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Lancaster PA | Does anyone do it? How many times before you sharpen again? More interested to hear what guys with older machines do. We run an older NH 1900 and I never bother to move the shear bar between sharpening knives. We just replaced the knives and shear bar and I read an article about moving more often and was curious what other guys do. |
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WCIL | Have ran a Fox, gehl, and now NH fp240 and always set the shear bar up to the knives after sharpening. |
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swmn | Sharpen every 4 hours running hay with my claas, sharpen 6 cycles every time and set bar each time. Do an 8 hour cycle in corn. |
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western iowa,by Denison | set shear bar up about 2-4 times a day-old chopper fixer before thee was a sharpner on chopper said use shear bar to keep knives sharp--set to just tick not clunk-always nice to have good manual shear bar bolts-the old pain in the butt ones-but they set the bar tight and would not move-we also replace shear bar and don't use the other side-usually ever 100 ton in hay-and on pull type corn at least every 20acres-we also use corn knives-and grass knives in hay- |
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Lancaster PA | I adjust it every time I sharpen the knives too. If I read it right this article was saying that you could do it more than just when you are sharpening knives but I didn't know if it would make enough difference to make it worthwhile. |
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| Ran Gehl and NH pull types. Sharpen knives every day, (10-12hrs.). Set Cutterbar aftter sharpening and 2 times during a normal day. Uses less fuel, keeps a more consistent shop length, and the knives never get real dull so sharpening goes faster. Knives and Cutterbar last longer too. Set Cutterbar so it ticks lightly on both sides.
I tap on the Cutterbar with a hammer as I am adjusting it to eliminate any tension in the adjusting mechanism that causes the Cutterbar to (jump) toward the knives. This is more of an issue with the Gehl choppers. |
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Earlville, NY | That's interesting...we sharpen every two hours in haylage with our claas 850, 18 cycles. That's what guy we bought it from did so that's what we did. Our auto shearbar setter went south, the next option to try fixing it was really expensive so we set it at beginning of the day with t-handle wrench and sharpen 2-3 times without setting shearbar. Maybe need to rethink that; thought bar needed replacing since haylage is a little shaggy even though the bar seems to be in good shape. Glad I read this thread. |
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south central WI | Adjust the bar between sharpenings, unless you aren't putting that much through in a day. It does help from it getting shaggy. After sharpening you need to adjust the cutterbar, otherwise both will wear even faster.
My knives wear very fast, I think due to our Sandy soil and cutting the hay lower. I need to replace them already, but going to push 4th crop through them next week. Maybe 2500 acres total hay on them? |
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Beresford, SD | Auto sharpener and bar on 6650. Sharpen once a day and set bar twice a day. All crops the same. Had Icon (JD cutter man) out last week.......he said bar and knives are good to go at least one more season. Machine had new knives and bar in April of 2012 when I bought it. Have cut 600 acres corn silage, 600 acres earlage, 100 oatlage and 400 acres of haylage so far since purchase.......need a new stone to get knives back after oatlage and haylage this year. Zero custom, just my own........have replaced just a chute liner on machine since purchase, other than filters and oil.
Edited by carlsoncl 8/4/2017 23:04
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Columbia Basin, Ephrata, WA | We sharpened every 4 hours in corn and 2.5 hours in windrows, usually ten passes and set shearbar every time.
Usually knives were replaced every year (about 50,000 tons) and had some life left but I didn't want to change them mid season.
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100 miles north of the NYC crapper | Set every time knives sharpened. That's a good idea to tap with hammer to remove tension in mechanism. NH 900 |
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BC, Canada | You can't sharpen and set the shearbar too much, a shearbar with too big a gap will wear quicker than one than is set tight a few times a day.
Pic is of knives on a 870 Claas, was 6 hours between sharpen cycles, sets the bar every time. As you can see the middle of the knives will never get cleaned up and the bar is set to only the outer edges, took me 90 passes to get them looking decent again.
We sharpen 10-15 passes every 2 hours and set the bar every time with our Claas 830. When we ran NH pull types it was in the morning, sharpen and set bar and then again in the afternoon when we stopped for chores and fuel.
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 IMG_6649.JPG (148KB - 96 downloads)
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Shear bar adjustment between knife sharpening
