Flail Mower Let's talk flail mowers

[shaeff]

Got some mowing in yesterday

View attachment 508902

I envy you and you SSQA bucket. Looks like your flail cuts nicely!

My bucket gets in the way. All. The. Time.

 

[jabroni1m]

I like the idea of the verge/bank mower even though I don't see needing it right now, but the tractor has only got 1 set of rear remotes. Do the verge mowers not require 2 sets?

 

[leonz]

I like the idea of the verge/bank mower even though I don't see needing it right now, but the tractor has only got 1 set of rear remotes. Do the verge mowers not require 2 sets?

You can get around that with a second control valve plumbed into the single pair of remotes in the second circuit as long as its plumbed properly making sure the flow is plumbed correctly with check valves if needed.

 

[jkornbread]

So, at 447 pages there is a ton of info here. I have a couple questions that will probably take all day searching to find -

I have an old JD 25 flail. Bought it out of an orchard, tore down, cleaned up and basically rebuilt. I've been using the Y knives. For most stuff its great. I do contract field mowing in the area, so I do see a variety of conditions.

In normal field grass, if its dead I can mow at 3mph (low 4th gear) or better if the terrain isn't too rough. Green I'm 2.5-3mph (low 3rd or low 4th).
However we have a grass (I don't know what its called) that will grow in the low lying areas where water pools, and it grows thick! And the stalks are just tough as nails! Even dead I can overload the mower in low 1st gear. Would heavy scoop style knives work better here? Drawbacks? What are the pro/con to going to this style of knife?
I've had to overdrive the PTO just to get through a patch of this stuff without just blowing the belt. I've found running the PTO at 590 i have the best chance to eat through this stuff.
This brings me to my second question, how tight should the belt be? I have 63hp available and I can't seem to get it to the Flail. It will load up and slip the belt. I've been through 2 belts already this year, 1 very old belt (not surprising) and 1 cheap belt cause that was all I could find in a pinch.

 

[IslandTractor]

So, at 447 pages there is a ton of info here. I have a couple questions that will probably take all day searching to find -

I have an old JD 25 flail. Bought it out of an orchard, tore down, cleaned up and basically rebuilt. I've been using the Y knives. For most stuff its great. I do contract field mowing in the area, so I do see a variety of conditions.

In normal field grass, if its dead I can mow at 3mph (low 4th gear) or better if the terrain isn't too rough. Green I'm 2.5-3mph (low 3rd or low 4th).
However we have a grass (I don't know what its called) that will grow in the low lying areas where water pools, and it grows thick! And the stalks are just tough as nails! Even dead I can overload the mower in low 1st gear. Would heavy scoop style knives work better here? Drawbacks? What are the pro/con to going to this style of knife?
I've had to overdrive the PTO just to get through a patch of this stuff without just blowing the belt. I've found running the PTO at 590 i have the best chance to eat through this stuff.
This brings me to my second question, how tight should the belt be? I have 63hp available and I can't seem to get it to the Flail. It will load up and slip the belt. I've been through 2 belts already this year, 1 very old belt (not surprising) and 1 cheap belt cause that was all I could find in a pinch.

1) Thick lush grass is difficult for any mower especially a mulching type like a flail. I just slow down for the first pass and then nibble at the edges with less than a full width cut to maintain speed.
2) I'm surprised that you have trouble with 60+hp at PTO even in thick stuff (mine is 30 something). If belts are slipping then they'll burn. I've found that Gates Kevlar belts are good enough to hold up for several seasons and I keep them tight enough that I stall the tractor rather than spin the belts when I get in too deep. Thumb deflection of 1/2" seems to be about right.

 

[IslandTractor]

So, at 447 pages there is a ton of info here. I have a couple questions that will probably take all day searching to find -

I have an old JD 25 flail. Bought it out of an orchard, tore down, cleaned up and basically rebuilt. I've been using the Y knives. For most stuff its great. I do contract field mowing in the area, so I do see a variety of conditions.

In normal field grass, if its dead I can mow at 3mph (low 4th gear) or better if the terrain isn't too rough. Green I'm 2.5-3mph (low 3rd or low 4th).
However we have a grass (I don't know what its called) that will grow in the low lying areas where water pools, and it grows thick! And the stalks are just tough as nails! Even dead I can overload the mower in low 1st gear. Would heavy scoop style knives work better here? Drawbacks? What are the pro/con to going to this style of knife?
I've had to overdrive the PTO just to get through a patch of this stuff without just blowing the belt. I've found running the PTO at 590 i have the best chance to eat through this stuff.
This brings me to my second question, how tight should the belt be? I have 63hp available and I can't seem to get it to the Flail. It will load up and slip the belt. I've been through 2 belts already this year, 1 very old belt (not surprising) and 1 cheap belt cause that was all I could find in a pinch.

