40-Ft. Header Made From Three Swathers

40-Ft. Header Made From Three Swathers SWATHERS Swathers 24-1-20 Richard and David Pope, Eston, Sask., used three Versatile pull-type, center delivery swathers to make a 40-ft. header that they mounted on their 1980 International 1480 self-propelled combine. "We use it to straight cut small grains including canary and flax. It lets us cover a lot of acres fast," says George. "We spent only about $2,500 to build it. Commercial headers of comparable size sell for $40,000 to $50,000." They started with two early 1970's Versatile 20-ft. swathers which they already had. They bought a third identical model for parts. They removed the center delivery rollers on two of the swathers, filled in the middle by welding in sheet metal, and mounted new canvases on each one. The sickles are driven by a pair of used pitman drives off self-propelled Versatile swathers, with one pitman drive mounted at each end of the header. They used the third swather to build a small 4-ft. wide reel that mounts between the two 18-ft. reels. A 4-ft. wide canvas below the small reel feeds the crop into the feederhouse. A shaft that runs through both 18-ft. headers is used to chain-drive the small canvas while the reel above it is driven off the combine hydraulics. "We've had very few problems," says George. "We had been using a New Holland TR70 self-propelled combine with a 20-ft. header. The giant 40-ft. header lets us cover about 20 acres per hour. "We reinforced the framework on the two 18-ft. header sections and made a frame from scratch for the 4-ft. section that mounts ahead of the feederhouse. We bought a 12-ft. long extension auger and bolted it on in order to make room for trucks when unloading into them." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Richard Pope, Box 666, Eston, Sask., Canada S0L 1A0 (ph 306 962-3813).

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