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By the 1860s, most machines were capable of efficient and reliable mechanized threshing and winnowing. The laborious process of feeding bundles into the machine and removing and disposing of the straw and chaff that exited out the rear of the machine had yet to be mechanized, however. By the early 1870s, however, it was possible to buy a machine like the MacDonald- MacPherson “Standard” (780939).

MacDonald-MacPherson & Co., “Standard” Threshing Machine (780939)

These came equipped with a straw stacker: a slatted conveyor attached to the rear of the machine, which carried the straw away and deposited it in a pile. As the straw stack grew in height, the conveyor was gradually raised by a system of chains and pulleys. Although straw stackers mechanized the process of building straw stacks and eliminated the need for several labourers, this labour-saving was often offset by a need for more workers elsewhere in the process. By the 1880s, for example, horse-drawn binders were supplanting field labourers and speeding the harvesting process. These machines used wire to tie the stalks of grain, however, making it necessary to have several labourers had to cut and remove the wire ties before passing the bundles to the labourers who fed them into the machine. Once the grain had been separated from the stalks and chaff, two more labourers removed it from the machine and measured and bagged it. Thus, despite technological advances, a minimum of six men was still required to operate a threshing machine.

J.R. Ebersol “Special Band Cutter and Self-Feeder”

Sawyer-Massey’s “Peerless” Separator (700391)

The use of sisal twine in the Appleby patent twine-tying mechanism of the late 1880s soon made it unnecessary for labourers to cut and remove wire ties. This, in turn, made it possible to introduce a mechanical device for feeding bundles into the threshing machine. There were many competing brands of self-feeders; all, however, were similar in appearance and function. Sawyer-Massey of Hamilton used a J.R. Ebersol Special Band Cutter and Self-Feeder on their “Peerless” Separator (700391). A self-feeder consisted of a conveyor, equipped with open slats with upward-pointing short tines. These were attached to the front of the machine, level with the bottom of the cylinder. The tines caught the bundles as they were pitched onto the conveyor, and carried them under a row of reciprocating knives which cut the twine bands, opened the bundles, and fed them directly into the cylinder at a constant rate.

By the mid-1890s, most of the large machines from Canadian and American manufacturers were equipped with self-feeders, that had governing mechanisms controlling the speed at which sheaves were fed into the cylinder. This speed was related to the cylinder’s optimum threshing speed. The feeder would not start moving until the cylinder was spinning fast enough and, when the cylinder slowed under the load, so did the self-feeder. This meant it was nearly impossible to slug or jam the cylinder by feeding sheaves too quickly. Although it was essential that the cylinder and subsequent mechanisms be kept operating at maximum capacity, too much grain led to reduced separating efficiency. This forced manufacturers to increase the length and width of their machines’ straw walkers, in order to accommodate the increased flow of material to be separated. It was common to find a threshing machine with a 32-inch-wide cylinder and a 54-inch-wide straw walker.

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