I particularly enjoyed your “Setting Up A Binder” article in the last Small Farmer’s Journal. I noticed that the Champion binder has an IHC auto-steer tongue truck. I’m wondering if you know when that Champion binder was manufactured. There are many clever designs in the old horse machinery, but I have long admired how that tongue truck turns shorter than the tongue so a team can sidestep around a corner to line up for the next swath. We had one of these tongue trucks installed on a #9 mower back when Dad was still alive and farming. I still have a couple stashed in my windbreak.

Most of the grain losses from combine operation can be prevented if the grain is ripe enough when it is cut and if the machine is correctly adjusted. The machine should be adjusted for each field that is cut and adjusted several times each day for changing weather conditions. Good operation of the combine is difficult where there is a large proportion of weeds in the crop, but correct adjustment reduces the trouble. Grain loss may be at the following places: the grain platform (reel or cutter bar), the cylinder, the straw rack, and the cleaning shoe.

Every thresherman purchasing a new machine wants to do just a little better work than his neighbor. It is therefore important that he should operate his machine properly in every particular. He should make every adjustment necessary to do good work. The cylinder should be run at the proper speed and the concaves adjusted to meet the existing conditions and kind of grain, so that all the heads will be threshed clean of every kernel. The more perfect the threshing, at the cylinder, the nearer the approach to perfect separation.

It is only natural for the owner of a new combine to want to try his machine as early as possible. This results in most new combines being started in the field before the crop is ready for combining. As soon as a binder is seen in the neighbor’s field, the urge to start becomes uncontrollable. When grain is ready for binding, it is not ready for straight combining.

Since the conditions encountered in the field are so varied that definite instructions would be of little value, the aim is to explain the effect of certain adjustments and leave it to the one making the adjustments to determine when they should be made. Determining the cause before attempting a remedy will simplify the task. Study the problem carefully before making any changes. There are four principal units in the Harvester-Thresher: The Heading, Threshing, Separating and Cleaning Units. Each should be considered individually to determine where loss of efficiency may be present.

Grain growers were quick to appreciate the many outstanding features of the John Deere No. 5 Combine – quick to see in it the answer to a demand for a light-draft, long-lived, grain-saving combine. All through the last combining season, they were enthusiastically asking friends, “Have you see the new John Deere No. 5?”