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Modifications Solve Bale Basket Problems
The EZ-Trail Bale Basket on David Skornia's farm works much better, thanks to some modifications he and his employee, Bob Gibson, made to the unit.
The Boyne City, Mich., man purchased the bale basket new, and although he liked the unit overall, he found several ways to improve upon it.
Skornia found tha
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Modifications Solve Bale Basket Problems BALE HANDLING Bale Handling (31B) 29-1-35 The EZ-Trail Bale Basket on David Skornia's farm works much better, thanks to some modifications he and his employee, Bob Gibson, made to the unit.
The Boyne City, Mich., man purchased the bale basket new, and although he liked the unit overall, he found several ways to improve upon it.
Skornia found that the unit's gate didn't always stay latched when it was supposed to, and he didn't like having to stop to get off to unlatch it when it was full. The rig was also top-heavy and unstable on hills with just two wheels under it. In addition, the design of the basket had a sharp angle, so the bottom bales would sometimes bridge and become distorted from the weight of the bales on top.
"To solve all these problems, we removed the back of the basket and added a walking tandem axle so that four wheels would replace the two. We also added two feet of length to the basket size to increase capacity by 20 bales," Skornia says. "There's a little wider dimension between the wheels for better stability, and we installed a flat 2-ft. bottom on it which is hydraulically controlled from the tractor cab."
When the basket is full, he activates the hydraulic cylinder which tilts the floor down. This releases two latches on the rear gate, and the load is free to slide out. All of this can be done in one motion without stopping to empty the basket."Once it's empty, you use the stack of hay that you just dumped to back up into, and it pushes the gate into the closed position," he explains.
Skornia uses the hydraulic lever to raise the floor back into the level position, and he's ready to go again.
He also extended the chute that delivers the bales into the basket and added a 180? loop of smooth pipe that's an extension, onto the existing bale chute.
"This alleviated a problem that we had with the original machine. Bales would sometimes catch as they fell into the basket. By putting on this round extension, there were no sharp corners that would catch the twine," he says.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, David Skornia, 06028 Zenith Heights Rd., Boyne City, Mich. 49712 (ph 231 582-9944; fax 231 582-2046).
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