REAPERS. The reaper has been so far superseded by the binding-harvester that inventive energy may almost be said to have become diverted from this form of harvesting machine ; nevertheless a large aggregate of reapers is made annually. Steel, and malleable and cast iron are employed for many of the parts before made of wood. In reapers, as in the ease of mowers, the front-cut construction has been adopted, bringing the eutter-bar forward on a line with the front of the machine. instead of the former rear-cut construction. to get the driver back to a safe position out of the danger. formerly incurred. of a fall in front of the sickle.
Wood's Reaper.—A front view of an improved reaper, by Wood, appears in Fig. 1.
It has a novel rake-controlling device. The rake arms, which, in this class of machine also serve to reel the standing grain to the sickle, and lay it on the triangular platform, are guided in their sweep by the ordinary cam track, but this track contains a switch. the automatic move ments of which direct any given rake arm up ward to clear the plat form in passing around the rake-head axis, or downward to sweep from the platform to the ground the grain accumulated thereon. Pig. 2 shows the con troller parts shaded. The controller finger is set to switch every- sec ond rake to sweep the platform ; and Fig. 3
shows the finger forced up by a revolving spiral inclined plane until it trips the cam switch which decides the course to be followed by a rake arm, and then drops back to the same level from which it started. The driver, without halting, sets the finger by the hand lever and index to drop upon either of the spiral ledges, after which it continues to open the switch automatically, at the exact intervals determined. Although the reaper has only four rake arms, every one, or every second, third, fourth, or fifth, may be automatically switched to sweep the platform, according as the hand lever is moved on the numbered index. A foot lever, seen in Fig. 2, serves to interrupt the operation of the automatic controller, when the driver• prefers to momentarily cease raking off, though the movement of the rake arms as reels continues to direct the standing grain to sickle and platform. This is in specially thin spots in the erop, and at corners to avoid dropping sheaves there, where the team would on the next rowel trample them and waste grain.
Reel : see Milling Machinery, Grain and Cotton-spinning NRVItilleS.
Marhinery : see Ice-making Machine•:.