Rookie Opeating a Small Square Baler for the First Time

I've been haying with a NH 688 round baler for four years now and I wanted to see if I can develop a market for small squares with local horse people. I bought a used Hesston 4600, added a hydraulic cylinder for the pickup, did the maintenance checks and greased 'er up. and after getting most of our hay as round bales I proceed to try my hand at small squares haymaking. I promptly plugged up the Hesston! And I mean plugged it. I waded into a big windrow with low pto speed and high ground speed and within less than 10 ft, broke  the shear bolt on the suffer fork! This happened at 8:45 pm last night so I figured I'd fix it this morning.

 

I used a bale hook to try to clear it from the front. No way that was going to work. Fortunately the forming chamber has an removable access panel at the rear of the baler and I removed that and found a wad stuck in the lower left hand corner. 2 1/2 hours later I got it cleared. Started up again and remembered "high pto speed, low ground speed" and we were off and baling. 

 

Now I notice the bales are falling apart as they come off the chute. It turns out the knot connecting the twine balls got stuck in one of the needles and broke so only one knotter was tying. I fixed that and finished baling. I monkeyed with the bale density control (hydraulic) and it's making nice bales now, just a s I run out of hay to bale.

 

What I learned was that a small square baler is a more complicated beast than a big round baler. The pickup has a much lower capacity and you have to operate it differently that the more high capacity pickups on  round balers. The knotter mechanism is also more complex than the net wrap system on the round baler. It takes a different skill set to operate and maintain a small square baler than it does a big round baler.

 

I thought some of you long time hay shakers would get a kick out of hearing about my rookie problems.

Rookie Opeating a Small Square Baler for the First Time