"Endless" Cutterbar Fails On The Job

"Endless" Cutterbar Fails On The Job MOWERS Mowers (31H) 32-4-16 When Harold Gleason read a story in FARM SHOW about an endless chain cutterbar (Vol. 24, No. 1), he thought it made great sense. So he built his own, with a few design changes. The first time he tried it, it worked great. Later, however, he hit a snag. "I finished it in the winter and took it out into a field with some tall hay standing in four to five inches of snow," recalls Gleason. "I dropped it into the snow and started cutting. It sailed through and cut like crazy, leaving the hay laying in the snow." The snag came when he pulled it into a field of green alfalfa later that year. It immediately plugged up. The same thing happened in slough grass and prairie hay. Anything that was green would plug in seconds. "I tried going fast, and then I tried going slow," he recalls. "I pulled out every other section, turned every other section upside down. It didn't matter. I couldn't go a foot without plugging up." Gleason's endless cutter consists of knife sections attached to a conveyer chain. The chain of sections slides through a 9-ft. cutterbar from an old Case mower. After leaving the bar, it runs around a large drive sprocket and then up and over an arch. As it returns to the bar, it goes around a second 8-in. sprocket. Gleason made a U-shaped channel to keep the chain on track through the cutter bar. Everything works smooth as silk, except for the cut. "I still can't believe it won't cut," says Gleason. "I've had different people look at it, and they were all as baffled as me that it wouldn't cut." Gleason is open to suggestions from FARM SHOW readers. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Harold Gleason, 2843 Gleason Dr., Tolna, N. Dak. 58380 (ph 701 262-4584).

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