Chain Guards

[Bird]

Re: Mwahahaha

<font color=blue>would of used some thicker, wider angle iron to move the front guard away from the blades</font color=blue>

Yep, I did that on the second set I made. And on the first set, when the chain was too close to the blades, I used longer bolts to hold the angle iron on, and put spacers (several washers) between the mower deck and the angle iron to move the chain guard out aways.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Re: Mwahahaha

I am new to the bush hog gang and was looking over this thread. Have a half-baked idea for some words of wisdom about price and application. How about stretching a piece of regular chain tightly across the front and/or back, bolted in place for the horizontal component. Then use cross straps from a tire chain (cut in half) as your vertical chains. They would be easy to attach to the other chain. Not sure on the cost side, maybe someone had some input.

 

[Bird]

Re: Mwahahaha

moeh1, the idea sounds logical, and might work. I used the cross chains from a set of tire chains on the first chain guard I made simply because I had some tire chains for which I had no other use, so I cut'em up with an air chisel, but welded them onto a piece of angle iron that I bolted to the deck on the brush hog. One (of several) things I didn't like was the fact that those cross chains are a twisted link chain and grass stuck in the links and stayed; hard to clean out. However, they did serve their main purpose of keeping the brush hog from launching projectiles.

 

[internationlman]

Chain guards are defintly a good idea whether costly factory made or cheaper homemade ones. Found out the hard way last year after being hit in back of leg with a rock. Had to go to emergency room for xray felt like something was broken, Had swelling around achilles. Cost of emergency care and 3 days off work was not fun. Got hit in early august 2001, Finally quite hurting in January. So if you can't build it buy it,Well worth it.

 

[chim]

I bought a used KK rotary mower, and have used it only one time so far. Just had to test drive it. I have been following this thread, trying to come up with a quick, cheap and easy way to get a set of chains. One thought I had (see attached file) was to slip short sections of chain onto a piece of 3/8" allthread using nuts or some short pieces of small diameter pipe to keep them spaced. Short sections of pipe have the advantage of slipping them on and not turning nuts forever. Every so often, you could slip an eye bolt on to attach the assembly to the mower deck. This would be fairly easy installation, and would space them away from the blades a bit so they don't "trimmed" if brush pushes them back. Any thoughts?................chim

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Chim,
Thats exactly what I did and it works fine. My setup involves bolting two pieces of 1/4" x 3" x 8" long flat stock to the sides of my cutter. The flat stock extends about 4" out from the front of the mower. I drilled a 1 3/8" hole in each end and slid a piece of galvanized pipe through to act as a hanger. From this, using exactly as shown in your post, I hung (with 5 eyebolts) a piece of 3/8" threaded rod with chains and spacers. Picked the chains up at the dump, pipe and flat stock I had lying around, spacers (3/8" rubber grommets) I picked up at a local surplus yard for $3 and the eyebolts cost around $4. Total cost $7 plus about 2 hours labor. This was for the front only. Next weekend I hope to attack the backend.


Russ

 

[TonyC]

<font color=blue> slip short sections of chain onto a piece of 3/8" allthread</font color=blue>

Believe it or not that's exactly what I'm working on at this very moment! The only difference is that I plan to weld small brackets on the bush hog to hold the allthread. I will post a photo when it is done.