In The Shop: Tool Storage on Combines
Combine manufacturers keep adding features to combines, but never add the feature farmers would appreciate most: better tool storage.
Most combines come with a dinky little toolbox that barely holds a couple Crescent wrenches and a box of extra sickle sections. Sure, farmers may have a full set of tools and thousands of dollars of parts in their pickup parked on the endrows, but what good does that do when the combine breaks a half mile away at the far end of the field?
Farmers do all sorts of things to compensate for the pitiful tool storage provided by combine manufacturers. I was around one combine with a 5-drawer tool chest bolted to the side of the separator. That was good in theory, but the drawer slides eventually got so packed full of dust that the drawers wouldn't open and close. One guy drilled a row of holes in a side shield, bent a bunch of 1/4" bolts into an L-shape, bolted them in the holes, then hung a full set of open end/closed end wrenches on those hangers. That actually worked pretty good, but sounded like ton of scrap iron in a cement mixer as the combine went through the field, with all those wrenches jangling on their pegs. A lot of guys line the floor of their cab with wrench sets, hammers and spare parts. Which keeps the tools out of the dust and weather, but requires a lot of trips up and down the cab ladder to get all the tools to the broken part of the combine.
I wish manufacturers would include a large, rugged, dust-proof tool and parts storage box on every combine. They could never build one large enough to hold all the tools and parts farmers would cram into them, but they could definitely do better than the pitiful tool storage they now offer.
