Flail Mower Let's talk flail mowers

[Fallon]

My flail does pretty much the same.

ALL of my neighbors use 5&6 foot rotary mowers,,, and,,,
they ALL comment about my lack of windrows, and ALWAYS question how to eliminate them..
no one else has popped for a flail,,, yet,,,

One guy switched to using a RFM on a bunch of acres of pasture,, because he had it,,,
BOY, does he go S L O W !!!

My ancient beatup Ford 917 flail with side slicers gave a way better cut than my new Land Pride rotary. Smooth even cutting distrubution, good mulching action, clean cut even with never sharpened knives. That was field mowing not lawn mowing. I couldn't imagine a finish mower doing any better job than my flail.

 

[leonz]

What's recommended? 8foot times 5hp per foot is 40hp and I'm right at that considering I'm a gear drive and not HST.

No offense meant but I'm just worried your a little biased about it all, really concerned being absolutely nobody I know has ever had or seen a flail in operation and I don't want to drop 2k on something I'm going to regret. I do want to mow stuff around the house that can be seen from my recliner so maybe the flail isn't for me it's just hard to say not having ever seen one operate in person. I'm not picky about my lawn however as I drive the truck and tractor on it all the time nearly every day so it's not like I'm talking about a manicured lawn I've never once sprayed it or any such but I will throw a little 34-0-0 on it when I feel like mowing every two days for a month or so.

==========================================================================

No one is being biased trying to talk to you about flail mowers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Its more important to explain how flail mowers work.

There is a Vrisimo flail mower dealer in almost every county in the continental United States you can go visit and talk to one of them.

The 5 Horse Power Rule for mowing good sod and brush cutting is both misleading and wrong as the issue is available torque, mowing speed and mowing height. You can crawl with a gear drive and mow 15 foot tall brush and do not let anyone tell you you cant as I did it with my flail mower and my father did it with his Ford Jubilee gear drive mule and a 7 foot JD finish flail mower reclaiming old overgrown pasture.

Previous to this my father used his towed 8 horse power B+S motorised 36 inch lawn genie to open a jogging path for my mother so she would not have to jog on the local roads due to the crazies and drunks that drive on them.


My towed motorised 48 inch wide cut flailmower which is now 37 years old uses a 16 horsepower B+S delivered power through a Hilliard centrifugal slip clutch to a belt drive for four row finish flail that I use for grass and brush mowing and
I leave all my mowing with a 2 inch cut that looks perfect with little effort.

There are hundreds of flail mower videos available to watch on line in many operating scenarios from crop shredding to brush mowing to fine grass cutting. a rear finish mower will never recut material unless its powder dry and subject to breakage.

What your forgetting is the final drive is powered by a right angle gearbox to a drive pulley then the V belt delivers power to the driven pulley of the flail mower. The flail motor rotor is acting as a flywheel of sorts due to the 2200 RPM and the verticutting method which cuts the grass and brush to its smallest length and then the following knife set cuts even more grass in succession as the "Verticut Method" of mowing takes advantage of the fact that a flail mower will have 96 inches of cutting edge(in my case for every four feet of cutting width using much less horsepower DUE to the verticut method of brush and grass mowing and shredding ad its ability to recut material in the same pass with 2, 3 or 4 sets of side slicer knives. The scoop knives also give a basic finish but do not recut material well as they are a one pass dual use flail mower and good sod can be cut using right angle mowing methods just as the two row rotor flail mowers can.

 

[DavesTractor]

One other way to get a "finish" cut with a flail when cutting a knee high field is simply to cut it quickly in one direction and then cross cut at 90 degree angle with the same speed. It basically just double cuts but also mulches better. I don't do that because I don't give a rat's arse about lawn like appearance in the fields that I cut once or twice a season but I have noticed when I recut at 90 degrees that the "hay" gets mulched pretty good.

I agree. I keep about 8 acres green and mowed, about an acre is actual lawn and done with my Exmark. The rest is just weeds and grass. When we do an event at our place, like a wedding or a big church picnic or something, I like it all to look like a lawn. So I mow it all one direction and then cross mow it. I mow it pretty low and it sure looks great for a few days before the weeds start out growing the grasses and gets fuzzy looking. Currently using a 12' Vrisimo low-pro orchard model with scoop knives behind a 60 PTO HP tractor. Takes a couple hours to mow the place in each direction.

