So this is a,
what's called a box baler. It's a wooden box baler. You can also get
metal fabricated box balers that there are a few
manufacturers out there but they're pretty expensive and they're also pretty
heavy.
This is a wooden box baler that I made
with one of my students help. It's also pretty heavy
but can definitely move it through the woods with a little bit work.
There's a couple of sets of plans on the internet that you can use
to help you build your pine straw baler - a wooden one like this one.
We actually used those sets of plans kind of as a guide and then we made some
modifications
based on things we saw when we actually tried to use it in the
field to improve it. Some of those modifications you'll see on this baler
and other modifications we made on the second baler
that we built about a month or two ago. So
I'll talk about those kind of as we go through it. So
you see that it has kind of the box part right here. This is where you actually
put the pine straw
in. It has this platform out front and a lot of times people say, "Well, why does it have
to have this platform out front?"
It doesn't. You can actually build it without it or you can build it with a slightly
shorter platform if you'd like. The main thing this is is this kind of
gives it some stability
so that when you actually compress the pine straw, it kind of keeps it from tipping
over.
Again you can make it somewhat shorter if you want to you.
This is also an area where the pine straw can actually, when
you open it up and the pine straw bale falls out, it falls out onto
this platform. Again it's kind of a personal preference.
You then have the handle this is the handle, it's made out of a two
by four that is attached
to the plunger. This is the plunger here that
goes down into the canister to press the pine straw down.
We did modify the plunger from the
original plans that we saw. We just made it out of
a couple pieces of two by four here and then bolted it onto here.
The plywood ones that we used early on
we baled a few bales of pine straw and they broke. We tried some stronger
plywood and they also broke.
So we opted and kind of made this change here
to the plan. We also
had a reinforce our handle a little bit too because we had it to break
early on. So what happens is is you have
the canister part here. It has a door on the front. We have a
barrel bolt on this one.
The door opens. On the
new one that we made we actually took and just made like a crossbar. We have
two, we actually modified it so that we have
two metal arms that come out and then just a wooden two by four piece that
goes down over that that we found is working a little bit better than the
barrel bolt because as temperature changes, as humidity changes the wood will
shrink and swell and some days the barrel bolt opens really easily and some days
not so much. So, when you're out there you're really trying to make
good production in bailing pine straw you want life to be easy.
So, why make it be a struggle. So
we again we adapted so that we don't use a barrel bolt but just use a cross bar
that moves a lot easier. So the pine straw actually goes
in the top here. You actually close this down
lock it and put the pine straw
in and you compress it but I'll show you a little bit how you actually
have to set it up before we
get started.