What is a flail mower? How do I decide if it's right for me?

hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to the farm it's another beautiful day here in early June out on the farm and I've got some mowing to do I'm getting a little bit behind on my grass clipping so today we're gonna talk about something that's been by popular request on the channel we're gonna talk about a flail mower and this is the titan attachments hydraulic flail mower it's a hydraulic slide 72 inch or 6 foot flail mower we'll go over all the details about it I'll tell you what I think about it we'll kind of talk about what you need to do for setup and for everything you need to do we'll talk about how it cuts and we'll talk about comparing it to a standard rotary cutter commonly known as the brush hog or a finish mower this thing really shines so we're gonna have some fun today come along on the farm as we learn about the flail mower alright [Music] this is my freedom mounted as well as you can keys so here we go if this is your first time to the Stoney Ridge farm thank you so much for coming please pound that like button consider subscribing to the channel we've got a first generation farm that we're building here and we're gonna take you through our journey so we've been taking you through the journey for about four years now it's early June in 2020 and we're out here mowing and this year we're gonna be doing most of our mowing on the farm with the flail mower here now we have a finished mower and we have a standard rotary cutter mower commonly known as a brush hog and ours is a woods BB 72x I love that machine it's done a great job however it doesn't cut like the flail mower the phloem or mulch is so we're going to get over here we're going to talk about a lot of the details of this mower we're gonna kind of walk around it and talk about how it would come to you if you decide to order one from titan and again there's a coupon code down the video description for you okay so without further ado let's go through the details of the flail mower okay guys so this thing hooks up similar to most of your three-point implements there's a three-point hook up and then there's also the PTO hook up be sure your tractors off this is not a safety video just so you guys know so be safe and know your own equipment okay I'm not responsible for that so what we have here is the transmission box there's a shaft in here in this requires oil it comes dry and this requires oil it also comes dry and then over here is a belt system this is a belt drive and if you get into heavy heavy stuff you can feel that belt and smell that belt okay trust me I got into some heavy heavy stuff over here so this is really really thick grass and I'll tell you the rotary cutter does better on really really thick grass now this will cut it as you can see but it did bog the tractor just a little bit let's go up underneath here and this is the guts of the flail mower and how it all works so underneath here there is a rotating assembly it's just a big shaft right here I'm not going to get up underneath it because it's not very safe but I will show you the parts so underneath is a shaft and it has hammers on it you can see that's one of the hammers or blades for the flail mower right here this one's kind of clogged up with goop so there is also a roller at the back here this roller has a mud guard on it so this will scrape off the mud or it'll get bunched up with grass what we really need to do is probably rotate that up for what we're doing today I'm gonna lay down here a little bit and we'll talk about what we've got underneath so underneath again that's your roller at coast along the edge of the ground and these are the hammers that I'm talking about okay so that is a cutting edge right there that is a cutting blade this is a cutting blade all these little cutting blades right here flip and flop around now as they come down as this thing spins these come down and they chop so it's basically a big little pulverizer and back here you have a chain yard to keep stuff from flying back toward the operator of the tractor so this thing will rotate in this direction right here and these hammers come down on the grass and they pulverize it if you wanted to sharpen them you could put an edge on that blade you can tell I've already gotten into some rocks you can see an ich tit right there I've nicked it in several spots now this has to be balanced okay so this shaft right here has to be balanced so if you do replace blade on it you have to replace the blade on the opposite side or you run the risk of your shaft getting out of balance that's what I'm told okay now this roller right here again coasts along the ground and this thing cuts SuperDuper tight to the ground now you'll notice there are some adjustments here you can raise this guy up and you can make some adjustments to raise or lower this foot right here and this is a slide that also slides along the edge of the ground this roller is adjustable too so with the slide adjusted downward you would have a taller cut and with this roller adjusted downward you'd have a taller cut that's how it all works up underneath here it seems very very simple it's just a rotating assembly with blades on it awesome so let's talk about maintenance before you start using it so you have to make sure that your oil is right in your transmission here that shaft and then we have to lubrication points on each side one here and one here and also the lubrication points on your PTO shaft this side is very simple to get to but as we go over to the other side there's a cover you're gonna have to negotiate around so this cover houses the belt system that drives the cutting blades and there's a little plug right here inside that plug there's another grease fitting right there so don't forget that guy okay so we're going to grease this thing up we're going to toss the drone up in the air and we're going to get busy with it and I want to tell you a little bit about how it cuts so I've been using it again for maybe maybe an hour or something like that and what this does is it cuts down very very low to the ground okay so it's cutting almost as low if not even lower than my zero turn mower so it really serves as a finished mower that will mow tall grass now my experience so far has been tall grass is acceptable thick really thick tall grass is not acceptable for this thing so it'll kind of bog down a little bit and if you go too fast with the tractor you're going to leave some stubble sticking up so you want to think about that too you might have to go a little bit