THIS LEVELING TOOL WAS A WASTE OF TIME! SEE WHAT WORKED!

we're going to compare two tools today folks one of them costs four times as much as the other one I don't think I can justify it I'll try to make a case stick around thank you foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign new tool today that we have never used before never shown on our Channel just got them in recently from Reese we showed you their power rake that we used last year on our skid steer Reese manufactures a lot of landscaping tools primarily for skid steers but they do it for tractors and three-point hitches as well and this is one of their their tools and we've had some demand some requests for drag mats and I don't know it's just never been a thing that's had much it hasn't piqued my interest right but anyway I thought that this was a unique design it's a roll-up mat crank design uh with the handle on here you can roll this whole thing up two inch receiver Mount so if you get something like a trailer mover on the back of your tractor like the Versa bracket or if you have an ATV or UTV or I guess even a smaller vehicle that you want to pull around with you could do it on there too so I like that versatility that it offers it comes in two different widths you have a 66 inch and an 84 inch working with the overall width is going to be a little bit wider roughly 73 inches I think it is a 91 inches on the bigger unit I've never used a drag map before so you know I mean I've really only seen them used on baseball diamonds the infield but I get requests for them for other uses as well so maybe there's more of a demand and more of a widespread usage that I'm just not aware of right but anyway I thought it was worth getting in I've got a couple of grab handles here that are really just I think to help you get that thing installed on your your two inch hitch there you'll see a couple of little welded on hooks on the back it came with some extra rubber straps I think just kind of has a um an extra precaution to help keep that thing from unrolling but this crank handle is held in place by a spring locked pin here that you can just pull back and rotate and lock it in place there so once it is cranked up there's not really anywhere that it can go but I suppose better safe than sorry so really it's not too complicated we don't have any Ball Diamonds out here but we do have a couple of different areas that I thought hey it's worth a shot we've done the majority of the grading and it's just really trying to improve and get it to that really good finish grade and one area we brought in a lot of topsoil part of that topsoil was filtered some of it was not filtered so you're going to see some interesting surprises that come out of that another area we recently tilled up and worked up a lot of side we had dug out five different stumps I'm just trying to smooth it out get it level back out and then seed it and everything else we've had some we've been battling some weather around here so I think things are dried out well enough uh could always be drier I suppose but it's not rock hard it's it's not super wet so it's just kind of in the mix and I don't know you guys watch and see what you think it takes a lot of passes you gotta you gotta pay close attention to watching how that grade and how that surface just slowly improves at least on the area along the drive where we brought in the topsoil the other area I'm not so sold on I think of the Thatcher rig that we sell would do a better job I like the versatility of the two inch receiver Mount but it's kind of a pain you have to take these big arching swings to get repositioned and I like a three-point attachment you can just lift it up just do a quick turn and then get back right where you want to go and with the detacher rake you can go forwards and backwards now this area that we tilled up and going to be reseeding where we had all the stumps it's really coming along I will say though and I want to know your opinion on this I don't really like the finished results it definitely did smooth down the dirt overall it did level it out even more but it's separated out filtered out I guess the remaining side clumps that are there and kind of almost shook off all the remaining dirt that was on there and left a lot of little bare root little clumps so I think that the thatcher rake might have done a better job because it would also go through and smooth out everything really well but then I think actually collect all of those side clumps by either pulling or or pushing that rake along and condensing them into smaller piles where you can then scoop them up and get rid of them so all in all honestly I'm not really sure if this is worth the money and maybe it's because I'm not using it in the right application maybe it's because I don't know how to use it maybe it's you know there's there's different ways to use it I'm not aware of it so if you want a drag map we have an option for you didn't order a lot of these just a couple of each size right now just to kind of test the market and see what you think about it it's not cheap I'm going to say that as well but it's an option for you it's something that we carry and uh you know we'll let the video speak for itself and then as well as you guys also with your different skill sets as operators if you think it's the right tool for you great um bye bye and that sold on it though but you will see it for sale on our website and uh I guess we'll wait for your feedback so what we're going to do now is throw on the three-point to thatcher rake and see how that does over there if it does collect all the sod instead of just kind of spreading it out like it's done right now it's certainly not going to hurt the conditions over there if anything is going to help I think it's a better tool but let's find out now a lot of you still haven't seen the tractor that we're using it's the summit tx25 comes with all sorts of features as standard that other tractors don't we've done a whole bunch of videos on it so check those out if you want to or go to Summit tractors.com okay folks we're back out the next morning ran out of time the day before hooked up the 60 inch to Thatcher from CMP and you know we've talked about this a whole bunch love this thing and I think today you're going to see where it really thrives and just a fantastic