WIND STACKER STORY

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Threshing and baling in one operation at the Rough and Tumble Engineers Association Reunion,1951. This was a method used widely in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Box 143, Woodman, Wisconsin

I read in your September-October IRON-MEN ALBUM Magazine that Mr. Charles W. Tad lock wants to hear the story about the 'Farmers Friend' wind stacker. While visiting with my good friend Ed M. Peacock during threshing season on his farm near Fulton, Missouri this summer he handed me a book written by Stewart H. Holbrook called 'Machines of Plenty', and said I should read it.

Just before the postman brought your magazine this morning I was reading a chapter in this book about the wind stacker, and am attaching hereto an excerpt from it. This is an interesting subject and I am eager to hear what other readers may contribute.

I always look forward to receiving the IRON-MEN ALBUM Magazine and read everything in it several times

HASTON L. ST. CLAIR, 7511 The Paseo, Kansas City 10, Missouri

Excerpt from 'MACHINES OF PLENTY', By Stewart H. Holbrook (Chapter Nine-Page 105)

'WHEN JEROME CASE died, Stephen Bull, his brother-in-law, became president of the Threshing Machine Company. During his regime the concern introduced a single crank self-feeder for threshers that eliminated both the feeders and band cutters of threshing crews. Because the self-feeder increased the amount of straw entering the machine, it called for more labor at the other end, where the threshed straw came out. This labor in turn was reduced by an endless conveyor stacker, which swung from side to side of the threshing machine as the straw moved away from it.

'Even the conveyor stacker, however, several men were required to swing the stacker every little while and to stack the straw. An inventor named J. J. Buchanan soon came out with a patented wind stacker operated by a fan that forced a blast of air through a big pipe. Seldom has a new invention been so successful from its introduction as the wind stacker. It blew the threshed straw high and far in the air to fall and make a pile. Stacking was eliminated.

'Not only farmers and the makers of farm machinery recognized at once the great improvement of the wind stacker. It was also recognized as such by a group of *Hoosier lawyers who bought Buchanan's patent rights, formed the Indiana Manufacturing Company, and set out to license actual manufacturers who wanted to add wind stackers to their threshing machines. This amounted to virtually everybody in business, including the Case Company. The new device was called the Farmer's Friend Stacker. The concerns licensed to make it agreed to sell it at a fixed price, or $250. Of this amount, $30 went to the Indiana lawyers as royalty.