Frankenstein Discbine

We have done so much with so little for so long, we can do anything with nothing. 

My Dad has that quote posted in our shop and has it attributed to Dave Marcis, who may have gotten it elsewhere. Sometimes I wonder if it references the past, present, or future. Maybe it depends on what day it is, but this week it speaks of the present.

Our John Deere discbine had four bolts that lost their nuts and let a cog break a tooth. Not a problem, right? Well, the assembly to replace part, I say part, of it will cost over $1000 and it is a small piece. Our dealer, luckily, said they could rebuild it for much less. In the meantime, however, we've got hay to mow.....

We had a theory when we bought this discbine that the bar with all the spinning blades on it was the same as the one on our old broken down New Holland discbine. So we began harvesting parts off the New Holland and tried very hard to avoid the wasps that had made it their home.

It took a couple of days of working on the disc bine between milkings and feedings, but we finally got the parts from both mowers put together. Then it was time to put our theory to the test.

I suppose if "nothing" is an old discbine with weeds growing around it then we were definitely able to do "something" with it!  After all of this I can't decide if we're more like Dr. Frankenstein  (It's Alive!) building something out of different brands of machinery or more like the guy in the Johnny Cash song One Piece at a Time. I'll let you decide for yourself.