application for it and to be fair we did run over this area with the drag mat first but I honestly don't think that had much of an impact on this the performance of this rake I think is going to really shine you're going to see exactly what it does it does well it's doing three things at the same time right now number one is collecting all those loose clumps of debris all the little side chunks and the root chunks that are left over any of the roots any branches sticks even a few rocks I saw getting swept up and collected here there two it is leveling and smoothing things out all right it's it's just moving that dirt kind of slowly and evenly it's a rake that's what it is it's a two row rake that you have here and it's just doing what you would do with a rake so think about the same kinds of jobs there except you're just doing it with your tractor and number three it's putting little grooves where all those rake Titans are making contact and so what that does is gives you a nice little trench for a seed bed and so you can come through afterwards do your overseeding and then run that detacheric again ideally at a little bit of a different angle so it kind of skims and scuffs the dirt over top of all those little trenches covers all the seat up so you have really good seed to soil contact for germination hold some moisture in and then get your grass started so recently we started shipping manufacturer direct to try to keep prices down with today's economy you know we're doing everything we can to get creative and find different ways and so when we can work with a manufacturer to ship directly from them instead of having to get inventory shipped into us and then sending it back out to customers I mean there's real cost involved with Transportation right so if we have to ship a bunch of stuff to us and then send it back out to you it's just driving the price point up and so I'm thankful to CMP to to work with us and they're grateful too that it's a good partnership that we have and we're able to ship stuff Factory Direct right from them and so these things ship out UPS ground on a 50 pound box it's about five foot long by nine inches by nine inches so easy enough for a UPS driver to drop off at at your front door it takes about maybe an hour a solid hour I would say you know you're bolting a lot of stuff together all these little tines I have to get bolted down here too so plan on about an hour if you're taking your time hour and a half whatever it's not not the end of the world you do it once and you're done oddly enough a question that came up after we were done shooting yesterday and before we started shooting this morning was tell me the truth is this the Thatcher really heavy duty and give me give me you know the scoop on it is it quality and yada yada this is not a heavy duty attachment and it is not meant to be we did a video in the fall comparing a landscape rake versus a dethatcher rake and the idea is a landscape rake is a bigger heavier tool the Thatcher rig is the opposite end of that Spectrum it's a very lightweight tool so it's not super aggressive if you're going to use this all over your lawn you don't want to be taking out chunks aside you want to just get the thatch out of there you know open up some soil on there for germination for for scarifying doing this leveling kind of thing on a very light level you don't want deep grooves from a rake or anything else or having to really control it this tool you can just drop it down on the three point and let it do its thing you can go forwards or backwards so this is if you run into a tree though or a stump you're gonna break it all right so you gotta use this with some common sense involved but go into it with that aspect as well as it's a decent amount less than a rake a landscape rake too so it has that going forward as well overall these are a very very popular item that we sell if you do need to get replacement parts too you can order those directly from CMP they have a little section on their website where you can just order replacement parts for a tine or if you do run into a stump you need to replace a section of the frame you can buy that section on there too and get back up and running I'm going to give you my opinion and I think that the Thatcher is really the winner here and again I I don't have much experience with these drag mats but I do think if you had a just a receiver like on an ATV or UTV that's a big selling point for that drag mat um you you know this requires a three-point hitch to use this to Thatcher but man if I've got the two tools sitting side by side right now I'm struggling to come up with an application where I'm going to pick the drag mat over the Thatcher and think that that's the right tool for the job I mean I don't know I think the results speak for themselves at least in the applications that I have here of course there's other scenarios and circumstances where perhaps that drag mat works better I don't know but CMP has been selling these things for years longer than I have and they advertise them for raking out Ball Diamonds too doing gravel driveways on light grading that kind of thing so really using it for a lot of the same purposes that a drag mat is used for anyways I don't know four times the cost three four times the cost somewhere in there not as versatile harder to turn around and navigate for me the Thatcher's getting the win so folks if you're looking for one of these tools that you saw in today's video or you need something else for your three-point hitch or your front end loader we'd love to help you out we ship all over the country every day of the week prices include shipping rewards and financing too and if you enjoy watching tractor Tools in action then check out the other videos on our Channel we have over 600 more for you to take a look at I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by and until next time stay safe we'll see you soon [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] favorite [Music]

Channel: Good Works Tractors

Views: 28,840

Keywords: john deere, kubota, good works tractors, goodworkstractors, ttwt, tractor time with tim, gwt, michigan, kalamazoo, john deere dealer, kubota dealer, resit, dethatcher, drag mat, drag harrow, cmp, grading, summit tx25

Id: BtQdQHhJRcY

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023