belt power equipment?

i ve never used a belt,from a tractor to power a piece of equipment,
how is it done? does any one still use one? differant belt for differant machines? or same size?
how do you line it up? how does it stay on the pully?
does it streach? i ve seen a few pictures, some belts are use twisted, and some straight?
thanks for your help!

Most belt equipment uses similar widths though the length may be different. Sometimes will run flat especially on shorter runs. Sometimes will run a figure 8 type of twist to reverse direction depending on the type of equipment being driven. Sometimes on longer belts do a twist inside out is about the best way I can describe it but the end result is the equipment and tractor pulleys run in the same direction. This can take some of the slap out of the belt on longer belts.
Belt pulleys may have a slight bit of arc where the middle of the pulley is just a bit taller than the outer edges. This helps the belt to stay on center.

Much as I hate using anything Google related, You Tube has some very good videos of flat belt use. "Tractorman44" has a couple that outline how to use one that make sense to me. I still use one for a buzzsaw and an ensilage chopper on occasion. They really aren't very hard to use or set up. Sometimes you put a half twist in the belt to get the proper rotation and sometimes a full twist is put in because some people don't like the "flopping" a straight belt can get to doing. The pulleys are crowned, normally, so they don't need to be perfectly aligned. The belts don't stretch much IME because they aren't run that tight and because most belts still in use are fabric/rubber composites that we're new, or even well used, back when Ike was in the WH.

In short, they are are viable, older tech option for some of us.

(quoted from post at 06:26:39 11/22/20) i ve never used a belt,from a tractor to power a piece of equipment,
how is it done? does any one still use one? differant belt for differant machines? or same size?

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ockshutt on the mill[/url]

There are different sizes needed for different horse power. For example on a saw mill of threshing machine you likely run an 8” x 100’ or 150’ belt from a tractor or engine. Things like buzz saws or feed grinders would run a shorter 6” belt. 4” belts on small equipment run by gas engine or as power transfer on the machine itself like a threshing machine. The pulleys are crowned to keep the belt centered on the pulley. Lining up a belt comes with practice. It’s an eyeball shot between the power pulley and the work pulley. A steam engine has the ability to run either direction in relation to the work. However it is common to twist a long belt to help with slap and windage. A lot of times a twist is required to provide the correct rotation. Sometimes an inside out belt is run to help with slap and windage.

My dad used a belt driven hammermill and had a belt driven cutting box and forage blower for the silo when we were kids. My older brother and I used to compete against each other to see who could get belted up the fastest with my dad's MH 30 and the hammermill. Got pretty good at it for a couple 10 year old kids!

Ben

Being a novice a may not have all the answers to your questions, but this is what I know. I currently do not use one, but I have in the past and intend to in the futures as I have acquired a few pieces of equipment that require it. In my experience you use a belt that matches the smallest pulley size. Everything I have both the machine and the tractor have a 6 inch wide pulley, I have never seen a 6 inch belt used when the machine only has a 4 inch or smaller pulley. You line up the tractor by first putting the belt on the machine and laying it out squarely on the ground, then simply line up the tractor to the belt and install. How the belt is installed depends on a number of things, I think equipment may have been made in both clockwise and counter clockwise rotation, and some could be operated from either side, in either case you may need a half twist in the belt to change rotation. The longer the belt, or when a 2 cyl tractor was used you wanted a twist to eliminate or minimize belt slap as this can work the belt off not to mention it causes machine surging. The belts stays on by the weight of the belt and the slight crown on the pulleys. Therefore when installing the belt you do not need to back the tractor up to get all the slack out of the belt but you may need to tap the individual brakes to pivot the tractor every so slightly to get everything trued up. HTH

In the 60's we used a belt driven silo blower to fill silos. I currently have a hammer mill, corn sheller and ensilage cutter that are belt driven. There are different length belts and I think some of what you used depends on how close you can get to the equipment. Long belts on thrashing machines were good to keep sparks from what ever was running it away from the straw. I don't find it hard to line up the belt. I eyeball the pulleys when hooking it up and that will get you close. When you give the belt a few turns it will line its self up and you can see if its running off to one side and then move the tractor to make it line up in the middle of the pulleys. I always try to be in position to cross the belt to prevent it slapping but sometimes you can't get on either side of what you are running and can't do that.

Most my experience came from running my Dad's blower with an 8N Ford. The pulley could be bolted on the rear to the left or right so we could always run a twisted belt. I help with a local show where we run a belt on a Bearcat grinder, a Rosenthal shredder and a rock crusher. There is also a thresher that usually attends the show.

I've never run one either, watched it done at tractor shows.

It works well if the operators know what they are doing...

I've maintained a lot of conveyor belts. Most run with no problem, but some that don't have the crowned rollers area constant battle to keep them tracking in the middle.

One place had a multi bank drill press with flat belts. Constant problems! To keep the belt from slipping it had to be tight. But run it too tight and the lacing would pull out!

