SICKLE MOWER VS FLAIL

[Brimfield]

I have a [AFFILIATE=1, nofollow=true, newwindow=true, title="Kubota"]Kubota[/AFFILIATE] L3800 and I am looking for a side mower. This is for cutting wild rose bushes and small saplings. along the driveway. I can find posts on flail mowers but not on sickle. Also what brand mowers are good? I have Titan log grapple, forks and a bucket so I am thinking of buying from them.

 

[leonz]

You may be better off buying a small farm disc mower to do that as
the disc mowers discs ride on the ground and each disc has 3 or 4
single blades on it and there are no sickle teeth to break and mend/rivet.

 

[redman135]

A sickle bar mower is for hay cutting. Doing the job you describe will destroy it. You need a flail mower, it is designed for jobs like yours

 

[ovrszd]

A sickle mower will not like cutting saplings. But I guess if you can get them cut and then keep them cut low it'll handle the job. A sickle mower that is belt driven is great for cutting road banks where the slope angle varies. That's what mine gets used for. Or cutting along a waterline of a pond/lake. My Flail trails behind me. But it leaves the best looking cut.

 

[diesel85]

You should use a flail mower like folks have mentioned.

 

[ericm979]

If you want a side mower for small saplings you could get a ditch bank flail mower.

I'd check reviews of the Titan flails. Not all that great and no spare parts. They're common EF style Chinese flails so maybe someone else's parts would fit but many manufacturer make changes to the design so you'd have to figure it out on a part by part basis.

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

We used sickle bar mowers to cut hay back in the 60's-70's growing up on the farm. Lord help the one of us that used one to cut brush or small sapplings. That would get Dad's leather strop off the nail hook and warmed up on our backside.

Either an offset flail, or an offset rotary should do the trick.

The sickle bar style mower just isn't robust enough for that kind of steady use.

 

[LouNY]

Less then 3000 pounds and 39 Hp on the pto;
the small offset flails may work.
Depending on the size of the saplings I would not be afraid to use a sickle mower.
One inch and under green saplings and brush and briars the sickle would have no problem with
and it is much lighter then a flail.

Here is a suggestion it is chinese made;

We haven't used our sickle bar mowers for hay for many years, they do get used for fence line and roadside triming.

 

[Brimfield]

yea I saw that sickle mower. I am leaning to the flail to eat up the roses. Will I need an enclosed cab for safety? Brush hog mentioned it. I have dug up rose bushes for years with a back hoe and they grow back in no time. Is there a brand of flail mower that is not made in China? Or at least has spare parts. If I wanted to build a survival bunker I would plant wild rose hedges for cover. No one could get through that quickly and not be cut up.

 

[LouNY]

They are a formidable obstacle.

 

[diesel85]

yea I saw that sickle mower. I am leaning to the flail to eat up the roses. Will I need an enclosed cab for safety? Brush hog mentioned it. I have dug up rose bushes for years with a back hoe and they grow back in no time. Is there a brand of flail mower that is not made in China? Or at least has spare parts. If I wanted to build a survival bunker I would plant wild rose hedges for cover. No one could get through that quickly and not be cut up.

Ahh, yes, thorny rosebushes.... My father planted a whole row of them on a front section of my lawn to deter deer. Well, they didn't deter anything but me getting near them to mow/weed wack near them. Guaranteed I'd look like I got a hold of a mad scratching cat using me as a scratching post. I liked the roses that would bloom and the smell, but that was about it.

After he passed, that following summer, I went out and yanked them all of them out with my truck one afternoon. Then I got some top soil with my tractor and filled in the holes. I then brought them rose bushes to the back burn bit, and burned every single one of them!

 

[ovrszd]

Multi-Floral Rose Bushes are the nemesis here. 40 years ago the Missouri Conservation Department would give you seedlings to plant. They promoted them as wildlife preservers. Horribly invasive and will completely take over a field. Sometimes our Government has good intentions that actually aren't. Well maybe a bit more than "sometimes"......

 

[IndyJay]

Multi-Floral Rose Bushes are the nemesis here. 40 years ago the Missouri Conservation Department would give you seedlings to plant. They promoted them as wildlife preservers. Horribly invasive and will completely take over a field. Sometimes our Government has good intentions that actually aren't. Well maybe a bit more than "sometimes"......

Isn't that how we got so many Honeysuckle?

 

[ovrszd]

Isn't that how we got so many Honeysuckle?

I don't know for sure where they came from. But probably.....

 

[HarryVanderpool]

Is there a brand of flail mower that is not made in China? Or at least has spare parts.

There sure is! Take a look at a Rears SPF mower.
Made in Eugene Oregon.
Once you see one of these in person, all other brands look like flimsy pieces of junk.
I bought the 6 foot SPF with the heavy duty, 2 position mast.
Love it!!

 

[IndyJay]

These folks...

FLAIL PRODUCT LIST - Rears Mfg Co

Rear's Manufacturing Home page

rearsmfg.com

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Is there a brand of flail mower that is not made in China?

Yeaaa, NH451, not only made in USA it has no problem cutting green saplings up to an inch IF you go slow.

I do it with mine all the time.

SR

 

[mo1]

A rotary boom mower would be ideal, and there are some that are 3 point mount so they are easy to remove. I don't know if a Kubota L3800 would be heavy enough to handle one. A sickle will cut some twiggy stuff but it is really made for cutting hay. Same with a disc mower, although if you break a disc mower it is way more expensive than fixing a broken sickle section.

Multi-Floral Rose Bushes are the nemesis here. 40 years ago the Missouri Conservation Department would give you seedlings to plant. They promoted them as wildlife preservers. Horribly invasive and will completely take over a field. Sometimes our Government has good intentions that actually aren't. Well maybe a bit more than "sometimes"......

Isn't that how we got so many Honeysuckle?

Ah yes, bush honeysuckle and multiflora rose. Fortunately there is not bush honeysuckle where I am right now but there was a bunch of it at the last two places I lived, it pretty much choked out everything else growing along the edges of fields and yards. I do have some multiflora rose in the fencelines where I am now but cutting the fields a couple times per year keeps it out of the fields, it is pretty similar to blackberries in that it can grow into a field but cutting it back a few times kills it and cutting a couple times per year keeps it out of the fields. It's not like those %&^*$ locust trees that really only die if you spray them. Fortunately the same triclopyr + 2,4-D ester that kills locust trees is also highly effective on multiflora rose.

Both the bush honeysuckle and multiflora rose were advocated by the government to be great things to plant back in the day. The worst part is that bush honeysuckle was not just something that private individuals/companies brought from Asia to the U.S. and the government merely recommended its use before they found out it was invasive. No, the federal government was the central figure in the plant being brought to the U.S. and they were the entity propagating and distributing it to both botanical gardens and to private individuals through the Soil Conservation Service.

 

[JasperFrank]

Met too many old farmers that had less then the number of fingers they were born with, to ever advocate a sickle bar.

Scotch Broom was introduced to stabilize steep ground on highway constructions. That didn't work out so well either.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Met too many old farmers that had less then the number of fingers they were born with, to ever advocate a sickle bar.

Too many farmers and KIDS too were killed by PTO shafts too, but I'm NOT giving up those either!!

How many people are killed EVERY year by cars and trucks??

SR