching his hired man drag bales from one end of the haymow to another. When his wife, who manages a clothing store, brought home several sets of old clothes racks that had been replaced by new styles, he quickly found a use for them. "It struck me that they could be converted to bale carriers," says Smith, who is a retired USAF Lt.-Colonel. Rather than putting wheels on them, he decided to hang them from an overhead track normally used for sliding barn doors. He mounted 65 ft. of track to the ceiling and just a couple of feet from either side wall of the barn and running the length of the mow. The clothes rack frame he used consists of 1-in. angle iron perforated for adjustable shelving. The rack is 49 in. long and 49 in. high. A single bar runs along the top. Smith wrapped 3/4-in. iron straps around each end of this bar and bolted the ends to rollers hanging from the tracks. Smith cut and bolted a plywood board to the bottom of the rack to act as a floor. Two boards bolted to the backside of the rack hold them in place. There's just enough room for two bales to set on the unit. Smith says that one man loading bales at one end of the track can give the cart a shove, and it slides all the way to the other end of the barn where a second man can unload it. With a shove, the bale cart returns for its next load while the delivered bales are stacked. Hauling bales out of the barn is just as easy. "Anybody living near a discount clothing store may be able to pick up similar clothing racks," says Smith. "Or you can build a cart to handle as many bales as the track weight limits can handle." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Rodney Smith, Lt. Col., USAF Ret., P.O. Box 88, Dayton, Tenn. 37321 (ph 423 775-9036).

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