Kelderman Hay Rake Redo

[farmersamm]

Start this off with the fact that I'm a swather guy. 1014 Hesston HydraSwing. I don't like disc mowers.

Bought this thing........long story, not worth telling. It's in the shop for new shoes(high cut shoes). Cheap to make, expensive to buy.

But, anyways, the damn thing needs to run ahead of a rake. Something a self respecting swather doesn't need. I guess..........mower conditioner for y'all picky folks.

I flip stuff. Buy it, sell it.

I had a Kelderman sitting in the trees.

Being as the disc mower needs a rake to follow it...............

I put some of the pieces together. Remember, this is a sale item, not a keeper.

I'd done some work on the main frame some years back, then parked it in the yard. On closer examination of one of the rake arms...................we gots a problem.....

Some serious tweaking

This post was edited by farmersamm on 12/12/2022 at 07:55 pm.

 

[farmersamm]

I'm a nut about heat shrinking, aka flame straightening.

One down, one to go. This stuff is fun, and I mean FUN.

But, the other bends on the rake arm had to be cut out, a piece made to fill the gap. The damage was beyond straightening.

 

[farmersamm]

I like to use good levels, and some smoogieing to do stuff. It works. Outside the box I guess, but it works. It was broke when you started, it can't get any broker.

I can be a smart azz all I want, but it's still a great sigh of relief when it all comes together, and lines up.

 

[farmersamm]

So, here we are. A big WOOHOO!!!!!!!

Then the bad news settles in.......................

https://youtu.be/HiNqFTR8DzM

THIS THING IS A PIECE OF CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[farmersamm]

To be continued. It's getting late, and I'm sorta old.

K'kins never ages, she's as beautiful as the day I met her. She's my sounding board when I do stuff like this. I have it in my head, discuss it with her, we go out and look at it, and she gives me her opinion.

 

[farmersamm]

Before I get outta here, a little something.

Welds, and I'm sort of all about welds, look like crap when photographed.

Same welds, close up. Original pic cropped to set things right. I hate a bad "look"

Stupid, but it what it is. This was about a few days before cataract surgery, and about a month after I burnt the top of my hand off. ROFL

On a good day, I could still run a weld. On a bad day, sometime before, I could still manage to run a torch over the top of my paw.

Just a bit of context here.................
:lol:

 

[caterpillar guy]

Those tubes look just like the ones on my Gehl rake. Might have to weld the 4th leg on to fit your frame but look the same and would have to go out and look at it to be sure. Just though this would give you parts and a new frame to use for something else.

 

[casecollectorsc]

I have a 3 point v-rake like yours...would like to find the Kelderman set-up. Save some aggravation hooking the rake up.

 

[farmersamm]

To recap..............

The arms are good now.

If you looked at the video, you can see that another problem cropped up. I didn't anticipate this, because I've never used one of these old Kelderman rakes.

I believe, IIRC, the minimum width you could close the thing for transport was around 14-16 feet, or so. You can't safely run down the highway with that. My hay meadow is about 2.5mi from the house.

 

[farmersamm]

I needed to be able to raise the rake arms to near vertical, so that they wouldn't intrude on approaching traffic on the other side of the road.

The simplest thing was to use a pulley system(which actually isn't that simple).

Because we're dealing with multiple pull angles, you need to analyze the stresses on each pulley.

You need to know the vector forces. PITA.

The wheels(5 per arm) weigh around 200# combined, add the weight of the rake arm......maybe 125#ish to be safe. That's all hanging on the rake arm about 3ish(average) feet from the pivot. You're looking at around 1000# of torque on the pivot tube.

I attached a lever to the main pivoting tube, this arm extends about 30". So, you're looking at about 1000# torque to move the pivot tube in order to lift the rake arm. I forget the calculations, but a small winch, and a snatch block system, would be adequate.

So.........why do we need all this Rube Goldberg crap?

Why not modify the existing lift system the rake came with?

As designed, the pivot tubes are brought together by a hydraulic cylinder, and a linkage system. The arm with the roller climbs the ramp as the tubes are closed. This is the limit of designed lift.

As modified, this is the position of the roller when the rake is in field transport mode.......enough to get through a gate.

Here, the roller arm is in the road transport mode, rake arms close to vertical.

Modifying the roller arms would not give enough lift. It would have made things simpler, but it ain't happenin' LOL

 

[farmersamm]

Went out today to get a better detailed pic of how the arms are attached, and the main mast is attached. I really didn't take a ton of pics while doing this thing. I was running out of time, and the damn job seemed to have no end. K'kins still calls it The Rake From Hell.

Everything is bolted to the pivot tubes, or main rake tongue. This is in case the attached stuff needs to be moved to a different location on the tongue for any reason. Clearance issues, etc. And,, it made aligning everything easier.

 

[farmersamm]

The hook/pulley assemblies were initially made from recycled parts from dead come alongs.

This proved to be a partial failure.