1) Thick lush grass is difficult for any mower especially a mulching type like a flail. I just slow down for the first pass and then nibble at the edges with less than a full width cut to maintain speed.
2) I'm surprised that you have trouble with 60+hp at PTO even in thick stuff (mine is 30 something). If belts are slipping then they'll burn. I've found that Gates Kevlar belts are good enough to hold up for several seasons and I keep them tight enough that I stall the tractor rather than spin the belts when I get in too deep. Thumb deflection of 1/2" seems to be about right.

 

[jkornbread]

With the new belt I just got Sunday slippage seemed to be a lot less, but it would still squeak, id just stop the pto, pick it up, restart the PTO and let it clear out. I'll tighten it more. I'm researching adding the creeper gears to my M7060 to help save my clutch in the thick stuff, point here was to see if there was a more efficient way to handle this thick, tough, heavy grass. Like I said even dead and brown the stuff is just so dense and tough it plugs up the flail in a hurry.
What got me thinking on the other style of knives and the belt was while waiting for a new belt, I borrowed a tow behind (well behind and off to the side) crop shredder. Its a flail on steroids. Huge swinging paddles, chain driven instead of belt. When that thing would load up you could feel it but the Kubota would just send it more HP and the mower would power though the stuff I'm struggling to get through with my flail.........Downside is it rotates the opposite direction as my flail, and by the end of the weekend I blew the corner window out on the right side from a rock it sent my direction.......... Not a fun implement to run but it ate tough grass like nothing I've ever seen!

 

[jkornbread]

At 30hp ish I could see it stalling out for sure. I think the problem I'm seeing is when I have the load sensing system on, the tractor will increase power to maintain PTO RPM and thats when the belt will slip, its always the drive pulley slipping. I'll try tightening the belt I just worry that I'm sending more HP to the belt than the belt can take. I have 3 spares now so I guess I'll find out how tight I can run that belt lol

 

[cch750]

I have a ls xr4145 is this tractor big enough to run a ford 22-124 flial mower? Thanks in advance

 

[Dan in MN]

With the new belt I just got Sunday slippage seemed to be a lot less, but it would still squeak, id just stop the pto, pick it up, restart the PTO and let it clear out.

Having to let it clear out sounds similar to problems I was having last year. With the Value Leader flail I was running I had all kinds of problems with the mower loading up and pulling the tractor down. I found that when I had adjusted the roller to lower the cutting height there just wasn't enough room between the roller and the housing to eject the material and it would build up inside. If your roller is height adjustable try lowering the roller in relation to the mower to increase the amount of space for material ejection.

 

[Steave]

I have a ls xr4145 is this tractor big enough to run a ford 22-124 flial mower? Thanks in advance

I run my Ford 907 on a Ford 3000 about the same size tractor as yours and it does fine. The 907 weights 650 lbs according to my scale. Mine is a very smooth running flail compared to the Mott 72 I have. The Mott 72 has a prettier cut because it's set up for finish cut and the Ford 907 is set up for rough cutting. It's kinda like a crop chopper but has the rear roller.

The 22-124 is a 72" cut Ford 907.

 

[mudplugger]

Hi there,

DieselBound suggested I post here... and show another European flail mower manufacturer..

Can you guys get the German made Muething fails in the US?

Worth looking at if you have serious work to do...: MUTHING GmbH & Co. KG - Soest - Landau - Neumarkt - Uffenheim - Bad Kreuznach - Langensteinach - Welcome

The new flail is an MU-H 220 Vario MUTHING GmbH & Co. KG - Soest - Landau - Neumarkt - Uffenheim - Bad Kreuznach - Langensteinach - MU-H Vario

And is pictured here mounted on my Kioti NX6010 HST

All I can say is that it works. Well. Really well.

 

[IslandTractor]

Hi there,

DieselBound suggested I post here... and show another European flail mower manufacturer..

Can you guys get the German made Muething fails in the US?

Worth looking at if you have serious work to do...: MUTHING GmbH & Co. KG - Soest - Landau - Neumarkt - Uffenheim - Bad Kreuznach - Langensteinach - Welcome

The new flail is an MU-H 220 Vario MUTHING GmbH & Co. KG - Soest - Landau - Neumarkt - Uffenheim - Bad Kreuznach - Langensteinach - MU-H Vario

And is pictured here mounted on my Kioti NX6010 HST View attachment 509754View attachment 509755

All I can say is that it works. Well. Really well.

