BRUSH HOG vs. FLAIL MOWER (for compact tractors)

welcome back to the channel everybody you're watching a little bit will do and today is the day you've been waiting for and i've been waiting for i have a feeling this video is going to be pretty popular so stick around and see what i'm talking about early this summer i picked up a brush hug i got a smoking hot deal on it so i couldn't resist and the only reason the only reason that i bought it was because i want to do a comparison video between the brush hog and my flail mower all right so let me tell you about the brush hog first this brush hog is a king cutter four foot brush hog okay it's used it's in uh it's in really good shape it just has a little bit of surface rust uh this is the first time this brush hog has ever been hooked up to my tractor and uh i don't know how it's gonna react i don't know what it's gonna be like so stick around with me and find out now this flail mower i can tell you that i just i love this thing this flail mower is a four foot flail mower it has hammer blades if you don't know the difference between the different blades that the flail mowers have the two common ones are hammer blades and knives knives are more for like a manicured lawn flail mo or hammer blades are for brush and and just you know they really handle a lot of stuff so this is what it is it's one of these brands all right it's not the it's not the top of the line brand i've got about 10 maybe 15 hours on it already and i've got a lot of videos out there on the flail mower it works great i love it i haven't had a problem with it hopefully i don't have a problem today so it's holding up well all right again another look at the brush hog both both blades on the brush hog in the flail mower have recently been sharpened so that should not be a uh an issue all right let's get this thing going [Applause] so so my first impressions with this brush hog is that i am basically not that impressed yet i i just i'm not seeing the nice quality cut that i expected when i was going over light grass and light brush i got a little bit of heavier brush back here and we're gonna give that a try and maybe it will excel at heavier brush um but you'll see for yourself because we're gonna hook up the flail mower later and you can see how it compares for your own eyes but right now i'm telling you in my opinion i think the flail mower is going to come out on top but we'll see at the end of this video [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] well you've got to see how the brush hog cuts light grass medium grass and kind of a light brush or medium brush and then some heavy brush i probably would have cut some more heavy brush except i don't have a slip clutch and i would be a lot more comfortable if this pto had a slip clutch on it so you know i could put one on there but you know they're about 150 bucks or so and i just don't want to invest in one uh so i'm just gonna i'm gonna be done right now with the brush hog and we're gonna hook up the flail mower um one thing that i should point out if you have a lot of different obstacles to go around the the brush hog sticks out so far and it really you really got to be aware of your turns or you're making too tight of a turn or you're going to hit something and you also have this tail wheel back here that doesn't always like to turn around and i know that when my dad had a brush hog he broke off a tail wheel and that's kind of what led me to getting a flail mower uh that and gp outdoors he kind of kind of convinced me that was all his fault that i had to get a flail mower so anyways we're going to hook up the flail more we're going to see how it compares to the brush hog and uh we'll see for you can see for yourself so stick around [Music] [Applause] [Music] so we've taken a few passes with the flail mower and if we get down right here to the ground you can see that the flail mower really does a great job of mulching this stuff up really into a just a kind of a fine mulch really just really eats it up good it gets it gets down to the ground and it does a nice even job if you look over it's just kind of evenly cut yeah it's missed a few here and a little bit over there but if we go over here now to where the brush hog was i don't know how well you're gonna be able to notice this on the camera but there's you know there's sprigs of grass that are up that the brush hog missed a lot and let's just look at this part right here for a second now the brush hog cuts this type of grass fine well not fine but good enough but it doesn't cut it it doesn't mulch it up like a flail mower does it kind of leaves windrows in the middle of the brush hog now here's something to think about when you're thinking between a flail mower and a brush hog a brush hog has a cutting surface you know on the forefoot on the four foot brush hog anyway it probably has 12 inches on one blade and 12 inches on another blade okay so it's got about 24 inches of cutting surface as far as the blades go and it's going around as fast as it can you know 540 rpms on the tractor not exactly sure how fast it's going but i had it going right where it's supposed to be now the flail mower has hammer blades and those hammer blades every single one of them is four inches long and there's 20 of them so 20 times four right 80 inches okay well over 24 inches that the brush hog has so those that cutting surface of those blades is coming around at a really fast rapid rate and it's doing a really great job of mulching everything up so there's one difference that if you haven't thought of yet between a brush hog and a flail mower as far as cutting blade surface cutting surface it's a it's really a big factor the other thing i want to mention is that the flail mower cuts on a drum it's going around and around on a drum and all those 20 different hammers are cutting it evenly they're going around at the same speed they're hitting from the left to the right they're hitting the material on the ground at a consistent speed a brush hog however has you know two blades all right and let's just say there's 12 inches of cutting surface on each blade well in the middle of the brush hog that's where you're getting the best cut because it's cutting on the forward on the forward part of the brush and it's cutting on the back part after it goes over the the uh what do they call the stump jumper part of the brush hawk but on the left and the right that's only hitting the material on the ground one time before it passes on okay so in the middle is where your best cut is going to be on a brush hog so if you're cutting if you're cutting some kind of you know big brush with a brush hog you want to try to center that really well on a flail mower it doesn't matter so much because it's consistent all the way through so just things to think about when you're trying to decide between a flail mower and a brush hog all right we're gonna go try some uh medium brush right now and uh you can see how that compares [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so that is how the flail mower handles medium density brush and as