The pulleys didn't have enough ability to swivel in order to allow the wire rope to pass through the pulley without snagging the edge of the pulley.

You can see how the rope is forced against the edge of the pulley, where it will fray.

MORE TO FOLLOW LATER IN THE DAY...........THE SOLUTION TO THE ROPE PROBLEM. Got other stuff to do right now.

 

[paul]

Neat stuff, thanks for sharing!

Paul

 

[farmersamm]

Before I continue..........Thanks for the positive feedback so far, it's a pleasure to know people are interested.

Anyways............I need swiveling pulley blocks at this point. I took a brief look at McMaster-Carr, and Ebay........nothing available that would fit the bill. Either too long overall, or not able to accept the hooks I'm using.

Ultimately, the solution was a set of homegrown blocks.

If you look closely at the holes, you'll notice that they are sized differently. The pulley I'm using, being as it's coming from a Chinese import come-along, is metric. So, we're looking at a mix of metric, and imperial, fasteners.

The swiveling pulleys were actually a fairly precise undertaking. All milled for exact fit.

Even the welding required precise fitup.

A spacer block is milled square for use as a fixture. Being as the thing had to be aligned in all planes, the mill table was used as the benchmark.

The clamped assembly is transferred to the vise for tacking, and weldout.

The axles for the pulleys, being metric, had to be turned. The other end of the assembly accepts a 3/8 bolt.

[b:3eb658b3e3]Lot of work for some stupid pulleys[/b:3eb658b3e3]

 

[farmersamm]

As you can see, I'm working within some fairly tight space limitations. The mast was designed with offsets to accommodate the space taken up by the original non-swiveling pulleys. This placed additional size constraints on the new swiveling pulleys. It's tight.

You might notice that the bends in the hot roll hooks on the mast don't look normal. They're not done in the usual manner. Heat and bend.

Instead.........the round stock is sliced about halfway through, then heated, and bent.

The gaps are filled with weld. This gives me a tighter radius to accommodate the hooks. It allows them to pivot around the inside corners without hanging up. It also allows for more precise lengths when bending.

 

[farmersamm]

The mast which holds the winch required some special consideration.

In order to have a straight line pull on the line, the mounting base had to swivel, and tilt.

Again, this mast is bolted to the tongue so it can be relocated if necessary.

The winch is a cheapo Harbor Freight number, that's been laying up in the shop for years. It finally found a home.

 

[farmersamm]

[b:b78dc91ad9]So.......... What have we achieved with all of this agony?

[/b:b78dc91ad9]

A comparison between the available lift as it came from the factory, and the additional lift attained when modified by the boffins at Uranus Inc.

To be continued.....................

 

[farmersamm]

Due to the fact that the system can only lift one arm at a time, there has to be a way to hold one arm, while lifting the other. And.........there has to be the ability to pin the arms. You cannot depend on any lifting device to safely hold what it lifts.

I believe at this point I ran out of Acclaim,, and had to finish out with Excalibur. I do NOT like Lincoln electrodes anymore. They tend to run "cool". If you're using a small transformer welder, which I generally run, they simply don't run hot enough. Atom Arc will run hotter, giving you a bead that isn't excessively convex at a given amperage. I can switch to the engine drive, but I hate to use it for short run, intermittent welding. Anyways......................

The arms can be pinned at "field transport" mode, or "road mode".

Due to having to use the new swivel pulleys, which take up more space, it was necessary to increase the distance between the main pivot tubes.

The plate that the pivot tubes rest in, when fully closed, needs to be widened.

Cut it off, protecting the hoses with a welding blanket, and a bit of scrap plate.

Widened, and glued back together.

 

[farmersamm]

[b:1b722383e3]Getting near being done[/b:1b722383e3]

At this point, the arms can be lifted, and pinned.

Pretty close, but not enough. Still too wide for road transport. This is the position to go between fields.

To be continued.......................K'kins just showed up from work.

 

[farmersamm]

The extent of the lift is limited by the rake wheels themselves. You can't go vertical because the wheels would interfere with each other, and probably get locked together.

Chunk of pipe with the seam removed about an inch inside the mouth.

Turn, and thread, a plug to fit the pipe.

Glue it up.

Weld it on the frame, and you have a place to store the rake wheels.

 

[farmersamm]

When fully raised, if all 10 rake wheels were left on the arms, they would interfere with each other.

Removing the wheels from one arm allows the arms to be folded as close to vertical as possible.

The lug bolts are welded to the hubs, as a set of studs would be, in a non agricultural configuration. This allows me to take off/install the wheels in a matter of minutes, without having to fuss with the stupid lug bolts that seem to be on all ag hubs.

Word of caution. Hubs are generally made of "semi steel".......another word for cast iron mixed with whatever scrap is available. When you weld anything that has a high carbon content, expect the weld to be hard, and brittle. The carbon migrates into the puddle, and creates an alloy that's extremely hard. For something like this, it's allowable. The welds aren't structural.

