If a rivet or bolt was too long, hold it with some pliers and cut it off. Oh, and a hacksaw with teeth missing on the blade. You'd have a rusty file, a bent punch, assorted rivets & short bolts, a ball peen hammer and an anvil setting on the ground. They always made sure the rivet box was left outside so everything was good and rusty. Rivets weren't in sections by size, just all thrown in there together. Every small farmer had a tackle box packed with rivets of all sizes and short 1/4 inch bolts that got used for rivets. Replacing cutters was something you didn't look forward to. Regular bolts would stick up, or down, too far to clear the guides going back and forth. When I was a kid replacing cutters I don't ever recall bolt ons being an option.
That's less than one payment for a newfangled one. I would estimate that this machine runs me around 400 dollars per year to keep in the field. I replace the sections yearly just to make for smooth fast cutting, although you could run them longer than one season. Switch to the bolt on sections, and your world is green with grass all the time. IT'S A WASTE OF TIME AND INCREASES HEADACHES. I occassionally read on forums about guys trying to use the old style riveted sections. You do not want your hand here while it's runningĪfter removing the sickle bar, something I do annually, the sickle sections are unbolted from the bar. The guards support the sickle bar, provide a cutting anvil, and protect the sickle sections. The sickle bar runs inside guards (the vicious looking tooth things ). I can run circles around a rotary machine when it comes to operating costs, and I can almost keep up speed-wise under certain conditions. A lot of people have gone to rotary cutting beds, but I still swear by this machine. The main cutting component, the heart of the machine, is the sickle bar. The unit can be steered by hydraulics independantly from the tractor, makes it easier to do turns and irregular cutting paths. It's 40yrs old, and still in the field every year. This is a Hesston HydroSwing model 1014, built around 1972. I mainly put this here, if it's allright, to allow everyone to see old style hay cutting equipment, and maybe give a little tutorial on the maintenance of these machines. As of yet there's no welding involved, but if God made little green apples there probably will be somewhere down the line.