Last look at an M with Pinto Bean Cutters

Got my 10 Acres of Pinto beans cut and the old M worked like a champ. I to reconfigure the spacing since I set it up wrong the first time. Front tire was running on the row...Have to set the back tires to 88 inches for 22 inch beans. I also added 2 more cutters from the spare parts I have so now it's a 6 row cutter which matches my 6 row No 60 McCormick bean planter. This was the test year to see how beans are done. I'm planting about 50 acres next year. Will be combining these beans next week.

Mind if I ask what a "pinto bean cutter" does? If you run it through a combine, what do you cut?

Interesting for sure! I assume it cuts the stem of the bean, and then just leaves the plant lying in the sun waiting for the pinto beans to dry out?
Does it cut them above the ground or just below the surface?

We used to call them "bean pullers", as they don't really cut anything, they slice under the plants, lift them out of the ground, and pull two rows together. Never seen a setup like this one, our first was front-mounted on a Ford Jubilee, and only two rows. We later had a four row setup on the side cultivators on one of our 706D's, ran the rear wheels all the way out, and left two windrows from 4 rows inside the rear wheels. The large knife-like blades do the pulling- one thing the later versions had was a double guide bar setup above the blades to help contain & windrow two rows into one. Then the two would be brought to one with a hay rake, and then through the Innes "bean windrower", which would pick up the windrow, gently shake the dirt & rocks out, and fluff it up for final drying. The plants were first sprayed with Shed-a Leaf defoliant (think Agent Orange- not kidding, it came in those infamous orange drums) which knocked all the leaves off and dried out the stems in just a couple days- just had to dry the actual beans to spec for the mill. I was in my early teens at the time, we had a couple extra sets of puller blades to switch out the dull ones, so I ground blade edges in the evening and ran the rake with the 8N or the Innes on our second 706D during the day. Got to run the 91 Bean Special combine the first time when I was ten. My price to pay for getting to run the 91 part-time was to change the broken windrow pickup tines about every third day- one royal PITA. Spent the rest of my daytime while the combine was running staging the haul trucks and doing the check-walks behind the combine for setup

Pinto beans grow too close to the ground to go in and direct cut with a combine even the one's they use for soy beans...so what you do is run a bean knife rig or a bean rod rig through to cut and lift the plants out of the ground.
This rig does a good job of cutting and then putting 2 rows together. It was suppose to be a 4 row cutter but had longer bars than normal and I had extra knife bars so I added the 2 outside ones and it works just fine.
After cutting you are suppose to rod the rows which lift the plant all the way out of the ground but with the wide knives I put on the plants aren't in the ground at all. Next step is to use a hay rake and rake 4 rows onto 4 then another 4 onto those 8 for 12 rows total.
The combine has a special front roller assembly with tines that pick the plants off the ground and then up and into the head.
You have to do everything in the morning except the combine part with dew on or the pods shell. Gives you about 3 hours to either cut or rake.

Great to hear from someone that used this old type cutters. If I have my model number right the mounted parts of this rig are the M-448 cultivator set-up that IH built for the M's back in the day to cultivate with. They then developed the parts needed to cut beans which is the bean knife arms and the row dividers. You took off the cultivator stuff and mounted the bean stuff on the same bars the cultivators were on. Can't find any books and I don't know if the manual for the 448 cultivators mentioned the bean parts. I sure would like to find a manual about the bean parts and how they figured to best adjust them. It all worked good this year but I don't know what the optimal settings should be or what to strive for as far as knife angles. There are adjustments on the knife arms for up and down and the knives themselves could be moved to different angles. I bought some late model knives and drilled and cut them to fit this rig.