Hesston 1014

[molinegb]

Never seen a Hesston that used the 260 two piece guards. All used the one piece 245. Maybe for long forage? 245 poor in fine hay. With overserrated knife. Weak in all prairie hay. Have broke flywheel/pitman shaft 3 years in a row. Time to go to scrap. OK in forage but keep away from any fine hay.

 

[molinegb]

These type.

 

[molinegb]

Pic

 

[lastcowboy32]

The manual for my Hesston haybine says to use smooth sections on fine grass, regardless of the type of guards. It's probably the serrations on the sections that are making things work too hard, as opposed to the guards.

 

[molinegb]

Only patches of fine grass. In old days smooth knife with ledger plates as used in horse mowers etc.

 

[lastcowboy32]

Gotta appreciate the old time wisdom. Look at a sickle, made for cutting fine grass... smooth blade honed to a razor's edge. Then look at a corn sickle... corrugated, serrated blade to provide a "sharp enough" edge that's thicker and stronger.

I bet they applied that thinking to the different types of sections in the first mowers.

 

[730pete]

(quoted from post at 18:04:06 08/15/23) Never seen a Hesston that used the 260 two piece guards. All used the one piece 245. Maybe for long forage? 245 poor in fine hay. With overserrated knife. Weak in all prairie hay. Have broke flywheel/pitman shaft 3 years in a row. Time to go to scrap. OK in forage but keep away from any fine hay.

We bought a 1014 in 1974 new and it had the two piece guards in it from factory.

 

[molinegb]

Were they any good? Especially in fine hay. No one here has ever seen or used before.

 

[730pete]

We only used them in alfalfa and they worked fine.

 

[lastcowboy32]

For what it's worth. I've tried three guard styles on our Hesstons in various types of hay.

With respect to plugging,

I've had the best luck with good two piece stub guards and top serrated sections

Second is full guards with hold down clips.

Third is two piece full guards.

It seems to me like the two piece full guard is the worst of both worlds. The top half doesn't always clip in tightly, the edges dull fast, and it just seems like it's a gap for hay to get caught in.

In the end, I've settled on a hybrid approach...I use the two piece full guards for the first three "hightop" spots on the drive end to protect sections that are a PITA to change. Run stubs in the middle of the cutterbar and one full guard at the end of the header...to protect the end section from the shield on the header being bent up into it. The tip of the full guard protects the end section from the shield...not rocks...

This setup seems to cut well in various types of grass and legumes with top serrated sections. If I was running in fine grass more often than not, I would think about smooth sections.

The stub guards and sections are new (well... a couple hundred acres on them) right now... so I'm running 5mph in just about anything with minimal plugging.

I can't comment on how long my honeymoon will be. I think stubs run best...and they are less expensive...but I can only guess about longevity... my guess is... you need to change them and the sections more often to keep things sharp. They run great with minimal plugging and clean stubble when they are good. But I expect that my stubble will start getting ragged, as the cutting edges dull. So probably the same cost, when it's averaged over the life of the machine...but sharp stub guards and sections make mowing with a sicklebar much more bearable to me... much less plugging.



This post was edited by lastcowboy32 on 08/21/2023 at 10:20 am.