May I share some of my pan thrower and baling experience with you?
I have about 30 years experience with JD pan throwers, first one a #30 on a 24T baler, late 80's (IIRC). They are an incredible labor saver and provide more safety than one person riding a flatbed pulling bales off the chute and stacking. We have many hilly fields and odd shaped fields, mostly rented 300+ acres of hay.
When we cut, we create a pattern of 4 rounds around the perimeter of the field, and then all the rest is cut in straight rows. This is the easiest pattern to bale as it minimizes the bales being thrown on the turns. We consider it a bad day if we have more than 2 drops/ hundred bales, usually much fewer drops. When you are making a turn and you have the feeling that it might throw a bale, set your distance control down to "3", allowing the bales thrown on turns to go to the front of the wagon, and as soon as the baler and wagon are straight with each other go back to a higher throw distance number to fill the back and middle of the wagon. Most of your drops occur on turns.
I like the ingenuity shown by your home made bale wagon. But we learned a long time ago to build the wagon sides from steel (1.5" sq tubing verticals, 1" sq tubing horizontals) with a flair out at the top to aid in reducing dropped bales. This is fairly common in factory produced wagons. We modify our commercial built wagons with 3 rows of light chain across the front above the fold down front door. The pan thrower will fill the wagon front with about 20 more bales due to the chains keeping the bales from rolling out the front on down hills. The belt thrower on NH balers can't do this and can only fill with 20 to 30 less bales than our full loads.
A real safety advantage of the pan thrower system is that it can only throw when the baler flywheel is turning. There is no hydraulic pressure accumulator. The large hydraulic pump driven by the flywheel must be turning to create the necessary pressure to make the pan throw. So when you get out of the tractor, shut off the PTO first.
I bale with a 1979 Ford TW 10 because I like the ability to feather the hydraulic controls. I keep right hand on that hydraulic lever and gently feather it to right or left. My son's IH tractor has electric over hydraulic controls and it makes adjusting the turns quite jumpy. I won't drive that tractor.
We set up our distance controls to operate with electric motors, and the 3 position switch is very close to the hydraulic steering lever. If I were to redesign the control lever, it would have the switch mounted on the lever, so the right hand never has to leave the control lever.
For raking, we have modified a commercial 10 wheel rake to rake 2 rows simultaneously and keeping them separate to allow faster dry down. Our cutter has a 13 ft cutting bar, so the windrows are plenty big. We do have another wheel rake that can merge 2 rows into one, if the crop is thin.
Right now we have 2 348 balers and 2 328 balers. We can put all 4 on the field at the same time. We own 18 throw wagons and occasionally borrow a few more. Our highest production day was 3500+ bales, all under roofs before quitting time (midnight). I really like the 348 baler, it has tremendous capacity, but if you feed it too fast it will bale faster than the thrower can get them tossed. Our biggest problem has been the inconsistent thickness of the twine. We use 7200 twine because the bales can put up with more abuse than with the thinner 9000 twine. All of our hay goes to horse stables.
In reviewing your video, it looks like you are allowing tractor and wagon wheels to ride on top of a windrow. We really avoid this as the driven on windrow is compressed onto possibly damp ground making for damp bales when you bale that row. We also use moisture meters in out balers with readouts in the cabs. 14% moisture is a very good number as it allows the hay to be compressed and yet will not become dusty from mold even if stacked immediately in the barn. Less moisture means the hay gets too "springy", lighter weight bales that are not adequately compacted. Over 18% moisture means risk of mold developing when the hay is in the customer's barn. Over 25% risks the bales heating up and producing methane, possibly setting a barn on fire. These numbers are for our hay which is a combination of alfalfa and orchard grass. The grass dries down sooner and helps the alfalfa get rid of some stem moisture when it is in the bale.
Thanks for your video, I wish I had the intelligence to make and post a video as good as yours.
Best Wishes for a good crop, rain free!
Paul in MN
P.S. When I refer to "we", that means myself (age 75), my son (an ag engineer), his son (age 16), his wife, and 2 daughters. All 3 of his kids work in the family hay business, and all 3 are in high school. They know how to work and I am proud of them! They are also very good students.
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