you saw i had to go over it multiple times some areas i had to go over multiple times some areas i i took care of right away you know like right over here where it was kind of light and and more of like on the heavy grass type of side i just went over it once and it knocked it down real nice mulched it up but in this area right here i had to go over this multiple times but i mean it really mulches things up i mean this is all going to just disintegrate and you know compost but then again there's some longer sticks it might take a little bit longer but regardless uh that's that's done that's not coming back i went over multiple times now over here i only went over this stuff once so let's take a closer look at what we have here so this is this is kind of more towards the heavier side of brush this stuff um you know we got some one inch and you know inch and a half stuff some maybe some two almost three inch over there but you run it over and it really just it takes a nice bite out of this stuff and if i came back at it the other way you know using my loader to kind of raise it up and and turn it the other side then it really does a good job of cutting it down here look over here look at this look at this stump that we have now this is kind of you know this is kind of big this that's kind of substantial running over that with a flail mower um but it knocked it down it took a big enough chunk out of it where that thing's gonna die and if i wanted to go over it a couple more times i could just really mulch it up and and make this just a really nice result i mean look at how nice this looks already this is just with the flail mower now so flail mower is going to leave you a nicer cut a nicer result you may have to go over you know some brush multiple times but a brush hog on the other hand you can knock down those bigger trees with one pass but you're not going to mulch them up real well they're just going to kind of spit them out and mostly like i said right in the middle of that brush hog there's going to be kind of a windrow of material that you're going to have to deal with for a flail mower leads kind of a nice more uh it spreads out the material a lot more evenly all right let's go put the drone in the air here's an example of what i knocked down with the brush hog pretty substantial stump you know three inch probably plus this over here uh so pretty big um that's a lot for that little four foot brusher for the the bx tractor to do um i'm gonna go over that again with a flail mower we're to see if we can clean that up a little bit so see what happens [Music] as you saw there the flail mower was able to really kind of mulch this up and and get it even further down to the ground just kind of turn it into you know small little small little chunks so did a nice nice job of just mulching it right up [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] there you have it guys i hope you enjoyed this direct comparison between the brush hog and the flail mower let's review our advantages and disadvantages the brush hog sticks out quite a ways behind the tractor it's got that tail wheel it's hard to turn also the tractor is carrying the weight of the brush hog versus the flail mower the flail mower rides on the ground on big rollers and you're really just pulling it and it rides and just kind of hugs the surface of the ground all right advantages to the brush hog it knocks down big material quicker but it doesn't really mulch it up very well the flail mower will knock down the same size material but it doesn't mulch it up right away you might have to make multiple passes to do that but you can accomplish it the brush hog and tall medium you know maybe some heavy grass not very well it tends to miss a lot of stuff especially on the right and the left hand side of it down the middle where the blade hits it twice it hits it on the front and it hits it on the back it hits that material twice versus only one time on the left to right then it does a little bit better but it does leave some wind rose so i don't know it really depends on what kind of result you're looking for if you're looking for a nice uh mulched up result the flail mower is definitely the way to go if you want to be able to turn in tight areas the flail mower is definitely the way to go so if you got a lot of trees a lot of obstacles that you want to go around i definitely get a flail mower if you've got a big uh you've got a big pasture that's kind of overgrown and it's got some heavy heavy shrubs on it that you need to knock down and you really don't care what the result is you just want to knock them down go with a brush hog it just depends right okay so whatever your application is whatever kind of result you want depends on which one you should get if i had to choose for my applications just kind of maintaining this land and knocking stuff down i'd go with the flail mower all day long it's so much more maneuverable and it works better behind a smaller tractor i think the flail mower works better behind a smaller tractor versus the brush hog that's just my opinion i feel like i'm more comfortable on the tractor it's not jostling me around so much as the as the brush hog did once in a while running the brush hog i'd come to a spot that i couldn't get over and i'd have to back up uh with the flail more the the flail mower just kind of rides on the surface of the ground and you're just basically pulling it the brush hog you actually have to lift it the tractor carries the weight of the brush hog you know it can skid on the ground and that's fine but if you have like undulations and uneven ground that brush hog is gonna get hung up on there and it's gonna it's gonna it's not gonna be a comfortable ride for you and it's not gonna be that great it's gonna be backing up and having to readjust whereas the flail mower i think it does a better job so there you go hope you liked the video hey do me a big favor like this video give me the thumbs up i really really need those thumbs up youtube uh pushes it out to a larger audience more people see it and then the the channel does better helps the channel grow so i would appreciate it if you do that if you want to check out our facebook group we have a facebook group called the ritter bit will do there you can message me ask questions i'm pretty good about getting back to you guys um other than that i think that's about it so as always until next time keep on tractoring and god bless [Music] you

Channel: A RITTER BIT WILL DO

Views: 322,323

Keywords: kubota, bx23s, bx2380, bx25, bx25d, bx2350, bx2360, bx1880, bx1870, tractor, trailer, backhoe, artillian, john deere, ford, brush, plow, third fuction, flail, l3940, dump trailer, f150, beco, betsco, forks, grapple, stump, curtis, lock and lube, lucknlube, plowing, snowblower, outdoors, homesteading, truck, shop, mechanic, outdoors with the morgans, gp outdoors, tractor time with tim, filters, a Ritter will do, weed trimmer, dji, curtis cab, load trail, hamiltonville farm, brush hog, flail mower, king cutter

Id: qimS8eKsQPM

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020