HAY BALER? NO, A HAY PRESS

Luckily, my press became obsolete before it wore out so putting on a new operator's platform was the major restoration task. Later a safety rail was added. My father, Paul Timmerman, (Mount Pleasant, Iowa) did the restoration of the hay press. Then some one asked who was going to whittle out the wooden blocks. What blocks? It seems that the wood blocks play a major role in dividing the long wad of hay into convenient size cubes. First, at some proper time, known only to the experienced person, the operator quits feeding hay and after watching the bale chamber clean itself out, drops or stands the block on end into the empty bale chamber. The returning plunger strikes the block (hopefully before it falls over) and shoves it into the hay chute just like another wad of hay. This is the division between the previous and next new bale just like wax paper between segments of a taffy candy bar.

Secondly this block must have horizontal grooves on both the front and back side. The grooves are too narrow for the compressed hay to squeeze into but large enough for someone to poke a wire through. (The 14gauged wires left straight are factory precut to about nine feet with an eye twisted on one end. They are packaged in bundles of 500 wires.) The block and wire are moved along the bale chute by the addition of hay behind it. Again, at an exact time known only to a few, another block is dropped in place to start its journey down the chute, the other end of the wire is poked through the groove in the block so both ends stick through to the other side. The person on that side tied the wire, after pulling the end through the twisted eye, forming the bound bale. There were usually just two wires used to bind a bale but sometimes for a super heavy bale such as old paper bales, a third wire was used. Grandfather used red elm wood to make his blocks because they could be bent almost double before breaking. Running out of baling blocks has the same results as running out of wire to tie the bales. My blocks were made of plywood centers with whatever kind of wood used in troop seats for army trucks on the outside.

At last, after the blocks have done their mission of dividing the bales and guiding the tie wires in place, they move along the bale chute with the moving bales and fall free as the completed bales emerge. The blocks are then carried forward and recycled until worn out or broken. If a wire is pushed through on the wrong side, the block will not fall free, but be tied onto the end of the bale very securely. The bale must be broken to release the block and then recycled through the press again.