Building FEL hay spear, have a question

[mjw357]

For those of you who use these regularly to move rounds or large squares, how important is having some rollback angle? The way my loader works, the attachment point is pretty much vertical at full rollback when the bucket is on the ground.

 

[LouNY]

I'm not getting your question clearly;
are you mounting a bale spear on your bucket or making one on a ssqa plate?
If you are vertical (straight up?) with full rollback at ground level,
I would caution you to be carefull when fully lifted that a bale can not slide or tear of and come back on you.
Normally you want to be able to get the bale to slide off the spear when placing it in a feeder,
so being able to get it to point most of the way downward with your loader high enough to clear the bale and feeder
is the desired operation,
moving and stacking as long as you can get the spear level with the ground you should be OK.

 

[mjw357]

Hi Lou, I am building a spear that will attach to my loader in place of the bucket if that makes more sense. Unfortunately I have the Kubota quick attach so I have to design and build myself.
What I mean is the attachment point on the loader is vertical, if the bale spear were mounted the spear would be horizontal. At full rollback the end of the spear would point upward ever so slightly as the loader is raised.
I have plenty of range to dump, getting a bale off the spear won't be an issue.

 

[LouNY]

OK, I think I understand now.
The only concern that I would have is that you can get a soft bale,
you might like to have enough angle at full curlback that the tip of the spear is a foot higher then the base at grade level,
that way it would not have a tendency to slide off while carrying it low down a grade.
Also the smaller base spears will keep a bale from from rotating,
which can be a good or bad thing depending on what you are doing.
spreading a bale out for bedding it can be handy to get them started unrolling by rotating by hand.
Good Luck
Lou

 

[countrybumpkin]

I’d make sure you have plenty of roll back for the same reasons as stated above.

 

[Birdhunter1]

If you are building your own make it with two spears instead of one. I've use'd single spears while working for others and I built mine as a single spear, but I wish now I would have gone with a dual spear setup. about 24-30" apart.

 

[mjw357]

Thanks, I was thinking that traveling downhill with no rollback could potentially be an issue. Also, having rollback would help make sure the bale is seated all the way against the frame.

Birdhunter, I am considering a 2-spear side by side setup versus a big main spear with a single smaller stabilizer below.

 

[texasranger556]

I agree you will want some upward angle on the spear with the loader low. I don't use a spear but same concept for pallet forks I built. Without rollback, it would be tough to keep a log on the forks going down a hill. For my JD quick attach forks, I spaced the bottom of the frame about about 3-4 inches to accomplish this. At full height the forks dump to just about vertical, but not far enough they hit the hood, which is another thing to consider.

 

[Birdhunter1]

My reasoning for the dual spear would be to grab big squares if you have to use them, I am a horse owner not a hay producer so I may end up with big squares. A dual spear can handle both as well as carry fence posts, pick up (to a small extent) loose hay or sticks and other things.
I also have pallet forks for such things but sometimes I don't feel like swapping attachments.

 

[M5farms]

Build it 90deg , you will have plenty of curl . Fwiw when you weld in your spear receiver space them pallet width and you will hardly ever use the forks again.

 

[M5farms]

I have built several overthe years but when I bought the new loader I got one from Titian attachments for around 400 bucks . It's hard to build one that price if you factor in your labor.

 

[chim]

Thanks, I was thinking that traveling downhill with no rollback could potentially be an issue...............................

Travelling downhill with the bale in front of you with a B3200 could potentially be an issue itself.

 

[mjw357]

Travelling downhill with the bale in front of you with a B3200 could potentially be an issue itself.

I always have one on the 3-point when moving bales in the bucket.

 

[mjw357]

I have built several overthe years but when I bought the new loader I got one from Titian attachments for around 400 bucks . It's hard to build one that price if you factor in your labor.

If I could find someone selling a loader mounted bale spear for Kubota quick attach for $400 I would surely buy one, no question.

 

[M5farms]

If I could find someone selling a loader mounted bale spear for Kubota quick attach for $400 I would surely buy one, no question.

I just assumed you had the quick tach or universal quick attach on your Loader

 

[mjw357]

I just assumed you had the quick tach or universal quick attach on your Loader

I wish, my dealer/salesman was not very knowledgable.

 

[Xfaxman]

I vote for extra rollback.

This is my first machine that could use a bale spike. I took off the forks and hung the 3 point bale spear on the fork frame. Soon found out it didn't have enough rollback:

Put an adapter together with a lot of rollback:

It worked great:

.

 

[M5farms]

I wish, my dealer/salesman was not very knowledgable.

why not just buy the attachment and build the QA to your specs I would think the global QA could be easily adapted

 

[mjw357]

why not just buy the attachment and build the QA to your specs I would think the global QA could be easily adapted

I thought about that, but then I would have to modify my bucket to fit ssqa, and have a $300 Kubota quick adapter that I would have no use for.

 

[LouNY]

After m5farms mentioned the global QA I got to wondering what kubota did for a quick hitch,
it looks like they had several different so called quick attaches;
Optional “Bolt-On” Brackets
Work savers may have your QA for your kubota.
good luck