Make your windrow the same width as your bale chamber or just a hair wider. Straddle the windrow and don't weave a bit.
If the hay isn't thick enough make the windrow half the width of the bale chamber. Weave to fill bale chamber evenly. Make sure you spend enough time on each side of the windrow. If you constantly weave without spend a little time on each side all you do is fill the center and your bales will be football shaped. The closer the tine spacing the better. If you leave large spaces the bale gets loose and you will have more spoilage.
Most people adjust the amount of twine they put on a bale depending how many times you plan on moving a bale. If you just move them to a side of the field then directly feed bale later you don't need as much twine. If you are going to move bale.stack bale.unstack them.load on a simi.you probably can't get enough twine on. If you have trouble getting windrow to feed into the throat,please don't try and get it started by hand feeding into the throat.
The mechanism is so fast it will jerk your arms into mechanism before you can let go. It will either tear your arm off or pull ypur whole body into throat.either way you will probably bleed to death. We had a neighbor who lost both arms like this. It was lucky someone drove by and saw him to get him out of it or he would have bled to death.
He was trapped and stranded. I would think maybe string could be 5 inches apart to start.