The first photo was taken on my grandfathers ranch who knows when. The header followed the ground and the machine was hand leveled through a series of friction clutches.
The other picture is of me in the early '70s on a new Harris we purchased. Look to the left above the tire and there is one of the leveling cylinders. It leveled itself through a swinging pendulum that you can barely make out under the operators platform.

Last year my Brother kindly salvaged the tool box, complete with the instruction manual form our circa 1940 IH combine with six foot cut.  My best recollection of this old machine was of jumping up and down on a three foot cylinder wrench to try to turn the main cylinder backward or forward.  If green vegetation such as milkweed or thistle were encountered rather than dry wheat or oat stalks, the green would hopelessly plug the machine and bind the main cylinder tight.  Hand pulling the vegetation and turning the cylinder by wrench were required to clear the clog.  

This was not a hillside combine, but a flatland machine powered by a four cylinder continental power unit as I recall and pulled by tractor.  I am pleased that the instruction manual survived nearly seventy years in the IH tool box that was continually exposed to our NYS summers and winters. I will add some pictures from pages of that book.  There are two cut away views to show the inner workings of those old machines for anyone not familiar with harvesting.

Charlie V.

Great pics Dave! Do you have any recollection of the horse drawn machine? I can't imagine trying to move that contraption down the road. I would guess most of them were stored outdoors due to their size and had a very short life-span.

The header came off easily and the machine and header were stored inside a barn. The canvass drapers were taken off and rolled up. I actually pulled a machine like this a JD model 30 hillside machine with a Cat diesel 50 crawler. It took a heavy tractor to hold it when going down a slight down hill. I still have the book for the JD machine.

Here is a couple more pictures from about the same era. The back of the photos say "Holt Steamer". Can you imagine the sparks from that thing in a stubble field?  Wonder if they burned straw.

I can't imagine burning straw in a mobile application. Seems to me it would take an unbelievable amount of straw as opposed to wood or coal. I'm with you on the sparks--very dangerous! I've always heard there was a big danger of fire when pulling a thresher. That would be nothing compared to being out in the middle of a wheat field!

The header came off easily and the machine and header were stored inside a barn. The canvass drapers were taken off and rolled up. I actually pulled a machine like this a JD model 30 hillside machine with a Cat diesel 50 crawler. It took a heavy tractor to hold it when going down a slight down hill. I still have the book for the JD machine.

Was that the same basic combine as a 30 from the 1950's?

Yes, it was a model 30 but equipped with hillside attachments. There was a lever on the platform that moved forward and backward that operated a big screw jack with acme thread. It was powered by a 6 cyl hercules flat head engine.

You must have never choked that combine down with a 6 cylinder. Ours has a 4 cylinder John Deere power unit and it does pretty good on power. I always enjoyed using ours when cutting wheat. Soybeans were a different story.