Quote Originally Posted by Flyingpig View Post
Im actually surprised that your spears are long enough to lift the bale. Some of those bales are pretty loose and soft in the middle.
This was one of my dilemmas I was struggling with, I didn't want them longer than needed making them unnecessarily difficult to push in, but then again they have to be long enough to do the job. So far they are working good, but we have only lifted a few bales.
The unit is designed for 4' bales but the arms will spread wide enough for a 5'er. The spikes have 16" of usable length, so thats a total of 32"s in the bale and that leaves 16"s unspiked. In other words, 2/3s of the bale are spiked and 1/3 unspiked.
Being that the bale is spiked from both ends helps a lot. Time will tell, I hope I got it right. If not, they are easy to change.

One other thing I would like to point out If anyone didn't pick it up from the pictures, no matter what the diameter of the bale is, as long as the axle is touching the bale and the top rail is touching the bale, the spikes will always land in the center of the bale. Sort of works like a center finder you would see in a machine shop.