Owatonna Swather Makes Great Compost Turner

Owatonna Swather Makes Great Compost Turner SWATHERS Swathers 30-3-26 Hydrostatic drive swathers work great as compost turners because you can spread the wheels out without worrying about drivelines. "If I was doing it again, I would put orbit motors into steering wheels too to make it four wheel drive so it could go through anything," says Bill Kleinschmit about the self-propelled compost turner he built out of an Owatonna 260 swather. Making the unit largely with parts from discarded equipment and scrap cost him less than $5,000 out of pocket. That included buying the used swather for $3,000. After stripping away the header, he raised and stretched the swather. He needed it to straddle an 8-ft. wide, 4-ft. high windrow of compost with room to spare. "I made new rear legs out of 4 by 4-in. steel tubing and attached them to the swivel wheels and frame," says Kleinschmit. "I had the local metal shop fabricate leg extensions for the front wheels to give the frame an extra 2 ft. height and width clearance." On Owatonna swathers, the legs are attached to pipes that slip into a sleeve attached to the frame of the swather. This provides added rigidity and maintains leg alignment. To get an extra two feet between the wheels, Kleinschmit added 1-ft. extensions to each leg pipe. "The compost roller itself was made from sheet metal rolled and seamed into 20-in. diameter drums that I welded together," explains Kleinschmit. "I cut steel plate picked up at a junkyard to fit for ends and welded it in place." The steel plate provided a stable surface to mount a drive shaft and sprocket to one end and a support shaft to the other. Bearings for the shafts were mounted to lift arms made from 4-in. steel tubing. The lift arms themselves were connected by a 5-in. pipe, which in turn was fastened to the swather frame by pillow blocks. Header lift cylinders from an old combine were mounted to the frame and the arms to provide vertical lift for the compost drum. Pieces of sheet metal were welded to the drum like flighting on an auger to throw compost toward the center of the windrow. To drive the roller, Kleinschmit mounted a gearbox off an old Oliver windrower on the motor and used it to redirect power to the drive sprocket mounted on the compost turner drum. A #60 chain drives the sprockets. If rebuilding the turner today, he would upgrade the drive chain to a #80 chain. Kleinschmit built a roof shield over the turner to protect the driver from flying compost and to keep it in the windrow. "At 300 rpm's, the compost would be thrown 10 to 15 ft. in the air without the shield," says Kleinschmit. "In some cases, I have to go back in and turn it a second time to try and cool it down. I've seen it heat up 30 degrees within minutes of being turned the first time." He would be interested in building similar units for others if they would provide the self-propelled swather. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Bill Kleinschmit, 56048 Highway 12, Hartington, Neb. 68739 (ph 402 357-2217).

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