The rest of the baler repair work

Last Sunday I worked more on removing the net-wrap from the baler's roller.  I finished removing the net-wrap at the second belt location. 

I saw that the fourth belt's lacing was where I could work on it to remove the lacing's pin, and I did.  I unrolled the belt from the net-wrapped roller.  Then after I moved the third belt over to the second belt's location I could then work on removing the net-wrap from the third and fourth's belt locations at the same time.  That meant I only had to go around the roller once, and not twice.

The lacing pin

As time went on I found I had a different knife I could use, and it was easier to use and sharper than many of my other knives.    Curtis's burning tool melted some net-wrap, but as time went on the melted net-wrap turned into pools of melted plastic and the burning slowed down as the melted net-wrap pools would harden.  And the tool couldn't be used for a long time as it would heat up and the handle would get hot.  I also used a blow torch a few times. There were locations and times I could use a blow torch for a short period to melt the net-wrap and the pools of melted plastic.

You can see the small flames (lower left) in the following photo from using a blow torch to melt a split in the net-wrap.

I got slowed down for a few hours on Sunday as it began to rain and I had to stop removing the net-wrap.

Also on Sunday I removed much of the net-wrap from the fifth belt.  I'm spending more time working on the removal and was going faster.  Maybe I can finish on Monday.

On Monday I finished the fifth belt.  I then did the sixth belt.  Two belts left.  But the net-wrap was thicker under these two belts.  The first six belts had lots of net-wrap but the belts were not wedged against other metal and I could work on sliding them over to another belt's location so I could work on removing the net-wrap.  These final two belts were wedged and what had caused the overall belt system to stop.  I could not slide these belts off the net-wrap.

I then had to use a drill with a 1-inch bit to drill out the net-wrap between the roller and the nearby metal piece.  You'd think drilling the net-wrap would be easy.  No!  The net-wrap is hard.  Part of the net-wrap turned to dust, just like drilling wood.  But then part of the net-wrap tore and then would wrap around the drill bit.  The wrapping around the bit would cover the cutting edges so I would have to stop and then unwind or pull the net-wrap off the drill bit before drilling some more.

In order to be able to collapse the net-wrap between the roller and the nearby metal piece I had to drill a number of holes.  Making things harder is the belt is 8 inches wide.  

Finally I drilled enough that I could collapse part of the net-wrap and then slide the belt off the rest of the net-wrap.

At the end of Monday I had removed the seventh's belt's net-wrap and started to drill holes in the eighth's and finally belt.

Tuesday morning I finished drilling holes in the net-wrap and was able to collapse part of the net-wrap and slide the belt off the net-wrap.  Now one would think that for the final net-wrap I wouldn't have to spent so much time cutting and burning the net-wrap from around the roller, and just have to cut and burn the net-wrap to split it.  But no...  the end of the roller had a "groove" where it was attached to the baler's metal side and this groove was filled with net-wrap.  Around the roller I had to work.

Finally all the net-wrap was removed.   

This is only around half of the net-wrap that was removed.

I noticed that under the seventh belt where I had to initially drill the net-wrap, I also drilled against the roller for a bit.  I didn't notice until I removed the net-wrap.

I put the fourth belt back around all the rollers and put the pin back in to hold the lacing together.   At 12:30 pm I was finally done.  Time to eat a full breakfast.

At 1 pm I was ready to bale my hay.  As I started to bale my next disaster hit.  The disasters don't end.