IMPROVEMENTS IN REAPING AND MOWING MACHINES
Year: 1878

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Charles Denton Abel at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents on the 28th December 1878. A communication
from abroad by Franz Heimel, of Vienna, in the Austrian Empire.
CHARLES DENTON ABEL, of No. 20, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, in
the County of Middlesex. "IMPROVEMENTS IN REAPING AND MOWING MACHINES."
[A communication from abroad by Franz Heimel, of Vienna, in the Austrian
Empire.]
According to the present Invention reaping and mowing machines are constructed
as follows:-The platform is carried by two running wheels, the outer one of which
is broader than the inner one and has attached to it a toothed ring in gear with a
pinion running on a pin fixed to the side of the platform. Attached to this pinion
is a bevil wheel in gear with a bevil pinion on one end of an axis parallel to the
side of the platform frame and carried by a bracket attached to the latter. The
other end of the axis is formed as a crank and is connected by a connecting rod
to the knife bar, to which the requisite rapid reciprocating motion is imparted
thereby. The fixed fingers to the knives have steel plates rivetted to their under-
side, against which the knives slide, being pressed in close contact therewith by a
rail carried by springs that are rivetted together with the finger rail to an angle
iron rail serving to impart the requisite strength to the finger rail, a packing piece
being introduced between the springs and the finger rail equal to the combined
thickness of the steel plates attached thereto, the knives, and the bar carried by
the springs. At the inner side of the platform is a vertical sheet metal flange for
separating the corn to be cut from the standing corn, and at the forward end of this
flange is a cutting blade terminating in a point and having a cutting edge directed
upwards so as to cut the weeds that are interlaced with the corn. The bracket
carrying the cranked axle of the running wheels on the outer side side has cast
in a boss on its upper side a vertical wrought iron rod over which is fitted a loose
tube carrying at its lower end a bevil wheel in gear with a bevil wheel attached
to the running wheel, so that the rotation of the latter imparts rotary motion to
the tube and consequently also to the horizontal feeding and delivering arms which
are carried in sockets formed or fixed on the upper end of the tube. Beneath the

page_text: socket of one of the arms is a second socket to which is hinged the arm of a rake,
This rake is during one portion of its rotation kept close up against the feeding
arm by means of a spring fixed to the tube acting on a bent rod extending down-
wards from the arm of the rake, but as the latter passes over the platform of the
machine a roller at the end of the said rod passes behind a cam shaped plate
attached to the bracket of the before mentioned vertical rod carrying the tube, which
plate is so formed that as the rod passes in contact therewith it is moved so as to
depress the rake onto the platform in order to clear off the cut corn, which is
delivered thereby onto an inclined shoot at the back end of the platform.