Combines sickle maintaince

Spend time on that sickle! Keep it clean and in real good nick. If it does not cut the crop really well, your losses have already started and they are then losses you can do nothing about. look after that header. Smooth feeding from the sickle on is a large part of keeping any combine operating at its very best. Cheers.

About all I do to the sickle is grease the wobble box and give it an "eyeball" in the morning, to check for broken_bent guards and knives. Of course I'm running wheat, which is easier and cleaner to cut. If you're in green stems or weedy stuff, then that can cause buildup and stickiness. In extreme cases, wash the gunk off with plain old water. Once it's straight and free a little dirt shouldn't hurt anything, as the places where the weight rides are pretty well shielded from dirt getting there and staying there. RE: your earlier IJ about deer numbers. Numbers seem to be way down here. Made a hundred mile drive from Glendive to Wolf Point on Sunday evening. It's normally a bad stretch of road where you might see in excess of a hundred deer along the shoulders. I saw about 6 in the whole distance. Ed in Montana

Wow that is waaay down. I didn't draw a tag this year but I still am very interested in the animal numbers as they seem to have dropped from last year in my opinion as well. I like the wide open space hunting and love to take my daughter out to look at the wildlife as its easier to see them than here in wisconsin. laura likes to fish and she is not to into hunting but likes the camping life. thanks for the reply I sure appreciate all the help. driftersifter

Replaced the knives on the left side of the head (thats all I had) and WOW did the left side feed better!! looking at the old knives you could run your finger along the edge and the serrations were gone. With a lot of rain delay time at hand I clamped the old knives in the drill press vise, flat not sticking up, took my air die grinder with 1_8 inch wheel and cut new serrations (more like notches) 5 on a side. Put the Sharks tooth knives on the right side of the head and I'm cuttin again. Green stemmed Soybeans. Works Great. Kinda like the big serrated sections but bigger serrations. I'd cut some of the fingers off short on the reel so taking 1_2 inch anhydrous hose cut 8 1_2 inch long warmed up with a propane torch on the end, Shoved the hose over the finger up to the top. Curved in like the finger they haven't fallen off. If they do they won't hurt anything.

What a great idea I can see how that would improve the feeding by putting hose over the fingers and they would be flexiblew enough to help with the feeding of the soybeans. i have my project thankyou very much. I was having problems with the bunching on the left hand side with an occasional plug at the feeder beater if I wasn't carefull with how i watched the wads. I hope this improves the feeding. thanks again driftersifter