Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living The old AC Roto balers?

I've been told you could load a rack behind the balers.

They enjoyed their 5 minutes of fame and were supplanted by the square press type balers. Downfall of these machines were that you had to stop the forward travel during the tying phase. This at a time when live PTOs were few and far between. Allis Chalmers eventually designed a hay bypass to avoid stopping but by then the interest in them had faded. They are an interesting piece of Allis history. If they had of designed a larger version Allis would have been forty years ahead of its time.

Nick

Dad traveled the Midwest representing a twine company for many years. He found that there were pockets where there was still enough interest in the AC balers that his company handled roto-baler twine as well as regular twine. If I remember correctly there was a complaint against the round bales in that a stack would "settle" between layers of the pyramid.

I've been told they could stack those bales on a hayrack.

Allis Chalmers sold a loader that attached to the side of their tractors and loaded the bales onto a trailing wagon. The bales were stacked by hand once on the wagon. My uncle had a roto baler but it was sold long before I was able to help out in the field and have no recollection of it in use.

Nick

AC Rotobalers were very popular in our area. Dad bought the first one in our neighborhood in 1952. By 1970 small square balers were used on probably less than 10% of the hay made in our area. This trend continued until VerMeer big round balers appeared in the mid 70s.

I don't recall seeing round bales being loaded directly onto a rack as is normal practice with square balers. Normal for us was two guys walking beside a lowboy trailer loading as a tractor pulled it between two rows. Actually faster than mechanical loaders as they could only take a single row.

A hay hook kept me physically fit and earned some good money for those days.

It always puzzled me that the hardware stores and implements sold bale hooks since no place that I baled ever used them. (Given my propensity to injure myself with most anything that was handy, that was probably just as well.)

I walked beside a low boy with a hay hook picking up those small bales a few times. Had to watch for snakes under the bales.

In 1975 I went to work at an A/C dealer. Older mechanic the told stories of folks getting their arms in those balers. I forget the reason for that. (plugging up possibly)

No, the reason is that it is a powered machine and the people using it are farmers. (God love them.)

Dont believe I ever saw one of those balers. Interesting machine.

Square bales was the norm as far back as I can remember.

pretty much needed an ALICE tractor with that I'm not going to get this phrase right kind of the neutral spot in the transmission without actually being in neutral. so you didn't burn the clutch out letting it wrapped a little bales with strings.
very hard on a normal type clutch..

The old WD Allis had a hand clutch, one speed, either engaged or disengaged. It would stop tractor movement, but allow the PTO to continue operation.

Starting around the D-17 era, they changed the term to power director clutch. It had a high and low speed with a neutral position. Both of them set ahead of the transmission in the case.

I've rebuilt both of them a LONG time ago! You had to shim the clutch packs. (wet clutches) This would have been in the 1970's and 1980's. My mind fades.

Or in them.

My grandad had one
They sold a lot of them there are still some in the fence rows around here

The only one I ever saw used was by our neighbor in southern Minnesota in the mid 50"s.

Our neighbor had one in western Ks in the early 60s. I got in on gathering the bales, by using hay hooks. I’m still amazed that I didn’t impale my leg with those hooks.

As I recall, Dad said that western Kansas was one of the enclaves of rotobaler twine sales.