Such manual chaff cutters have been used for cutting straw, hay, or grass. Two people operated the cutter. One turned the heavy flywheel and the other fed the material into the cutter. There were different types of gears, some having a rather complex design, e.g., a lot of gear-wheels. This model shows an easy design. The gear-wheel on the axis of the flywheel drives a special type of crown gear with three different diameters. The gear-wheel on the axis can be adjusted to one of those. As the crown gear drives the two feed rolls three different rotational speeds are possible. This corresponds to three different cutting lengths. Starting around 1920 such machines where retrofitted with electric motors in Germany.
This machine was retrofitted with an external electrical motor only around World War II. But as no drive belt was available due to wartime, an old fire hose was flattened with a hammer and used as drive belt. It worked surprisingly well for nearly 10 years.
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