Re: hay saw ?

[Homer Robson <Homer.Robson@trinexus.com>]

> Hi,

    This type of tool should work well on straw. They certainly did the
job on hay, which tends to be much tougher/heavier stuff than straw.

More detail than you may care about follows....
   I grew up using a "Hay Knife" on our bush farm in northern
Saskatchewan. We stacked our hay without the aid of bales - hay sweep,
and hay elevator dumped onto a wagon which had ropes laid out lengthwise
to make a sling. When the load of hay was complete, you backed up to the
hay yard, took the tractor around behind the wagon and hooked on to the
sling, and rolled the whole load of hay off the wagon and onto the
stack. It sort of made a dense lump of hay that roughly resembled
today's round bales.
    The fun came when trying to pull hay out of the stack by hand!!  A
hay fork would just bend as you tried to pry the hay loose from these
dense rolls of hay, all sitting on top of each other.
    The solution was to take the hay knife (or hay-saw that you
describe) and start at the top of the stack, and cut a slice off that
could then be picked up with a fork for feeding.
    Both handles protruded from the same side of the saw, which seemed a
little strange till you started cutting hay flush with the face of a 10
foot hay stack cliff. A handle on each side would have meant one handle
was digging into the face of the hay-cliff.

    0======0\========================/
             \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

* 0 = handle - both point toward the user.
* Blade had a curve up over the length.

Have fun!
--
Homer Robson, TriNexus, http://www.TriNexus.com
241 - 111 Research Drive, Saskatoon, SK, CANADA, S7N 3R2
Ph: 306.931.1337   Fax: 306.931.1370


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