Massey-Harris 701 Baler Restoration

Daniel Harris continues to rebuild his £100 baler

Next job was to clean up the inside of the existing portion of the lower rails before the bottom plate could be tacked into position. The rails were extremely scabby and, after knocking off the scabs with a hammer and chisel, a wire cup brush was attached to the grinder to complete the mission. I could have used a rust converter treatment at this stage, but elected to apply a weld through zinc base primer from an aerosol while the area was exposed. A hairdryer, which was purpose-bought and not the wife’s, made light work of accelerating the drying time.

It was back to my old friends at Teagle to get two replacement plates CNC plasma cut for the bottom of the bale chamber: I drew these up on CAD many months ago, a good job as they were plasma cut only a couple of weeks before I needed them. CNC plasma cutting is a wonderful process whereby an electric arc is used to heat a jet of compressed air, which cuts through steel like a hot knife through butter. Computer control means that literally any shape can be cut, including holes to a tolerance of +/- 0.5mm.

Originally, the base plate was made in one piece but at 3.4m long (11ft) it exceeded the 3m length of steel plate kept in stock. The two halves of the base plate were primed with zinc primer on the faces which lap with the angle irons before installation. Again, to ensure a good butt weld, a chamfer was ground on one of the plates with a 1mm nose remaining to stop the weld burning through, and the two halves were easily tacked into position.