 

[Kodiak45]

I know this has been asked before so forgive me. What speed can someone expect to mow at with a flail and achieve the same quality from a rotary at 5-6mph? My 25a is almost ready for field use and I would like to know what I should expect. If it can mow good at 4mph then I would be pleased. Assuming all cutting is knee high field hay.

 

[DavesTractor]

I mow at 3.0 to 4.5 mph. My issue when mowing much faster than 4 mph is when I hit a pile of dirt left by our friendly ground squirrels or moles I can get a little bounce from the mower and that makes the cut look bad. So I slow down in rougher areas. My mower weighs 2370 lbs, so even a commercial mower can only be pulled so fast.

My grass is relatively short as I mow often, so I am not limited by HP or the ability of the mower to discharge a lot of grass. Hood high grass or wet thick stuff would make a world of difference and I'd have to slow down a bunch.

 

[Fallon]

The 5 Horse Power Rule for mowing good sod and brush cutting is both misleading and wrong as the issue is available torque, mowing speed and mowing height. You can crawl with a gear drive and mow 15 foot tall brush and do not let anyone tell you you cant as I did it with my flail mower and my father did it with his Ford Jubilee gear drive mule and a 7 foot JD finish flail mower reclaiming old overgrown pasture.

Actually comparing PTO HP is comparing torque.

(RPM * Torque) / 5252=HP

In PTO applications RPM is always 540 (ignoring big machines & their 1000 rpm PTOs), so if HP is comparable across machines, so will torque. Torque curves may be different, but peak HP & torque measured at the PTO will be equivalent.

But ya, the 5hp per foot is a rule of thumb not a law. As long as you can lift it, you can spin it. From there it's just a matter of going slow enough for your avaliable HP vs the material you are cutting. Personally I'm a big fan of going wide & going slow. It's easier on operator & machine as long as you don't need to do tight maneuvering.

 

[Kodiak45]

I mow at 3.0 to 4.5 mph. My issue when mowing much faster than 4 mph is when I hit a pile of dirt left by our friendly ground squirrels or moles I can get a little bounce from the mower and that makes the cut look bad. So I slow down in rougher areas. My mower weighs 2370 lbs, so even a commercial mower can only be pulled so fast.

My grass is relatively short as I mow often, so I am not limited by HP or the ability of the mower to discharge a lot of grass. Hood high grass or wet thick stuff would make a world of difference and I'd have to slow down a bunch.

I mainly want to use the flail so I don't see wind rows and the safety aspect, but I hate to maintenance mow going slow as I'm just trying to knock things down. I look forward to getting the flail up and running soon.

 

[IslandTractor]

I mainly want to use the flail so I don't see wind rows and the safety aspect, but I hate to maintenance mow going slow as I'm just trying to knock things down. I look forward to getting the flail up and running soon.

You'll be happy with the flail. No windrows. When I cut knee high grass there will be "hay" that isn't so noticeable on the first day but will be noticeable a couple days later. Only cure for that is to cut more frequently or to run over the same cut area again to further mulch the hay debris.

 

[BrokeFarmerJohn]

What's a Ford 917 worth? I saw one go up on Craigslist and I was really thinking about it. It's an 8ft flail mower.

I bought my tractor last spring and have yet to buy a mower, I was wanting to get a bush hog but like the advantages of a flail.

 

[Fallon]

What's a Ford 917 worth? I saw one go up on Craigslist and I was really thinking about it. It's an 8ft flail mower.

I bought my tractor last spring and have yet to buy a mower, I was wanting to get a bush hog but like the advantages of a flail.

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

That's not really a question you can answer without knowing the details. One that's never been run would be worth a fair bit. Realistically I wouldn't expect one to be worth more than a grand or so though, they haven't been made in a decade or 2 & have been used a fair bit since then.

My 7' 917 had a bent hood, way to short PTO shaft, missing knives & had been used for 2 decades. I got a good deal at $100 for it. Have around $600 on it for knives, belts, PTO shaft & now new bearings. Few weekends worth of work on it too. I wouldn't sell it for under a grand though. To replace it with something new I'm probably looking at 3 grand or so.