I can easily believe that a German flail would be excellent. They know a thing or two about engineering and manufacturing. For some reason I've never heard of any German implement manufacturers exporting to the US though, at least for CUT sized implements. There are a number of excellent Italian flail manufacturers represented on this side of the pond either selling under their own brand or rebadged. Can you give us an idea of what a flail like yours costs in UK? The Italian imports in the 2 meter size go for between $2000 and 3500 here. I'm guessing that the German made mowers are at the top end or higher than that range. That would put the Germans in direct competition with the premium US made flail companies like Alamo and Vrisimo which have well established markets and are generally heavier duty (often used to maintain highway borders). The US heavy duty mowers are generally used on utility size tractors. The Italian mowers became popular here not so long ago as medium duty pasture and brush (and some finish) mowers especially after the CUT market took off.

 

[mudplugger]

I can easily believe that a German flail would be excellent. They know a thing or two about engineering and manufacturing. For some reason I've never heard of any German implement manufacturers exporting to the US though, at least for CUT sized implements. There are a number of excellent Italian flail manufacturers represented on this side of the pond either selling under their own brand or rebadged. Can you give us an idea of what a flail like yours costs in UK? The Italian imports in the 2 meter size go for between $2000 and 3500 here. I'm guessing that the German made mowers are at the top end or higher than that range. That would put the Germans in direct competition with the premium US made flail companies like Alamo and Vrisimo which have well established markets and are generally heavier duty (often used to maintain highway borders). The US heavy duty mowers are generally used on utility size tractors. The Italian mowers became popular here not so long ago as medium duty pasture and brush (and some finish) mowers especially after the CUT market took off.

Hi, we run a reasonably sized mixed arable, dairy and beef unit in the wet NW uplands of England.
Whatever land isn't used for permanent pasture, haylage or silage making is used for either chopped feedstuffs, a limited a mount of arable (mostly barley) or sheep and horse grazing.
The land is wet, clay based and is prone to the ingress of rush and bramble/thorn where not checked in the lower areas and gorse and bracken in the higher areas.
As such, we have a need for regular topping of rough unmanaged areas, the key uplands and even the horse pastures and field edges, forest walks/rides etc... We also need to control (by cutting) the invasive bramble/thorn and rush species that seem to double in quantity as soon as the sun shines..
We also manage some verges and open public grass areas for our local parish council.

On the two Farmyards we have a variety of equipment, including full size tractors, a forage harvester and loaders that we use in some part of our daily roles.
The list is long, but includes a Claas Forage Harvester, two JDs (6135 and 5125) a Steyr M9094 and an old grey Ferguson. We have both a JCB and a Merlo telehandler plus a few Yamaha ATV's for the hill/sheep work plus a few trailers of varying types.
At home I have another Yamaha ATV, another Steyr M9094 and a recent addition - a Kioti NX6010 HST.
I've been driving tractors since I was 10 years old - a sobering 44 years.. I'm getting to the point now where I'm only really maintaining a tiny 30Ha patch (75 acres) and the little Kioti is proving an easy machine to live with.
With low weight and low ground pressure tyres, I can get onto the wet ground around 10 months of the year without marking it. Any of the bigger tractors have only 7 months of the year where they'll not compact the ground or rut it.
As you can imagine over the years we have used an extensive array of equipment with which to manage the topping and brush cutting. Everything from a mean and solid 8' two swing bladed thrasher/cutter that I think would have mangled anything in it's path (but not tidily), a side mounted 12' pasture topper, down to a fully articulated 4' hedge/verge trimming flail.
In 1994, after an array of Italian flails for as long as I can remember, mostly Breviglieri (good) we bought our first Muething flail.
It was a fixed 7' wide mulching flail - and we've used it solidly behind all sorts of kit with very little real maintenance apart from the odd hammer flail replacement, a new set of belts and some oil/grease.
It got hammered - even hitting the odd rocky outcrop hidden by rushes - but really just kept going as smoothly as the day it was built.

We sold this together with a Ford New Holland tractor that it happened to be mounted on when someone came along and liked the tractor... They wanted the mower too - and agreed silly money for it.
So we decided to replace it last year with the equivalent model of Muething again - the MU-H 220 Vario (2.2 metres wide) - but also added a hydraulic side shift.
It weighs in at 615Kg or 1300lbs, so it's a hefty lump, but when it gets going, it's relatively quiet and vibration free.
Mowing edges is easy using the hydraulic side shift - as is levelling up with hydraulic top link.
Muething flails in my view are very, very solidly built and have a great secondary "comb knife" set in the cowl that aids really effective mulching.
We normally set it up to cut the pasture at just under 2" and it sits on the rear roller and happily trundles along - on smooth pasture and a lighter maintenance cut, you can go as fast as 12mph - and still giving a really good mulch.
We have even started doing a big lawned area with it now because the finish is so good, and so little grass left on the surface (all being mulched).
We have even set that down to 1" using a different roller pin height... Almost lawnmower quality.

