Museum of Rural Life May 2020 news
I have turned my attention, during this lock down period, to the McCormick “power” binder, so called because it is powered solely by the towing tractor’s “power take off” (pto). Horse drawn binders, such as our Massey Harris machine, derive their power to turn the mechanism from the large “Bull” wheel .
We acquired this machine about 18 months ago from a local collection, and it has had very little attention since! The original canvases had previously been stored in a building with a leaking roof, and were found to be completely beyond repair on arrival.
About three years ago we acquired a large collection of “new old stock” canvases, knives, needles, rollers, and other spares. A few of these canvases fitted our Massey Harris binder, but quite a lot of them didn’t. I realized that I could adapt some of these to fit the McCormick binder so that it could be used again in the future.
I decided to tackle the “conveyor” canvas first, which fits behind the knife and conveys the cut cereal crop toward the elevators and on to the binding mechanism. This machine takes an 8 foot cut compared to the Massey Harris which is a 6 foot cut machine. The conveyor canvas is thus very long and so I decided to join together two of the new identical short canvases to get the length. The width also needed to be reduced by about 2 inches.
I sought the advice of Graham Kirk who founded his company, Farm & Rural Past, in Norfolk nearly 30 years ago to make binder canvases and supply spare parts. He was extremely helpful and supplied me with rivets and other materials for the conversion work.
I have been able to do this work at home over the past few weeks and have now finished the conveyor canvas and the lower elevator canvas, apart from a little fine tuning.
Tony Hogg has come out of lock down now so at the beginning of June we uncovered the binder, cleaned it down, greased the bearings and lubricated the chains. It now turns quite freely, and we were able to try the “new” conveyor canvas for size. I’m pleased to say that it fits and moves as it should, needing just one minor adjustment.
I now have the upper conveyor canvas to make by adapting another spare in our stock!
Ashley Vincent : June 2020
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