Square baler questions

[Mark T]

We have finally had good haying weather so I have hit the fields with a vengeance. We made 300 60 pound bales over the last three days. However, I have a few questions.

One side of the knotters seems to malfunction and not make a clean cut every so often - it ends up trailing two or three intied lines and then we have to stop and clear it. The problem seems to abate when we lighten the bales, but I don't want to make 35 pound bales - they are twice as much work to load and stack in the barn. I switched from sisal twine to plastic twine and the frequency went down a bit. I'm told adjuctsing knotters is a tricky business, but is there a simply way to make an adjustment to allow me to make the heavier bales without having a broken bale every six or seven bales?

Some of my bales end up having a longer side which makes them hard to move - the short side can push out and break the bale. It also makes them harder to stack. The longer side is on the side closest to the packing chamber. Not all the bales do this, but it happens often enough that it is annoying when picking up the bales. My windrows tend to be about half the width of the baler pick-up so I was wondering if it was because the narrower windrows don't give it enough material to fully pack the chamber between each operation of the plunger.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Mark

[ksfarmer]

What brand of baler do you have? I'm only familiar with the old JD 14 and 24 T. There is a spring tensioned nut on the leaf spring that pressures the knotter. It may need tightened to put on more pressure, or the small leaf spring may be cracked or broken. That's the first thing I would check.

[Riverdale]

We had an old IH baler that would do that occassionally. The cure? Blow all the dust and chaff out of the knotter mechanism.

[Lazy J]

Packer forks need adjusted as they are pushing the hay too far to the left.

The twine knife on the knotter needs sharpened or replaced.

Jim