Low cost baling machines?

[snoozy]

Are there any low cost baling machines out there? Other than baling machines, is there any other way to produce tight square bales?

[dave_p]

Hi, this type of baler has been talked about here before I believe. They make them for pine needles, but hay will work too. I just googled 'baling pine needles', it was first thing up.There may be other designs, but this one seems very 'doable'. hope this helps some. dp

http://texaspinestraw.tamu.edu/baling.html

[clovis]

How much hay do you need to bale?

[FarmboyBill]

Seems like it would be way easier to find an old junk bailer, the old and junk usually referring to the tying and knotter assembly. Take and remove all that has to do with the knotter assembly. Make 3 of the blocks as there called so as to have a stopping and starting place for each bale to insert the wires or twine, mount a seat at both sides, and remake a hand tie bailer like they used to have.. Course youd have to have 2 people to run the bailer, and one on the tractor, but, thats about what you could get by minimum putting up the hay after it was bailed. Id say, if junk wasnt worth so much right now, that people would give a junk bailer away just to get rid of it. They aint worth much,

[Ramblin Wreck]

Here's one for sale on our local Craigs List, but I wouldn't call it a good deal/great price. http://atlanta.craigslist.org/wat/for/1771439619.html

[HermitJohn]

Go look in the old mother earth news archives. I vaguely remember couple home made "hay balers" for very small scale use. I mean this is super simple human powered type thing, not something you are going to seriously farm with, but might be useful for small homestead situation. And it wont pack as tight of a bale as a factory machine.

Unfortunately around where I am, lot of the older small scale farm equipment is gone or salvage only. Maybe in late nineties I ran across a smaller Allis Chalmers wire tie baler in amazingly good condition for $100 at an auction. I didnt buy it cause I just didnt have a use for it then and still dont have much of a use for such. You just dont see the smaller balers anymore and for sure not that kind of price for a usable one.

[FarmboyBill]

U sure right on the (aint cheap) part RW. Its the very same as in the other post. For that kinda money you can buy a bailer that May or may not be any good. Anything less, and its likely not good, and nonna them are any good till youve seen them bale a hundred bales. Anything more and you stand a better chance of getting a good one, IF it looks good in the first place, Again regardless of the price, nonna them are any good till youve seen them bale a hundred bales. Ive got the plans to make one that are in the Small Farmers Journal, but I dont know how to get them put on here. Its in a 20 some year old edition of same.

[texican]

A fair portion of farmers and ranchers are penny pinching skin flints. I can say this as I am one, and come from a long line of them... who needs fancy parts when you've got a pair of fencing pliers and plenty of barb wire? (We never had duct tape growing up... that was a fancy nancy rich man's 'thang')...

My point... if there were a cheaper way of baling hay, someone would have made it and replaced the current balers... and made a fortune off of other penny pinching skin flints!

Shy of a scythe and a bunch of string, balers are it. At a certain point, manual labor gets into the realm of torture. I could see 'baling' by hand, post-TEOTWAWKI, but not until then.

[snoozy]

Reason I'm asking is that I've come across a small non-profit organization (www.paksbab.org) that builds strawbale houses in the area devastated by the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.

Now, I know from my own time there that there are no machine balers in Pakistan. Yet they have millions of acres of wheat and rice and lentil straw which could be used to make far safer, better houses instead of rebuilding the rock'n'concrete standard houses which are just going to collapse in the next quake. This organization has been using hand balers such as the ones you have given links to. I was just trying to see if anyone had any other ideas...

[willbuck1]

You can find older square balers around here for $500 on up.

[Micheal]

Eons ago, when I first started, the only animals I had were rabbits and one steer. To bale hay for those few I located a hand operated paper baler - also worked for most anything recycled.
Back then I cut the grass (hay) with a scythe, raked it with a leaf rake, and picked it up with a pitchfork into the back of a pickup. Then loaded it into the paper baler compressed it into a bale, opened the front of the baler, tied it off, released the top plate and removed the bale.
Ahh, the good ol' days.......

By the way I still own the paper baler.......

[texican]

I'm wondering why anyone would go to so much trouble with straw bales, in a country very very rich in rock? (Pakistan) Rocks are free, there'd need to be a lot of extra work involved baling and hauling straw. Just a wondering.

[snoozy]

Originally Posted by texican

I'm wondering why anyone would go to so much trouble with straw bales, in a country very very rich in rock? (Pakistan) Rocks are free, there'd need to be a lot of extra work involved baling and hauling straw. Just a wondering.

For the added earthquake resistance. Strawbale houses are probably the most stable in an earthquake. Moreover, rock and concrete houses are very cold in winter. From the PAKSBAB newsletter:

"The devastating October 2005 magnitude 7.6 Kashmir Earthquake in northern Pakistan killed over 87,000 people and rendered more than 3.5 million people homeless. According to Pakistan’s Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority, 600,000 houses were destroyed,80-90% of which were in rural areas. Most people died in collapsed homes which were typically one or two stories of unreinforced stone, brick or solid concrete block masonry. Seismically resistant building methods typical to the United States or other developed countries are largely unaffordable in developing countries such as Pakistan. PAKSBAB is promoting the use of innovative earthquake-resistant straw bale building methods that are inexpensive, energy efficient, and utilize locally resourced renewable materials. These buildings are well tied together and lighter than traditional materials, making them unlikely to collapse in an earthquake.

In March of 2009, PAKSBAB subjected a 14 ft x 14 ft x 10 ft straw bale house to a series of eight simulated earthquakes of increasing intensity at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). This facility is part of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), which is an NSF-funded shared-use infrastructure with 14 experimental facilities.

The construction method for our one story test structure was a load bearing design consisting of site fabricated straw bales resting on a gravel bag foundation covered with soil cement. Exterior opposing bamboo pins were used to keep the walls plumb during construction and provide out-of-plane support. Fishing net was installed under the foundation, stretched up both sides of the walls and nailed to the top plates. The roof consisted of wooden I-joists insulated with light straw clay and covered with corrugated metal roofing. Gravel bags were placed at the top of walls to simulate a light snow load. The straw bale walls were finished with clay plasters and lime wash.

Just prior to the test, the straw bale house was rolled into the laboratory, lifted by overhead cranes, and bolted onto the shake table. During the eighth simulated earthquake, at accelerations of 0.82 times gravity (stronger than estimates of the Kashmir Earthquake), plaster cracked and flakes crumbled off, but the house survived. The system performed well due to the composite action of the straw bales, plaster skins and fishing net reinforcement."