Keep safety top of mind when working with farm machinery

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Try to protect yourself and others from personal injury on the farm. The life you save just might be your own or that of someone you love

by RALPH WINFIELD

Many of us, as farm children, were exposed to numerous safety risks in the barn and around machinery. Fortunately, most of us survived with only a few cuts and bruises. I still have all 10 fingers, but both hands show scars from close calls.

Many close calls resulted from rather stupid errors in judgement. When we were about 10 years old, most of us really did believe that we could withdraw our hands fast enough to beat a hungry turnip pulper or the connecting link of a truck rack chain under tension. By age 14 or 15, with some field experience as a tractor driver, we were sure that nothing mechanical could stand in the way of our success.

In my teen years, I was conscripted to load sheaves on the wagon as the older men preferred to stand on firm ground and pitch the sheaves from the stooks. We only had one horse, as did another member of the threshing gang. They would be teamed up, but only for the threshing season. The other mare had a habit of taking the bit in her teeth if you let the reins go loose.

On one trip to the barn with a full wagonload of sheaves, that mare got her teeth on the bit. The race was on and I could not stop her or avoid a turn as we approached the barn. I did what I had to do – I went to the high side of the wagon and jumped clear! The empty wagon with the rack askew returned to the field.

The next year, that same team with an empty wagon returning to the field took off with a younger driver. I watched as the owner of the other mare, who was pitching for me, attempted to stop the team and wagon.

The sight was not pretty. He was about 50 years old at the time. He was knocked down by the neck yoke, went between the horses and was hit by both of the big square wooden wagon axles. I did not expect to see him get up, but get up he did, with a little help from me and the other pitcher. I secured the now-stopped team to the nearby fence and proceeded quickly with the other team and loaded wagon to the farmstead for help.

The victim was taken to the local medical clinic where it was determined that he only had some cracked ribs. Needless to say, that pair of horses was never teamed up again.
Here are a couple of key safety lessons I have learned.

Machinery safety is essential. When I returned to farming in 1974, I acquired all of the relatively dangerous farm machines – but no horses.

Harvesting equipment, such as forage harvesters and combines, has to be amongst the most dangerous machinery to operate. They both have essentially open header devices that do not differentiate between a stalk of corn and an arm.

As an operator, you must take personal precautions and also ensure that no other person attempts to unplug a running header. I remember vividly those combine header plug-ups on those years or in field areas where the corn stalks were broken and laying across the row spacing. It was very tempting to go down and try to unplug the header while it was running. But then you would remember seeing some person who had lost part of an arm or more. The decision to stop the header became a very clear choice.

PTO shafts can be dangerous. Most of us have seen farm safety demonstrations where a piece of cloth or a coat comes in contact with an unguarded PTO shaft. The visual impact is spectacular and reminds one constantly about the importance of properly shielded PTO shafts.

Shielding of belts and chains on all machines is very critical as well. Fingers and loose clothing can both be taken in with serious consequences.

By now you can be sure that I have another near-miss story to tell, and you are correct. Just recently, our electrical power went out on a rather cold day. After determining by a phone call that it would be off for a number of hours, I went to power up the PTO-driven generator.

My portable PTO-driven generator has a relatively new, properly guarded PTO shaft in place. I hooked up the generator to the tractor and started the generator so the drive gears could warm up as I approached the centralized metering (CM) pole in the farm yard. It has the pole-top switch on top and the electrical connector about three feet above ground level. The electrical connection cable is about 15 feet long, so that the tractor and generator can sit level on the edge of the driveway.

I connected the electrical cable and pulled the snap action switch at the pole. To my horror, the PTO shaft broke loose at the generator end and started to flail viciously. I had to make a split-second decision as to how to get to the PTO lever on the tractor. Fortunately, I could leave the pole and proceed around the front of the tractor to get to the lever that was on the far side of the tractor.

Another fortunate thing was that the PTO shaft, which had a good shield in place, did not come apart. It jumped off the generator trailer and the open end of the universal joint proceeded to make a nice hole in the ground beside the generator before I got it stopped.

What happened is that the connector between the generator gearbox and the PTO universal joint broke at a weld line. The coupler was probably as old as the generator, and the weld had reached its fatigue or life limit.

I do remember the cylinder shaft in the last combine I owned breaking in a similar manner due to metal fatigue. However, the occurrence was not as dramatic as this recent failure of the PTO shaft coupler.

So, remember, any metal rotating shafts and/or couplers do have a fatigue life. I recall studying that in machine design courses at university.

Whenever possible, try to protect yourself and others from personal injury from livestock or machinery. The life you save just might be your own or that of someone you love. BF

Agricultural engineer Ralph Winfield farms at Belmont in Elgin County.