Making Square Bales - Baling

With the baler made its now time to bale the straw.

To start with cut some strands of cotton, I'm using which reald cotton here so it shows up on camera, really a fine orange thread would be more suitable or any colour of your choosing. Once cut line them up centrally in your baler as shown.

Pinch the strands between your finger, thumb and the balerholding them tight. Then add the first layer of straw, evenly covering the strands.

Compress the straw with the plunger keeping the twine tight, then let the twine drop a little moving the straw down the chamber.

Add another layer of straw, compact and move down. Repeat until the bale reaches the bottom of the chamber. 

When you are happy the bale is well compacted tie the string in knots. This is where the notches to the holes help as the string can be tied tight and close to the bale.

Tie the knot

And trim the excess string

And repeat for all the string

Give the bale one last compaction

 And then pull out the base plate

Flip the chamber upside down and compact the other end of the bale with the plunger.

Moving back to the top of the chamber use the plunger to push the bale along the chamber.

And out of the bottom

Voilà, one bale

You can just see the like along the centre created by the groove.

A stack of bales.

The sisal isn't quite the right shade for any straw and so to improve the appearance there are a few methods. For the two bales shown on the left the sisal has been dyed, see here for how to dye sisal. (I now have a method for dying sisal in larger quantities which can be found here)The one on the right has simply been spray painted after being made, the paint doesn't adhere to the twine while nicely coloring the sisal. The ideal method here would be to airbrush various shares onto the bale.

Hopefully this guide has been useful, any ideas or suggestions on improvements feel free to share them.