Cost...
Well I had to go and look this up.. we bought some other kit at the same time so got a decent discount - but still paid c.｣4,500 or about $5,800 for it last year
To put this in perspective, a 2m Dragone flail is ｣4,000 and the cheapest here from a reasonable Italian maker is about ｣3,200.
I have always reckoned that equipment prices in the US are pretty cheap compared to us... I think Muething have agents in Canada - but not the US yet..

Hope that helps - some nice videos on their site too..

 

[IslandTractor]

Thanks for the description of your flail use Mudplugger. Hope you stay around to answer questions on commercial farming use of your flail. We have a variety of users here on TBN but the typical user is maintaining a smaller acreage than you and most of us are not commercial. Pasture mowing for the same reasons that you do it is probably the most common use. You may be aware that until fairly recently "bush hog" rotary cutters (as you described as "swing bladed thrasher cutters" were used for most pasture maintenance. Safety and quality of cut considerations have opened up the flail market especially for compact utility tractors. Most of us here are maintaining personal property in the 5-20 acre range (though there are a few Texans with bigger ranches). I suspect that most commercial farmers in the US are still using big rotary cutters as high speed projectiles exiting from under the mower are not much of a concern unless near dwellings or roads.

As I thought, the German flails are about the same price as the big US manufactured flails. It will be interesting to see if they can make inroads into the US market. In that price range the buyers are mostly municipalities, highway maintenance departments and commercial farms.

 

[mudplugger]

Thanks for the description of your flail use Mudplugger. Hope you stay around to answer questions on commercial farming use of your flail. We have a variety of users here on TBN but the typical user is maintaining a smaller acreage than you and most of us are not commercial. Pasture mowing for the same reasons that you do it is probably the most common use. You may be aware that until fairly recently "bush hog" rotary cutters (as you described as "swing bladed thrasher cutters" were used for most pasture maintenance. Safety and quality of cut considerations have opened up the flail market especially for compact utility tractors. Most of us here are maintaining personal property in the 5-20 acre range (though there are a few Texans with bigger ranches). I suspect that most commercial farmers in the US are still using big rotary cutters as high speed projectiles exiting from under the mower are not much of a concern unless near dwellings or roads.

As I thought, the German flails are about the same price as the big US manufactured flails. It will be interesting to see if they can make inroads into the US market. In that price range the buyers are mostly municipalities, highway maintenance departments and commercial farms.

Hi IslandTractor, yes, I'll keep subscribed to this thread. I guess that we're more commercial in our farming operations, but as you can see - with the Kioti, we're just finding out how different things are in the CUT market - and they are different. For different you can often exchange the word expensive!
I'm glad that for most things we can use our farm connections to get things like filters and hydraulic fittings - they're about 30% to 50% less the price the UK CUT dealers appear to charge..!
I have boxes of linkage accessories (mostly Cat 2/3) but was horrified the other day at the CUT dealer price for some things.. I guess they charge what the market will stand - and CUT's here are predominantly used for sports/golf courses, municipal authorities and private individuals... That means there is little price pressure. I walked away and went to our local agricultural engineering supplies (account only) and paid 50% of what the CUT dealer wanted for some Cat2 stuff- and probably for a better product!
Thanks for the responses and have a productive summer!

 

[leonz]

Hello mudplugger,

I wish to welcome you belatedly as the newest British member of the Flail Mower Nations.

leonz

 

[IslandTractor]

Hello mudplugger,

I wish to welcome you belatedly as the newest Australian member of the Flail Mower Nations.

leonz

He's not down under, he's across the pond. But you make a good point, we have far more Aussie participants in this thread than Brits or other Eurozone folks.

 

[leonz]

Fixed my error, tired .........

 

[mudplugger]

He's not down under, he's across the pond. But you make a good point, we have far more Aussie participants in this thread than Brits or other Eurozone folks.

Correct IslandTractor..
I'm in the soggy NW of England.
My only Aussie connections are a few cousins out there in the Northern Territories...
All farmers... :thumbsup:

I guess Tractorbynet doesn't get much of a following here because we have a "farming forum" that seems to catch the hobby farmers and most CUT folks.
There are a lot of very old tractors that just seem to find their way onto hobby farms - it's partly what keeps the prices of a MF135/165 high...