Man Sized Hedge Trimmer

[Jerrico]

I have a hedge row that is about 250 feet long and it takes me several days every year to trim it with an electric hedge trimmer. I decided to build a man sized hedge trimmer for my Kioti. I went looking for a sickle bar for a Cub and found one. I sand blasted it and painted it then started designing a mount and drive system for it. I bought a hydraulic motor and machined an eccentric flywheel. I took it out for a test drive and it now takes me less than an hour to trim the entire hedge row.
Man Sized Hedge Trimmer - YouTube

 

[aczlan]

Very nice. It looks like you have it set up so you can trim either vertically or horizontally.

Aaron Z

 

[Jerrico]

Thanks
Yes, it has three positions, it will do vertical above and below the bucket so it can trim down to ground level.

 

[Tompet]

Pretty impressive and excellent job. Any photos of result...or a video of it in action?

 

[Jerrico]

Pretty impressive and excellent job. Any photos of result...or a video of it in action?

I added a video.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Ingenious! I'm impressed. Are you an engineer?

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

I would've been dumping the trimmings to my burn pile every so often.

 

[Jerrico]

Ingenious! I'm impressed. Are you an engineer?



No, just an old hillbilly who likes to make things.

 

[Jerrico]

I would've been dumping the trimmings to my burn pile every so often.

Can't burn anything in our township so I run them through my shredder.

 

[oosik]

I think that's one H*** of a fine tool. Great job there Jerrico. Yu da man!!!

 

[Handloader109]

Really good job.

 

[PHPaul]

Are you using tractor hydraulics to run it or a separate pump?

 

[/pine]

I have a Massey Ferguson 41 7' sickle bar...I use it vertically from the 3PH...but it tends to push about a third of the encroaching brush out of the way instead of cutting it...takes more than one pass to get a clean cut along the roadway...

 

[Jerrico]

Are you using tractor hydraulics to run it or a separate pump?

I am running it with the onboard hydraulics. I added an 12 volt solenoid with quick connectors that is connected to the tilt on the joystick for the FEL. Now when I use the trimmer I just throw a switch on the dash and it changes from the bucket to the trimmer. Now I have the ability to reverse the direction of the motor to unjam the sickle so I can run it back and forth until it cuts through large limbs. The solenoid also gives me the ability to have tilt on my snow blade in the winter.

 

[TractorNH]

Nice. Now if you put it a couple feet in front of the bucket and use clamp-on bucket forks you probably wouldn't need to do any cleanup after, the forks would catch it (instead of the hood of your tractor).

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Very nice!!

 

[pycoed]

If you don't like sickle bars, how about one of these?
Mean Hedgecutter - YouTube

 

[kthompson]

I like it. Now thinking may need to consider sickle bar for pond.

 

[rd_macgregor]

That is pretty nifty! Do you need the tire chains for this job, or do you just leave them on all the time?

The link pycoed posted looks like some Mad Max nightmare contraption!