[GSBN] Baling from rounds

[RT]

I don't think that there's any need to look for a different device for  
making bales. A normal hay baler does the job quite well.

The problem to solve I think, is one of feeding the baler in a way that  
isn't "awkward".

Instead of driving the baler over stationary windrows of straw, I think it  
would be a matter of moving a continuous windrow of straw to a stationary  
baler.

I'd suggest thinking of the big round bales as a roll of toilet paper  
(which it is, for livestock) which you want to unroll from a stationary  
dispenser and then feed the strip of unrolled straw into the pickup tines  
of the square baler.

This would call for a short conveyor (ie a continuous strip of moving  
"ground") between the round bale "dispenser" and a stationary square baler  
- slat type or belt type, doesn't matter ... however a belt type conveyor  
would allow you to split the end rollers at the baler end and tilt them  
towards each other to form a "Vee"so that the conveyor belt naturally  
wants to collect the wide strip of unrolled straw into a narrower heap  
(like a windrow) before feeding into the square baler. Mills discard  
room-width conveyor belts now and then and the people living near the  
mills often scoop them up (free) to use as roofs or floors for  
outbuildings and such.

This means that you want a passive roller set a foot or two away from the  
other end of the conveyor so that one sets the round bale onto two rollers  
at one end of the conveyor (the passive roller + the driven roller of the  
conveyor) so that when the conveyor is set in motion (presumably belt  
driven, connected to the same power source that is running the baler), the  
round bale unrolls itself onto the conveyor belt and a steady stream of  
straw is fed into the spinning pickup tines of the square baler.

Done and done.

That being said, presumably the end game of this whole process is to make  
straw walls. Yes ?

Taking big round bales and unrolling them to make little pieces which are  
then bunched together again to make a large wall panel seems a bit like  
taking trees to make plywood and then cutting the plywood into skinny 1"x  
4" strips which are then nailed together again to make a 4'x 8' sheet of  
sheathing.

I think that it would make more sense to place a perimeter form of the  
proposed wall on the ground (or floor slab) and make a simple  
"toilet-paper-dispenser-like" rig that will suspend the round bale over  
the wall form and which when moved back and forth over the length of the  
wall form, dispenses layers of straw into the wall form where it can be  
compacted, plastered and then tilted up into place when the plaster has  
cured.

Ideally the round bale dispenser could ride on two rails (salvaged from  
one of the many railroad tracks that are being torn up these days (when I  
lived near Paris ON there was a salvage yard which had all manner of  
railroad stuff - rails, plates, bridge timbers, box cars, deconstructed  
stations etc) and the whole set-up would be portable.


On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 13:00:00 -0400, <gsbn-request at sustainablesources.com>  
wrote:
> From: "Lance Kairl" <sabale at bigpond.com>
[snipped and pasted for brevity, excerpted from GSBN List Digest vol 29,  
issue 19]

> ROLL OUT the round bale and then re bale in the standard baling method.  
> That is move the small square baler over the windrow ( rolled out bale)  
> similar  to as it would be in the field.
> Yes you need a long straight piece of ground to do this, and if you are
> wanting to do it inside a shed in winter, then get a big shed

> From: Chris Magwood <chris at endeavourcentre.org>

>> I'm wondering if any of you have experience with making rectangular
>> bales out of round bales with a device other than the standard field
>> baler. I have done this using the regular baler, but it requires feeding
>> the straw into machine in an awkward way

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom					AOD257
Kanata, Ontario, Canada

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