IMPROVEMENTS IN HARVESTING MACHINES
Year: 1876

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATFON left by William Galsworthy at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents on the 18th May 1876.
WILLIAM GALSWORTHY, of Grimsbury, Banbury, in the County of Oxford,
Engineer. "IMPROVEMENTS IN HARVESTING MACHINES."
"
This Invention relates to improvements in harvesting machines, and consists in
mounting upon a frame one or a couple or more of drums or skeleton cylinders,
furnished with spikes or tines, which as the drums revolve pass between one
another. One of the drums or cylinders is fitted nearer the ground than the other,
and as the frame which may be upon wheels is drawn across a field in which a cut
crop may be lying the tines of the lower drum pick up the cut crop and deliver it
upon the higher drum, from which it is again delivered over a comb or finger plate
on to a screen or shoot, so as to permit the crop to slide down and be deposited
upon the ground; the operation of lifting and separating the straws and blades
enabling the crop to be laid upon the ground in a light and open condition. The
screen or shoot may have one side set at an angle to compel the crop to slide down
to one side and then to be deposited in a continuous swathe in the wake of the
machine. In lieu of the shoot being fitted at the tail end of the apparatus an end-
less travelling belt may be provided to work at right angles to lay the crop outside
the travelling line of the machine.
The shoot or endless band may, however, be dispensed with, and then the gathered
and separated crop would be permitted to fall in the wake of the machine as is now
done by the ordinary machine known as the hay-making machines, but without
the hay being thrashed or unnecessarily knocked about as is now the case.
The drum frame may in some cases be also fitted with what may be termed a
winder, viz., an apparatus in which a tube set to travel concentrically round another
tube as a central one which rotates, the gathered crop being passed through both
the tubes to partake of a twist thereby, and then up between nipping rollers from
which the crop, say hay, may as it leaves the gathering drums be twisted or rolled
into a kind of rope, but very loose so as not to injure the straws, and then by the
nipping rollers which act as lifters and feeders of the crop from the gatherer to a
wagon or other vehicle which travels alongside or in other convenient manner for
the purpose of receiving it.
I have mentioned hay as being gathered and again deposited by the first-men-
tioned drums as would be when used as a hay maker only, whether the deposit bo
in a sheet as a swathe from the shoot or as a swathe from the endless band, but
[Price 2d.]

page_text: other cut crops, such as wheat, oats, barley, and the like can be gathered if desired
by my gathering drums, which on the frame forms an independent machine, or one
to be put in connection with the tail end of a reaping or a mowing machine for
receiving the cut crop and delivering it in any suitable manner.
The crop twisting apparatus can be used separately for turning over or relaying
the swathes, or it can be used for elevating the crop in the making of ricks or stacks,
the crop being simply fed into the rotating tubes and between the rollers to be
afterwards delivered as a loosely bound or twisted rupe, and can be laid by hand as
desired, or the twisting apparatus may be used for lifting the crop in connection
with a thrashing machine.