Tapered roll harvester

Claim 1

In a vine crop harvester comprising a pair of rotating snapping rolls having metal cores covered with rubber, means for feeding vines and attached crop to said rolls, and means at the ends of the rolls for holding the rotating rolls against the vines, said rolls pulling the vines through while snapping the crop from the vines, the radius of at least one roll gradually increasing from a minimum radius at each roll end toward the roll midportion; the improvement wherein the roll midportion is substantially cylindrical and of length equal to about one-third the total roll length, with the magnitude of the total radius increase substantially equaling the total roll core deflection of both rolls that would be engendered by uniformly loading the roll cores along their length under the loading imparted by the vines during harvesting.