AN IMPROVED CONSTRUCTION OF SELF-RAKING REAPER
Year: 1866

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Frederick Howard at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents, with bis Petition, on the 22nd August
1866. A communication from abroad by James Shorkley Marsh, of
Lewisburg, in the State of Pennsylvania, United States of America.
I, FREDERICK HOWARD, of Bedford, in the County of Bedford, Agricultural
Implement Maker, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for
"AN IMPROVED CONSTRUCTION OF SELF-RAKING REAPER," to be as follows:-
This Invention relates to an improved arrangement of machinery to be
applied to reapers for the purpose of gathering up the corn and bringing it
under the action of the cutters, and also of sweeping off the cut corn from the
side of the platform and delivering it in sheaves upon the ground. A low
bracket casting is attached by bolts at one end to the platform and at the
other end to the drag bar of the machine. On the top of this casting is bolted
a hollow casting with an inclined or cam face, and within this casting is mounted
(on a vertical axle) a crown wheel which receives rotary motion when the
machine is in action; this wheel is cast with ribs at its back, forming radial
recesses, which are intended to receive the ends of wrought-iron arms for
carrying each one of a series of rake bars (say four in all); when four of
these bars are used one is fitted with tines or their equivalent for sweeping off
the cut corn from the platform, and the others are fitted with an adjustable
slat or bar for entering edgewise into the standing corn and pressing it back
towards the advancing cutters. The wrought-iron arms which carry the rake
bars are hinged to the ribs of the crown wheel, and they are so arranged as to
slide freely over the inclined cam face when the crown wheel is rotating. The

page_text: object of this cam face is to allow the bars to fall from an elevated position into
the standing corn and press back a given portion within reach of the cutters, and
afterwards to rise out of the way and take up a position for repeating this action.
The bars will thus rotate round a common centre, but sometimes they will be
moving in a vertical or nearly vertical plane, sometimes in an inclined, and for
another portion of their circuit in a horizontal plane. The rake bar arms are
connected in pairs by cross rods adjustable in length, so that when one bar is
moving horizontally and acting upon the corn the other is in the air. Motion
is communicated to the crown wheel from the driving wheel shaft; this
shaft is fitted at its end with a chain wheel, from which a chain passes to a
chain wheel mounted on a stud carried by the first-named casting, and on the
boss of this chain wheel or cast with it is a bevil pinion which gears into and
drives the crown wheel. If but one of the four rotating bars be fitted with
tines it will be understood that for each rotation of the crown wheel a sheaf
will be discharged on to the ground by the sweep of the rake over the
platform. The office of the other bars will be simply to do the work of the
bars of the ordinary reel. A simple way of varying the speed of the rake
bars so as to regulate the size of the sheaf according to the crop is to reverse
the positions of the chain wheels, which should for this purpose be of different
diameters.