A thrashing. cleaning, and separating attachment is carried on some of these headers. This elaborate mechanism is known as a combined harvester. Fig. 52 shows it as made by the Benicia Agricultural Works. It spouts the cleaned grain into sacks handled by men riding on the machine, who transfer it, ready for market, to the tender-wagon alongside as fast as the sacks are filled. Tho straw from the thrasher serves as fuel for the engine, which is made with a fire-box expressly designed as it straw-burner. This use of engines in harvest ing, where farming is done on a large scale. the ground level and affording good footing for the engine-wheels under the influence of a steadily dry summer climate, is rapidly extending, having proved economical hot h in respect of money and time. Fig. 53 exhibits one of the wide-cut headers (Geiser's), with traction engine attached, in the field.
Headers are sometimes employed in fields of small size in localities where straw is not valuable for sale. No binding mechanism is used in this mode of harvesting. The Buck eye" harvester, for example, is adapted for use either as a header or binder. When used as a binder it is run low, bringing its sickle near the ground to cut long straw for binding into sheaves. As a header it is used with the binding mechanism off, and with the sickle raised high enough to merely clip the cars, and leave the straw standing in the field. Attached to the delivery side of the machine is an extension conveyer, the extremity of which is held at any requisite height by a rod controlled by the operator of the machine, and which is fur nished with an endless apron to spout the harvested heads into an attendant wagon.
Corn- Ilarvester.—Fig. :3-1 is a sled with a folding wing each side armed with a blade set for work diagonally with the line of progression. The rapidity with which this very recently designed device has been adopted by farmers demonstrates the existence of a great need for corn-harvesting machinery. in this particular device the bladed wings are adjustable to whatever slant will cut off the corn-stalks most easily ; when they are ripened to a point of dryness, a decidedly 'slanting cut is required. The blades, if serrate-edged, remain efficiently sharp a long time and do more thorough work than if smooth or knife-edged. Buck-saw blades are used. A lever serves to transfer the weight of the front end of the sled upon a caster-wheel beneath, when it is necessary to turn about at the ends of rows, in response to direction of draft. One horse suffices for draft. Two men ride the harvester, sounding back to back, with a transverse hand-rail by which to steady themselves. The horse readily follows the proper line between the corn-rows, the reins being allowed to remain looped to the mil within easy reach. The men on either side receive the severed stalks in their arms until a gallows-hill
is passed uncut by momentarily folding the adjacent wing of the harvester, when they set their armfuls in stook against the selected gallows-hill, resume position on the harvester, re-extend the folded wing, and proceed as before. A era-ok-lever below the hand-rail, moved by the foot, folds and extends t he wing. Both wings are folded, for safety, when driving along out of work. Some of these sled machines are made with the deck adjoined to the runners adjustably, so as to gauge the height of cut. The attendants do not draw the stalks forcibly against the blades, but permit them to be slightly inclined forward, when the blades slice them off easily with a slant cut. While the invention seems simple, it has been a long time coining, and is effective in light or only moderately heavy crops, of which 10 acres may be thus stooked in a day with labor which, though not arduous, accomplishes somewhat more than double the usual duty of two men working with corn-knives. A notable step in advance is a corn-har vester devised at the factory of the D. M. Osborne Co., at Au burn, N. Y. The cutters are two horizontal disk- knives turning toward each other. Spiked wheels turning on the same shafts with the knives force the corn-stalks between the knife-edges. The two di vider-arms in front are spread open to receive the corn, wheth er standing upright or leaning, and are edged with toothed driven endless chains to lift the corn and direct its tops backward just before it is cut off. The dissevered corn falls upon the lower end of an in clined carrier, essentially a se ries of toothed endless chains or belts suitable for elevating the coarse, heavy material some 8 ft. above the ground level. An accompanying wagon receives the load, the corn be ing delivered on the wagon in two bents, one behind the other. The wagon-rack is necessarily low on the side next the harvester. To unload quickly, the right:hand wagon-wheels are lowered by running them in a trench prepared at the place of unloading, and the corn is rolled off at the side.
Pea and Bean 0. Savage's pea and bean harvester (Fig. 50) straddles the row and brings the peas or beans in contact with two revolving cyl inders supplied with picker-teeth to comb the pods from the vines, shell the seeds, and deposit them in sacks. Five acres per day are claimed as its duty.
The ",Moline" bean-harvester (Fig. tiri) unearths the vines and lays the complete growth of two rows loosely in a windrow, ready to be loaded, midway between their original place, without shelling by any violent agitation.
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