Worked on a Sunday! Square Baling until it makes me quit 

The guy that dreamed up the knotters impresses me more than anything Bill Gates came up with.

King Oliver Chris, I remember when your fathers Oliver came out and it's a beauty

There are few things known to man that are more frustrating than when your baler knotters are having a bad day

I just love watching these old tractors still out in the fields getting it done.

The bale thrower wastes hay. If you had one guy driving the bale trailer tractor, three picking up bales, and 2 stacking, one of the guys picking up bales would feed the broken bales back into the pickup of the baler. Therefore no waste. The stacker(s) are the secret to loading the wagon to the max and not losing a load heading to the barn. Of course, the worse jobs were in the loft taking bales from the conveyor and stacking them in the super hot barn loft. Working on a knotter that you think you have just right and then as you are walking back to the service truck it misses 3 bales. Emery paper to polish the knotter hooks, read the knots, and sharpen the cutter, and so on. Just as soon as you leave the guy driving the tractor starts running the RPMs up and it all goes to heck. Definitely makes one glad they are not out there working on balers anymore. Wonder why round bales became more popular?

Always used to bale with a JD 2020 diesel (just the right size for 10 year old me). When you blew a shear bolt, it was enough to stop the tractor, and you felt the back and forth from the baler the whole time. Years later, I was helping my in-laws bale up some straw with an IH 3288, which basically didn’t care if there was a flywheel involved or not. My wife’s cousin was waving at me to stop, because I didn’t notice the shear bolt was gone right away. It powered down, but didn’t stop like I remembered. A case of a little too much tractor for the implement. That 880 sounds like a very sweet running tractor, BTW.

I could’ve swore I heard the Rossqatsch at 11:26

"Work on Sunday wrench on Monday", Maybe the rest of the week. 🙂 Some great footage on how it all works. Stay safe!

Before grandpa got a baler with a thrower, I got the task of stacking the bales on the hayrack. That got to be work but oh the memories!

those knotters were pretty amazing

This video brought back so many hilarious memories of making hay. Like the time dad ripped me a new one for over loading the wagons. I had a hot, and I mean HOT HOT HOT date that night. I needed to get done. It was a life or death type of situation. Also we had a neighbor who had endless help from high school boys. Ya,because all the boys in county wanted to breed his blonde and red headed daughters. Man I miss those days! Great video Chris.

I always use plastic. One time I overdressed the knotters. Grease got on the knives and the darn thing wouldn't tie. After I broke about 15 bales I took it to the shop and cleaned it all off. The thing ran perfect after that. Now when I grease the knotters I use about 2 pumps total on each knotter.

I was thinking check the knives and you did LOL.

I've only worked with 2 balers in my entire farming career. The first baler we had was an Oliver model 50, which was a pretty good baler, but with the amount of hay we were baling, it was too labor intensive. Even as a young lad, I had to stack the hay on the wagon and then turn around and stack it again in the barn. We were baling 12-14,000 bales a year, which was a lot of work. In 1976 we bought a new Massey Ferguson 120 baler with a thrower, very much like the thrower on your 720. Still using that baler. And wow - knotters are wondrous things - when they work.

Hay grenades are entertaining and aggravating all at the same time. 🤨. Every time I would bale, before I went to the field, I would blow all the trash out of the knotters and and spray them liberally with some good ole PB Blaster or WD-40. Never touched the knotters other than that in over 20 years. Always sprayed them down when I put it away for the season. Just a suggestion Chris. Really enjoy your channel and I'm not even an Oliver guy. AC Orange is my color of choice. You and Ross are my "go too" videos. Thanks for taking the time to share your adventures with us. 👍🇺🇲🚜🌄🌱

Yeah probably needs cleaned, sharpened and adjusted. You'll get it back to working again. People underestimate those old square balers, if it's timed right and sharp they'll bale. I like the Oliver square baler just as much as the old IH balers.

I always liked how the 6 cylinder Oliver’s sounded. I had a 70 and an 88.

Back in the 70's my brother, dad and I did custom haying and during those years we did all square bales. Not once did we use a bale thrower or ejector, I kinda would have liked to. That said, we did a lot of hay and during most of that time we did have a hay hauling crew which made it handy for the land owners, but it was hard to keep a good crew. I ran a John Deere 24T and a JD 336, made some nice bales, made a lot of hay during those years. Anyways, liked watching as always, good to see you getting some hay up. Thanks, I hope you have a nice Sunday and week ahead.

Those knotters can really be a headache. I remember spending a good week trying to figure out what was going wrong with the knotted on our JD 346 baler around 1980. I was just out of high school, and I was trying to figure out how it worked so I could fix the problem. It happens so fast it almost seemed like magic. It would drop a bale about every third to fifth bale. I don’t remember what the fix was, but I do remember how frustrating it was.

i love the hay launcher 95000

We had an Oliver 62T, bought new approx 1963. It must have tied a million bales. Great video.