Belt drive was how everything was run in the old days before electric motors. Entire factories ran off a common shaft with a belt for each machine.

There is a cotton gin museum near here, it is set up like that. They start up the old Bessemer diesel and run it once a year.

What a nightmare that place would have been! Hundreds of belts, shafts, pulleys... Hot and nasty! They said working the night shift was more desirable because of the heat. Fire was a constant threat. The dust and lint were highly flammable. The belts generated static, a hot bearing could bring disaster!

I had a hammer mill lagged down to the barn floor for years. Belted it to my W4 . I always found a belt with a twist in it stayed on the pulley better. Still have both the hammer mill and the W4 , haven’t used the mill now for 17 years. Noisy and dusty!

I grew up with hammer mills run by belt. We put a half twist on the belt to make the hammer mill run the correct direction. The hammer mills were stationary so using the old tracts made lining up pretty easy. My earliest memory was when Dad was using the JD 1929 D. He used a split "V" block of wood to hold the tractor back. I was afraid of the "D" because it would "crack" and send sparks out the exhaust pipe on the left side we he slowed the tractor down when he finished grinding. It took ALOT of coaxing to get me to remove the block from the front wheel. Later he used the JD 1946 A to run the Montgomery Wards hammer mill. In 1969 we tore down the old double corn crib (That story is in "The Corn Cribs: Every Corn Belt Farm Had One"). We then built a double corn crib and put a Montgomery Wards "Grain Buster" with a traveling feed table mounted on two 6' channel irons to we could place it in the drive way of the corn crib 3 different positions and scoop the ear corn directly from the driveway or the cribs. We used an old galvanized water tank to grind into. We had to feed the mill a little slow when the "A" was on it, but by this time Dad had purchaced a JD 1951 "G" to run it and we could scoop as fast as we wanted to. It was work, but very good memories. Unfortunately Dad died in the Fall of 1970 and only used the corn crib for one year. So I used it several more years until I put up a used 20' x 35' used Harv. My back aches went away!

Corn Cribs

I had a Wards grain buster too, powered it with a 77 Oliver

For me right now the best use I have for a flat belt is starting one 2 cyl Jd with another needs to be twisted. Can be done alone.

No one mentioned it yet but if you put a twist in the belt to meet rotational requirements, it's better to twist the belt in the direction of the tractor rather than away from the tractor. Stays on better. Back right after WWII (The Big One) when we lost the horses, and only had one tractor, the tractor was used for everything which included pulling the load of corn bundles up to the silo filler and then hooking up the belt to the tractor. For each load. You get real good at hooking up a belt.

Yes it can, I've done it many times. Just be sure you know which way the pulleys are supposed to turn. Such as the John Deere H turns backwards compared to the other models

In my post above, I guess it would have been better to say "Make the twist toward the tractor rather than away from it".

and to add, we used to have belt dressing that come in what looked like a grease gun cartridge. was like hard tar and applied it when the belt was running.

We had a belt driven silo blower and a belt driven ensilage cutter up to about the time I was 15. A narrow front end tractor is much easier to use on a belt. With a wide front end you have to make sure the rear wheels of the tractor are elevated enough that the wide front doesn't interfere with the belt. The longer the belt, the less tension you have to put on the belt to keep it from slipping. A steel pulley requires more tension than the older fiber/paper pulleys did. When you back the tractor up to tension the belt, you try to back up as straight as possible. Then you engage the pulley slowly and see how the belt runs. If the belt runs to the inside of the pulley, you steer the front of the tractor slightly outward away from the belt and try it again. You do the opposite if the belt runs to the outside of the pulley. You put a twist in the belt in situations where for some reason you have to set the tractor up on the wrong side of the blower to run the belt in the right direction to run the blower. We had one silo where we had to set the tractor up on the right side of the blower instead of the left side and had to twist the belt to run the blower in the correct direction. On a morning after a rain, you started the tractor up and let the belt run for a least a half hour before trying to blow corn, to dry the belt out enough so as not to slip. Unplugging clogged blowers and pipes because the belt came off under load was NOT a fun job! You used a bit of commercial belt dressing on those days, too. If lacking belt dressing just a hint of molasses on the belt would help. (unless you overdid it with the molasses and made the belt even more slippery) Your joy knows no bounds when a belt lacing rips in two while you are feeding the corn into the blower at max capacity and you plug the whole 50 feet of blower pipe. BTDT entirely too many times. Chuckle.

When I was growing up we had a belt drive threshing mill, Papec silage cutter, hammer mill and buzz saw, later Papec was replaced by NH forage blower. It was always best to run with a twisted belt as if it was a windy day the belt didn't flap in the wind. The threshing mill always required a crossed belt to run in the correct direction. The forage blower could be driven from either side depending on the position at the silo. The 300U, B414D and 434 were good to use on the belt as the belt pulley could be filled 180* so that you could always have a crossed belt no matter how the NH blower was set at a silo. My Dad used to do custom corn silage harvesting and fill 12 to 15 silos every fall so the blower setup was different at every farm.

