Flail Mower flail good for grinding brush?

[tomfifield]

I want to know what you think is better for grinding up brush, perhaps up tp 2" or more a flail or a brush hog. A sales man tryed selling me on the flail but it looks like the flail is more for mulching lawn. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[bncsauve]

I have a pull behind flail mower with an 18 horse wisconsin motor powering it. It does real well on grass and brushy kind of stuff. Chops it up real fine and cuts it to normal lawn length. But, It will not cut and chop anything much bigger than about one inch and that's pushing it. (might take a couple of passes.) To answer your question, I would think a rotary cutter would be much better for large stuff. I don't own one but my dealer told me "If you can drive over it, the rotary cutter will cut it up."

 

[Darren]

The DOH county road maintenance crews have two flail mowers they use for R/W work. They are on booms that can be extended. I've seen them trim overhanging tree limbs. Anything on the ground gets chopped up as well. They do an amazing job.

 

[DocHeb]

A brush hog will do this work, but will leave a lot of varying sized debris around, and if it is saplings you're mowing over, you'll be left with frayed Punje sticks from the stumps.

Flail mowers can come with metal "flails" which are ~1/8" thick Y shaped blades that are designed to cut grass, weeds, and twigs up to 1". Constantly cutting that large of material will really put wear on the machine and the flails. I would not try a typical flail mower on 2" material.

Some flail mowers (sometimes called orchard mowers) have heavy hammers that will pulverize material up to 4" in diameter. For example: Seppi Orchard and Vineyard Mowers

If you have a lot of 4" material, it may be better to rent a chipper.

 

[Tom_H]

DocHeb is correct. "Light Duty" flail mowers are used for finish mowing; you may see them being used on fairways and school grounds. They won't throw stuff like a fixed blade and give a nice cut. You'll also see the "Heavy Duty" flails cutting (hammering really is the correct term) quite thick brush along the highway. Again, the flail won't throw like a brush hog would. In both cases, whether the light duty for finish mowing, or the heavy duty for brush, the flail is better (not perfect) for use in places where you don't want to take the chance of launching artillery at nearby bystanders, in contrast to the sword or meat cleaver like blades on the finish mower or brush hog. Downside in both cases is that LD flail costs more than fixed blade finish mower and HD flail costs more than brush hog.

Make sure you accurately define the application as well as which class of flail is being discussed.

 

[RAW]

Loftness makes tractor-mount brush shredders

They're currently redesigning them. I think they're in the $8K range. But the closeouts on the older models are about $5K.

 

[Tom_H]

Interesting..also heavy and pricey.