What is it about balers ?

[Scooby]

Err, excuse me but the clue is in the decal !!!
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/McCormick-Int ... 3aa91bd7be

[Guest]

Bit before McCormick isn't it? International Harvester more like. What was the difference between the B45 and B46? A now retired rather elderly farmer friend who used to be an IH fitter and then salesman said that the 46 was the better baler, he was so impressed with it himself that he bought one for himself for his own farm, probably at a good discount no doubt.

[John_Allen]

The B45 was a really slow baler compared to the B46 - I seem to remember that it had a much smaller flywheel and the drawbar was crude (if memory serves you had to move the tractor's drawbar). I can't remember exactly if the B46 could handle poly string - the 45 certainly couldn't but I seem to remember that my friend used his 46 with poly before he bought a 440 in the 70s.

If memory serves, the 440 was sold about four years ago for about what this bloke wants for his B46!

This is a B45:



McCormick was around at the same time as IH - I remember my late father saying he drove a McCormick when he helped a parishoner one haytime - the tractor was a B250 or B275 but the badge said "Mccormick International", though the McCormick was smaller and above the International.

[Guest]

I always thought that the ones that bore the McCormick name were red and white, or off-white and later than the 45 and 6 which were all red.

[Scooby]

The B45 was a very slow baler but of course they all were in those days. The B46 was quicker and made a lovely bale. The B47 was a really quick baler in it's day but if it wasn't rowed up nicely you sometimes had a job to make a decent bale. People were rowing up hay in those days with Acrobats and the trailed version like Bamfords. The Haybob type of machine was brilliant when it appeared.

But I had one customer who used a "side delivery rake" (was it a Nicholson) and that made quite a nice row. But it was a bit slow and he had to have a good head start or I could catch him up. They tended to lose tines at an alarming rate and my nice sharp knives didn't think much to that !!

[Guest]

When my Father started farming his own farm we used a 30D bought from the local D.B dealers for £25, it was 4 years old, cut the grass for silage and hay with a Bamfords trailer mower, turned and strolled in the grass with a Lister Blackstone side delivery rake and a nearby relation would bring up his Allis Chalmers Rotobaler and bale the hay, we then had to follow the baler to tie the string off on the bales and to stop them rolling away on the slopes and unwinding the string as they went. That set of machinery for hay was employed for several years until we bought a new white 880, £815, a Lely 'spider' turner from a farm sale, which was a heavier type of Acrobat and the baler became a Welger AP45, what an upgrade! I can't really remember the mower, I seem to think we borrowed a neighbours New Holland saucer mower, whizzler I think it was called.