slower with this machine than you would with a standard rotary cutter and much much faster than a finished mower okay so this is like a mixture between a rotary cutter and a finished mower if you get over in some tall thick stuff like this you can still cut it you just got to take it easy take it slow and that's pretty much the case with a rotary cutter too so let's get busy well fire this thing up throw it out here in the field and have some fun fYI guys we are using a mcnaught grease gun this mcnaught grease gun is made in Germany and it is awesome is the best grease guns I've found mcnaught has a quick attach that attaches to your grease fitting so if you've got that hard to reach grease fitting you slide this guy on there you know in there there we go it's attached it's firmly attached so you can use both hands I don't know how many times I've had to hold or had the grease fitting pop right off of the nipple right here so now I don't have that problem anymore we give it a couple shots and there's a release release there you go just like that so it releases right there click this one on do the same thing go okay we're about three or four good squirts here all right now we've already lubricated our chef and we've already lubricated the other side again this one is the mcnaught k40 and I'll post links to all this stuff down the video description this is a handy-dandy device very very handy cool [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] man this thing this does an awesome job cutting that noise scared me so you hear that noise that just just went off was that rotor in there spinning and coming to a stop and all the Hammers kind of settling down okay so the blades are kind of just stopping so let's talk a little bit about where the mower sits in reference to the back of the tractor and if you know ever you know about this so so if you have a brush hog type rotary cutter or even a finish mower if you don't have the hydraulic slide on it then you don't have any options so you see how this tire is completely out of the track of the mower so you've got a six foot mower and you can set it to offset so you see how it's offset out on the outside edge of this time that allows me to not run over grass before I mow it with this tire it's only one tire and if you guys mow you know what that does if you have a rotary cutter type mower and you're running over your grasp you don't have a front deck mower you're running over the grass and you're gonna leave two stripes of grass that will eventually stand back up what this does is pulverizes it down so I don't have but one tire tread in the in the path of the mower now another cool thing cool feature I'm going to set the camera down so you guys can see this thing slide back and forth okay so we slide of articulation I keep it all the way to the right when I'm out but you can set it to Center isn't that cool how that slides so there's a hydraulic and I also forgot to mention for other lubrication points but there are four lubrication points on this slide right here okay one two three four and there's a hydraulic cylinder in here and it slides it back and forth so I know if this is slid all the way that way it's right at the edge of my tire so going around something like that telephone pole where is it to go that telephone pole back there I can hug right up next to it I know if my tire is this far from the pole that the mower is that far from the pole so I can get a little bit closer to obstacles that's really really cool [Music] [Music] get out here man well what'd you guys think I think it looks great I think it turned out absolutely awesome I think this thing is a mixture between a standard rotary cutter and a finished mower in other words there's no way I would go over that grass as tall as it was with a finished mower but I can do it with a flail mower so that's what the finished product looks like the grass is probably about 2 and 1/2 inches maybe 3 inches tall the roller in the back basically stabilizes it so that you get a nice even cut and it actually rolls it out and you can't really see it here but you can see it's a little darker there and a little lighter there so it actually stripes it just a little bit but it did a great job so guys if you're interested in a flail mower I hope this has answered your question I think it cuts similar to a rotary cutter mixed with a finished mower so if you've got tall grass and you know you're not gonna be able to Moute with a finished mower a flail mower would be for you if you run over sticks it will chop them up it will pulverize them and it will shred them if you run over rocks well it does with the same thing that rocks do with any kind of cutter it can cause some damage so I don't want to blow any smoke up your butt on now and it will tear it up but if you hit stuff like this so see this rock sticking up right here it's exposed it ran right over it no problem and never hit it if I was running the rotary cutter over it I would have had to lift it up so I think it's a little better for a rocky field for sure guys thanks a lot for joining me here on the Stoney Ridge farm today I hope you enjoyed this I hope you learned a little bit if you're considering buying a flail mower now you know what to do I'll post a link to this one down in the video description I think they're out of stock but double check it double check that link and you don't necessarily have to have the hydraulic slide I think it's handy but is it a deal-breaker no I don't think it's a deal-breaker it's awesome mower thanks we'll see you guys next time on the Stoney Ridge farm please ask questions post comments and let me know what you think pound the like button subscribe the channel and they'll catch you later on the Stoney Ridge alright woo got all that to move by the way so I gotta go I gotta get to work got work to do [Music] Pierce we had some way supposed to be Stone Tyrion Oh

Channel: Stoney Ridge Farmer

Views: 132,738

Rating: 4.927536 out of 5

Keywords: homestead, homesteading, farming, tractor, farm tractor, stoney ridge farm, stoney ridge farmer, flail mower, flail, kubota, john deere, mower, brush, mahindra, kioti, compact tractor, massey, mowing, brush hog, brush hogging heavy brush, brush hog clearing land, brush hog skid steer, how to mow with a tractor, how to mow, how to mow hay, flail mower vs forestry mulcher, flail mower vs rotary mower, flail mower vs trees, best tractor, best tractor for small farm, best tractor attachments

Id: 7ECfPIojZDY

Length: 17min 10sec (1030 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 04 2020