My first attempt at building a pickup attachment on a pull type combine. A flat link chain design similar to AC chain pickups on model 60 and 66 combines. It actually worked fairly well but the chain links tended to break at the point where the tine bars were bolted on.

 My second attempt at building a pickup was to use a rotary design. This used pickup teeth and windrow guards from a NH round baler. I made everything else myself including the track for the cam follower bearings to run in. Again it doesn't work badly, but it's not perfect. The tine rotation is a bit rough and so it fails the cam follower bearings often. Just another pain when you're trying to combine.

Here I made a pickup head for my John Deere 4400 combine. This time I bought a cast cam track from new parts to fit a round baler. This track makes for a much smoother rotation of the tine bars in the pickup. It also uses a much larger follower bearing than my original rotary pickup on the All-Crop 90.

 Here I built a mobile bean cleaner. It started out as a large fanning mill using the round hole perforated screens that fit a 4400 combine. During the winter I happened across an ad selling several sets of spirals. I bought a pair of spirals and soon I needed a large frame to mount them on. My grandfather then said I should put one of the old grain tanks from a salvage pull type AC combine on it. By the time it was done, it is over 18 feet long. Unfortunately the guy that sold me the spirals also had a very large Clipper (no.6 I think) fanning mill for sale. I really regret not buying it then. At the time I had no good place to store it. It was a real deal for $900 though.

Allis Chalmers 11 row staggered row units planter. 1996. I bought the frame already made into a staggered planter. From Bill Wilson of Sparta , IL. He got the idea from an article in Farm Journal Magazine. I cut the number of units down to 11 rows on 15" centers. I then welded up a set of markers and used a cable and marker cylinder assembly off of a JD 7000 planter. There was only 2 drawbacks to this planter. 1 it was a pain to fill seed boxes with beans. 2 the markers hung down at about 45 degrees when raised by the cables. Not an issue unless at the edge of a tree line. Otherwise it worked good but I traded it for a Sunflower no-till drill in 1998.

Two Row 3 Point Mount corn planter. Spring 2005. I put this together to patch in corn. I have to thank Ron Burmeiester of Baldwin, IL for the AC row units and Bill Wilson of Sparta, IL for the 2 seed boxes.

 Hydraulic fold auger on JD 4400 combine