So, there you have it. A way of making an $800 POS into something that's workable, for me at least. I have a narrow driveway, travel on public roads, and need something that's not going to affect the safety of others.

The big difference between something like this, and the 1014 HydroSwing.................I can steer the windrower onto the shoulder. I can't steer the rake..........it just follows the tractor.

The Kelderman rake, which I think is out of production, is fine for applications where you don't have to move it on the highway. Absolutely nothing wrong with the design, although I think it's probably obsolete.

As modified, the side of the rake where the wheels are left on, extends 4.5' from the centerline. Well within lane width.

For quality you can trust, depend on products from Uranus

 

[showcrop]

It looks like you have "not anticipated" the strong possibility of fire from your welding and grinding. You claim to be concerned about the safety of others. Many people have been very surprised at how fast fire can travel. Usually they had no intention of starting a huge fire.

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

If I'm not mistaken, you didn't have to modify the arms to get them to pivot to the vertical position. I kinda got lost along the way with all the modifications you made.

I'm thinking if it folded up that far stock, it probably was missing something to get it to fold up like that, or it was a manual operation.

 

[farmersamm]

(quoted from post at 08:15:14 12/15/22) If I'm not mistaken, you didn't have to modify the arms to get them to pivot to the vertical position. I kinda got lost along the way with all the modifications you made.

I'm thinking if it folded up that far stock, it probably was missing something to get it to fold up like that, or it was a manual operation.

I guess I did a lousy job of laying it out.

[b:fb5b195f17]Maximum lift "stock"[/b:fb5b195f17] https://youtu.be/HiNqFTR8DzM

There never was any provision for lifting as high as I'm able now. All my add-ons make it possible to lift where I'm at now.

They were poorly designed for a changing world, and are out of production, probably because of it. They were fine for someone who didn't have to go between fields on public roads. Or, have to go through gates less than 20' wide.

I didn't mean to confuse anybody. Like I say, I should have done a better job of putting the thread together.

 

[farmersamm]

(quoted from post at 06:03:30 12/15/22)


It looks like you have "not anticipated" the strong possibility of fire from your welding and grinding. You claim to be concerned about the safety of others. Many people have been very surprised at how fast fire can travel. Usually they had no intention of starting a huge fire.

This is Oklahoma. We have high winds. I am very much aware of fire danger.

This one ruined my hay meadow back in 2011/2012(can't remember exact date)

The fire started about half a mile South of the meadow, burned the meadow, then traveled 2.5 miles to homeplace, in about 45 minutes.

[b:7ce2f41226]the fire as it burned across the highway from us[/b:7ce2f41226] https://youtu.be/80IkxlgN058

[b:7ce2f41226]the fire,, after the wind changed overnite, and drove it back on our place[/b:7ce2f41226] https://youtu.be/tYYqbbaIyxs

How our house survived, I'll never know. The volunteer fire departments around here are awesome. We evacuated, and watched the whole mess from the intersection at the end of the section.

I do hot work all the time in the shop. The vegetation is always ALWAYS wet down. 3 minutes saturating the area, 30 seconds of welding. If I'm working with a scarfing tip, or blowing metal with the torch.............the ground is wetted, or K'kins stands fire watch if she's home at the time even if everything is wetted.

Sometimes you see the hose in my pics, sometimes you don't.

25yrs of doing this. 25yrs no fires. Must be doin' something right I guess.

Are you related to the dood that didn't believe the tie down ratchet was strong enough?

 

[farmersamm]

A very cool thing about the fire video........................

The oil tanker you see screaming by on the highway, belongs to a local company. These companies regularly donate equipment time when there's a bad fire. They haul water to special temporary coffers that the fire doods set up at intersections close to the fire. Dump it in, and the brush pumpers replenish their tanks from the coffer.

I would hazard a guess that the fire companies in this state are about the best at fighting wildfire. It is, regrettably, a very common thing around here.

One of the greatest hazards is Eastern Red Cedar. These trees were planted here during The Dirty Thirties to help establish windbreaks to hold the topsoil from blowing away. They've become an invasive species. Burn like napalm, and send up sparks with spot over up to 1/2 mile..........starting fires out ahead of the main fire.

 

[farmersamm]

So, yeah...............I "anticipate" fire

 

[showcrop]

(quoted from post at 13:16:56 12/15/22) So, yeah...............I "anticipate" fire

I have your pics. As they say a pic is worth 1,000 words.

 

[paul]

I see, never really saw such a rake. It pivots the rakes forward to slightly lift thrm, not make the thing narrower.

Here on most roads the width wouldnt be much if a problem, roads are either pretty wide or so rarely busy its
common to run a 20 foot bean head down the road a few miles.

Cant imagine having to remove half the wheels to go down the road. Ugh. You lost me a little on that, but its a here
vs there thing, you must need it there.

Need a short video of how it folds now. I can see the pieces in the pictures, but not quite in my head how it truly
folds now.

Paul