[AT] Left or right combines?

[Dudley Rupert]

Charlie -

This thread on riding the back of a combine sacking grain brings back hot,
sweaty and "dirty" memories!!

I spent the summers of 59 & 60 working on a farm in the Willamette Valley
roughly 75 miles south of Portland, Oregon.  One of the last jobs I did in
early September before heading back to school was riding the back of a
combine for a couple of weeks sacking sugar beat seed.  The beat seed had
been swathed in windrows a couple of weeks before we started combining.

The beat seed from the combine was routed into a homemade hopper that looked
something like a hammer mill with an inverted Y at the bottom of the output
pipe.  My job was to continually "lift and drop" the sack while it was
filling from one side of the inverted Y.  The object of this was to get all
the sacks as close to 90 pounds as possible - why the Elevator made such a
big deal out of all the sacks being uniform I don't recall.  Anyhow, while I
was doing this lift and drop routine the owner's wife was tying off the full
sack on the other side of the inverted Y.  She used a needle maybe six to
eight inches long which pulled a burlap string.  Her stitching looked like
the "spiral" on a spiral notebook.  As I recall it when she got to the end
she would run the needle back about half way going over and under the
"spiral threads" and then pull it tight.  I don't know what you call this
stitch and knot routine she did but I don't remember ever having a problem
with any sack and she did hundreds of them.

Once she had finished the stitching I would stop the lift and drop routine
long enough to pick up the full sack and sit it to the back of the platform.
I would then go back to my routine and she would attach an empty bag back on
the inverted Y and when my sack was full we would trade places.  At the end
of the row I would drop/kick the bags off.  Combining sugar beat seed was
the "dirtiest" farm job I ever did ... nothing else was even close.  And, of
course, it had to be hot and sweaty too!

Dudley
Snohomish, Washington

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com]On Behalf Of charlie hill
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 7:23 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Left or right combines?

My grandfather had an old combine that he pulled with a Big M Farmall.  I
don't remember much about it except that it was an I-H (it was red) and
there was a platform on the back and a bagger.  The man on the back filled
burlap bags (with soybeans the day I remember being there when it was
running) and threw them off on the ground to be picked up and loaded on a
truck.

I can't remember how they closed the bags but it seemed like it was easy to
do.  Maybe the bags had already been sowed closed except for one corner that
was tied with a wire or a string.  Does anyone know or remember how that was
done?

Charlie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Whittaker" <gwhittak at triton.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 9:37 AM
Subject: Re: [AT] Left or right combines?


> The 62 IH combine I've got is right handed.
>
> Greg Whittaker
> Wolverine Mi.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Indiana Robinson" <robinson at svs.net>
> To: "Antique tractor email discussion group"
> <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 8:32 AM
> Subject: [AT] Left or right combines?
>
>
>> On 17 Mar 2005 at 15:21, Ralph Goff wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I  learned the hard way almost thirty years ago to use eye protection
>>> for
>>> grinding. I never knew for sure how it happened but I can still recall
>>> the
>>> pain that eventually drove me to a doctor to have a piece of steel
>>> removed
>>> from my eye. It was during harvest and I was using a p.t.o. combine
>>> behind
>>> the 930 Case. I had to work with one eye for a while as the doc put a
>>> patch
>>> over the injured one. Luckily it was the left eye injured. leaving my
>>> right
>>> eye still functional for all the over the shoulder work involved in pull
>>> type combining.
>>> I was lucky. Good vision, like so many things, is often taken for
>>> granted
>>> until we lose it.
>>
>>
>>
>> I seem to recall some combines having the "works" on the left and some on
>> the right but
>> can't recall which had them on the right. The Deere 12-A I grew up using
>> had everything
>> (cutter, canvas and cylinder) on the left and I'm sure the Allis 60 was
>> on the left. I
>> "think" the Case A was on the right but can't picture it in my head. I
>> have the remains
>> of one setting in my staging area to be sold as scrap but just can't form
>> a picture. I
>> don't recall which way IHC was. Anybody remember?
>>
>>
>> --
>> "farmer", Esquire
>> At Hewick Midwest
>>      Wealth beyond belief, just no money...
>>
>> Paternal Robinson's here by way of Norway (Clan Gunn), Scottish
>> Highlands,
>> Cleasby Yorkshire England, Virginia, Kentucky then Indiana. Here 100
>> years
>> before the revolution.
>>
>>
>> Francis Robinson
>> Central Indiana USA
>> robinson at svs.net
>>
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>>
>
>
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