IMPROVEMENTS IN MOWING AND REAPING MACHINES
Year: 1876

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by James Green at the Office of the Com-
missioners of Patents on the 7th July 1876.
JAMES GREEN, of No. 55, Batty Street, Dewsbury, in the County of York, Agri-
cultural Engineer. "IMPROVEMENTS IN MOWING AND REAPING MACHINES."
This Invention has for its object to so improve the construction of grass mowing
and grain reaping machines as to enable single gear to be successfully used for
working their knives or cutters, and to increase their efficiency by diminishing their
friction and rendering a larger proportion of their propelling power available.
The running or travelling wheels are made inuch larger in diameter than is usual
in mowing and reaping machines, and by so utilizing advantages derived from their
increased size, and also by using a longer than ordinary stroke, a less proportionate
number of revolutions to the pinion is required, which enables the pinion to be
made both large enough and sufficiently strong to inesh into and work with the
large gear wheel and at the same time to furnish the requisite speed to successfully
work grass mowing and grain reaping machines, whether each machine is used as a
reaper only or as a mower and reaper combined.
The crank to which the pinion is connected gives in this way a stroke to the
cutters of about double the length of the ordinary stroke of mowing and reaping
machines, and this combination as a whole enables one set of the gear ordinarily
used to be dispensed with, and so that this machine has only one gear wheel, which
is also a very large one, and meshes directly with its pinion. The pinion is made
with a spiral gear to act in combination with the large gear wheel, such having
been proved a more effective means of working it than if an ordinary pinion was
used. The main gear wheel is also held in position with the pinion by a roller or
brace wheel attached to the frame of the machine to contact and roll with the face
of the gear on the large wheel and prevent the tendency of its slipping from mesh
with its piuion in any sudden or severe strain of work.
The axle for the travelling wheels is so adapted that the frame or bed of the
machine with the pinion attached to it and the cutting arrangements are enabled
to slide along it sufficiently to easily throw the machine into or out of gear, and
this is accomplished by a stud on the axle entering an inclined slot made in a hori-
zontal plate or slide, which slide is operated by a hand lever, and the moving of
which lever will so slide the bed and cutting arrangements along the axle as to put
it in or out of gear. The running wheels are constructed with an internal grooved
rim, within which is placed an india-rubber tire, then over these a wooden tire or
[Price 24.1

page_text: felloes, and this tire is closed with a sectional iron tire that breaks joints therewith,
and is made secure by bolts that enter the felloes.
The cutter bar is hinged to the front end of a bar connected to the rear end of the
frame and extending to the front thereof, and a chain pendent from a bell crank
hand lever connects with the front end of this bar and serves to lift the cutter bar
over any obstructions that may be met with. The cutting edges of the knives or
cutters are by preference made at an angle of 45°.