New sickle mowers

[Mace Canute]

Back in the 60s when I was a kid we used to mow up to about 80 acres of hayfield with sickle mowers, first was a 6 foot mower that attached to the rear of our old Allis Chalmers WC and we traded that up to a pull type International with a 9 foot sickle bar. We never really had any trouble with them and they cut just fine. These days a friend uses an old International mower that he keeps hooked up permanently behind his old John Deere A for mowing around his acreage in the non lawn areas and it does an excellent job. We were pleasantly surprised to find that a really old horse drawn mower the previous owner had left there when he sold out had the exact same guards and ledger plates that his had...and they were still in excellent shape and sharp too! We rebuilt his sickle bar with those parts! That old horse drawn mower was so old the wooden tongue had rotted off it.

As others have said sometimes they need a little bit of adjusting to get the best performance out of them.

 

[TractorToolsDirect]

Sickle mowers will do a few things better than a drum mower. For one, they are a lot lighter weight so they are safer on small tractors, and easier to connect to the tractor as they are easier to move around when connecting to the 3 point hitch. Sickle bars also cut above and below level a lot better. You have to do more maintenance on them, especially keeping the cutterbar well oiled. I would recommend sticking with the double-action models, they cut faster and clog less.