Always enjoy watching some baling as was in a couple of hay gangs in my early years and still miss the smell of picking it up, even got called in on a Christmas day to pick up hay once. I had a full time job but did it after hours and on my days off. Safe travels

Chris great video keep up good work hay bailing how keep parts for machine on hand, hard sometimes to fix not going way you want. Thanks again answer my questions great video

Thanks for the video. The knife arm knife may need to be sharpened, but the twine disc wear and tension is very important especially when changing to plastic twine. As you know there are many little things that can affect knot integrity. I couldn’t see if you had the 6 notch twine discs, but we changed many Oliver balers to the 4 notch twine discs to make them tie more consistently in different conditions and with twine variations. The Roto Flow balers worked very well in most conditions. Hesston eventually bought the Oliver design and produced it for a few years as a 4500 prior to making an inline baler that had a lot of the Oliver flavor.

I liked the slow mo shot’s especially the knotter, though I’m still “knot” sure how it works. The bail launcher reminds me of a pitching machine, I can see the down side it can be a total mess real fast if it’s not working correctly.

The knotter is a wonderful thing, until it’s not.

When we did small bale hay it was my sisters job to ride on the bale chamber of our international B46 and shout to dad to stop when it mist a knot so he could tye it before it came out.👍

I counted about 11-13 flakes between ties, nice. That Oliver baler is a beast compared to my 14T.

You just wanted to ride in the air conditioning 😂😂😂

I figured that would happen to me if I tried using plastic in my NH. The hay is so dry that it shatters.

Man Chris, after a twenty some year slumber that 880 runs as smooth as a sewing machine. Loving seeing that tractor back in action. Sorry you had the problem with the baler. Our baler at home always gave little issues like that at the start and then we tweeked it and went on with the season.

I personally feel like the best balers were New Holland back in the day, But Oliver really made a nice baler too. We used Case on Grandpa's farm, and a John Deere 24T. Both those balers had nothing but trouble in thick material like you were baling. Our neighbor with New Holland could eat windrows like no tomorrow. He would put up 1,500 bales in an afternoon and had a team of 6 kids unloading kicker wagons in the evening. His hay shed held 15,000 small square bales, had two elevators in it so you could unload two wagons into 2 spots at the same time. His tie stall barn had room for 110 milking cows and the mow held another 5-10,000 bales. He did all the field work, and his daughter handled the barn and milking crew. She was murdered in the yard by an ex-boyfriend and within 2 weeks all the cows were gone and 3/4 of the land was for sale. Within a year everything was sold and they had a new house being built built on their last 80acres. He sells arts and crafts now out of his garage. No one talked about depression back then, but I can only imagine how horrible he was feeling to make those choices. Grandpa used to hire him to chop silage and fill silo until he abruptly quit farming. He was a quiet man to begin with.

Sometimes a fella just has to walk away from his problems…😂

880 and 720! Nice combination! Great video and camera angles! I’m sure you will figure out the knotter issue.

Thanks Chris for another video using your Oliver tractor. When I was a kid, I always thought that was quite interesting 🤔 that the balers could tie a knot. When I was a kid on the farm Dad had an Oliver square baler. Dad would start baling hay using his 770 Oliver tractor, my brother and me with start picking up the hay with the lowboy. I wish dad would have a thrower on the baler to put it in the wagon like you have. How hard is it to sharpen the blades of those cutters? Thanks Michael

My 620 WILL NOT tie plastic twain. I have to use good 7200 sisal or I might as well give it up even cheap sisal that's not uniform thickness the fingers won't hold. I also can't bale any where near that fast the wind row would have to be half that size. I dare you to come to Webberville to make it bale faster

The slow motion of the broken bale coming through the thrower was really funny haha.. I would tend to agree with you. I've noticed the same thing just getting a couple hundred RPM over PTO speed will make those knotters really start acting strange. But you definitely have a dull knife problem. We have an accumulator table that would put the bales in squares of eight. The problem is it takes a little bit a horsepower away when all of that stuff starts moving to run the hydraulic pump so to get around that I would rev the tractor up a little bit and then the accumulator table would work right and the knots wouldn't tie correctly lol

My old JD214T was intermittent loosing knots, and I finally chased it down to the knotter shaft was twisted making the timing different between the 2 knotters. I added a couple washers under one side to even it up and it tied great then.

With poly twine you gotta have real sharp knives!!! Sisal twine is more forgiving with cutting because it will tear where poly twine won’t!!

Man, that 880 just wants to go! I saw that you just touch the throttle lever and it just about bucks you off😂 so a kid that works for me has a super 77 that he pulls with. I'm 90% sure I've talked to you about this before but is there a way that I could help him tweak that governor a little bit to give him a little bit more snap but not do anything to harm the engine?

Ah knotters, the problem child that plagues most square balers lol. I'd say you're right on the twine knives not being sharp enough, or at least that's a good place to start. Seems to me like most everybody (JD, NH, Oliver, Ford, etc.) used almost the same design of knotter. I'm not to sure about the Allis and J.I. Case balers, but I assume they're similar. International Harvester was the one that had to be different, and they paid for that in more ways than one lol.

Hey Chris, where was the family dealership located? Is the building still there?

Worked when parked.

I like watching your videos and it helped me figure out what kind of 4 bottom plow I just got its a 565 I'm pretty sure but it's missing one of the coulters and half the mount for it it is a coshen type with spring and I was wondering if you could point me in a direction for parts for it

Do you have a front mount cultivator? Would be fun to see the install and operation of one ?

Balers can be finicky...

Did Oliver make there own equipment or were they rebadged?

What make is your square baler