Here is my belt story, about 15 years ago my wife and I had decided to take a vacation in September and there was a local plowing match with antique tractors and machinery so we went early in the morning, started walking around and came upon these three 20 to 30 year old young men trying to setup an old silage cutter driven by a flat belt from a MH30. I stood and watched for minutes as they could not get the belt to run on the pulleys. I showed them how I was taught by my Dad to put one end of the belt on the silage cutter pulley then hold the other end with both hands and walk backwards until the belt was tight in your hands and hold it up to your chin and move until the belt appeared to be in alignment then place on the ground and drive the tractor up so the belt pulley was directly over the belt. Showed them how to move the front wheels slightly left or right to get final alignment. After they had the belt aligned, they sped up the tractor and put the feeder in gear it wouldn't turn and they were completely lost. I looked at the pulley and cutter head and realized that it required a crossed belt. I mentioned that to them and got a blank stare, so I showed them how to cross the belt and all was good. They didn't even say "Thank you".

Maybe they were too dumbfounded to remember their manners. Most likely they weren't impressed with the ancient way of doing things.

(quoted from post at 09:02:54 11/22/20) and to add, we used to have belt dressing that come in what looked like a grease gun cartridge. was like hard tar and applied it when the belt was running.

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I had that same hard tube of belt dressing for years but its wearing out and hard to find replacements. Last I bought was some spray on dressing from John Deere. It works well.

A lot of good descriptions and good stories. I did not grow up around belt driven equipment, but I work with it yearly at the 2 shows I’m involved with. As for belt dressing there are some decent ones out there, but not the quality of the old stick dressing or even the “Pullmore” I was familiar with. However I have used natural syrup, and cal me crazy, dish soap. Atwater Threshers have a sorghum press and they also cook down and sell a sorghum syrup. That works very well for belt dressing. In a pinch I’ve used Dawn dish soap which is slimy at first, but tacks up and pulls good. When younger my blacksmith cousin showed me how to make a belt grow. You can make a rolled up belt grow half a loop by slight of hand. I try to do it for the spectators. Usually the kids catch on long before the adults.

The most fun is belting up to a machine with a "live" belt pulley!
As in a 2 cyl Deere. You're trying to line up, the belt is trying to turn,
you're hoping you're in line enough so the belt stays on, and finally it works!!!

My cousin Rich had a fence post in the middle of his barnyard. His belt driven hammermill was in the barn, belt went thru a small door in a wall. He drove his old 1945 Farmall H straddling that post. Belt was then lined up perfect and ready to work. Simple solution to a problem, tractor outside, hammermill inside.

When I was a kid we used the belt on the hammermill and silage cutter. I seem to remember Grandpa sometimes driving a stake in the ground next to the belt at midpoint, would that be maybe to help keep it from flapping?

Only flat belt equipment we have is the old buzzsaw and a drill press and it needs a new belt for it. The old one is Shot at the splice and is not a laced belt. Was more of an endless belt style. Where can I get new endless flat belts and hoe expensive are they now days. Vee belts have gone down in grade the last 30 years.

(quoted from post at 06:16:50 11/23/20) Where can I get new endless flat belts and hoe expensive are they now days. Vee belts have gone down in grade the last 30 years.

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I don't know if you can even buy those endless belts new anymore. I take good care of mine as I suspect it would be hard to replace and very expensive. My brother needed one for his wood saw so he found an old multi-rib V belt about 4 inches wide and just runs it upside down with flat sides on the pulleys. It has worked fine for years.

(quoted from post at 10:16:50 11/23/20) Only flat belt equipment we have is the old buzzsaw and a drill press and it needs a new belt for it. The old one is Shot at the splice and is not a laced belt. Was more of an endless belt style. Where can I get new endless flat belts and hoe expensive are they now days. Vee belts have gone down in grade the last 30 years.

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If you have any Amish in your area or a good antique tractor club, that's where I'd start. Flat belting is still fairly easy to find but splicing it without using lacing is something I know nothing about. It looks like a glue process to me.

There’s a farm near me that also had a tractor situated outside with a belt running through a hole in the wall. The tractor is still sitting there, hasn’t moved in over 50 years.

(quoted from post at 10:43:02 11/23/20)

(quoted from post at 10:16:50 11/23/20) Only flat belt equipment we have is the old buzzsaw and a drill press and it needs a new belt for it. The old one is Shot at the splice and is not a laced belt. Was more of an endless belt style. Where can I get new endless flat belts and hoe expensive are they now days. Vee belts have gone down in grade the last 30 years.

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If you have any Amish in your area or a good antique tractor club, that's where I'd start. Flat belting is still fairly easy to find but splicing it without using lacing is something I know nothing about. It looks like a glue process to me.

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Skived or stepped, glued & sewn.