Haybine or Discbine?

[flusher]

Here痴 a couple of things from my experience with both.

Diskbine Knives are cheaper than a cutter bar and easier to replace. Cuts faster and I have never plugged one. When something does go wrong, it gets expensive very quickly. Cutter bar or gear boxes can go into the thousands.

Haybine Slower, more prone to knife and guard damage. Much cheaper with major repairs. Better with down hay, can be more gentle on leafy crops.

Having used a disk, I hope to never go back to a sickle bar.

One other note, I myself after having used a disk mower would never use one on a tractor w/out a cab. Or at least have a shield made that goes between the tractor and the mower. I have a neighbor that I help a lot, and he switched 5 years ago to a disk. His brother, who has had disk mowers for about 10 years before that, was the one who told us about the safety issue. If you hit a stone just right it can come out and can go up. We groom our fields like a lawn when we seed back (woodchucks don't seem to care). We also replace the front curtain as needed. In 5 years mowing about a 100 acres a year 2-4 cuttings per season we have had 3 stones hit the cab. One time breaking the safety glass, 2 other leaving chips in the glass. Very glad the glass took the hit and not me. I know people mow with these without a cab, that is there choice, not mine.

Glad you weren't injured by the stuff kicked up by your mower.

If I ever take the plunge and get a disc mower, I'll probably build a roll cage like the unlimited class tractor pullers and top fuel dragster guys use.

I'd fill in the holes between the tubing with expanded metal panels.
I use something like this on my Mahindra 5525 to protect my backside when using the 6-ft brush hog.

 

[jimg]

Wouldnt the 'missile' issue be a function of how low youre cutting? If so I think cutting at 3+" would solve that and give better regrowth in the bargain?

 

[JasG]

No the missle issue is not solved by higher cutting. 2 reasons, 1 the disks and,we have the fail conditioner,creates a suction. This is what stands up down hay, and when we mow along roadways I have seen the little stones and dust sucked in. We do have the cutter bar angled down some, that is to get the crop to stand up. If all we did was grass crops we could have the bar flatter and I know that would reduce the chance of hitting stones. 2nd as I hinted in my other post, woodchuck holes. They mound the fill around the hole, 3,4 sometime 6" high. The great thing is a disk mower will slice them off, where a sickle bar will ussually break a knife and/or a guard. Also here frost will " pop " stone up out of the ground over time. Not much, but 4 - 5 seasons after seeding you will notice more stones laying around a field. As I said it's not ofter you hit them and that they come up like that.

We also thought of putting more of a ROPS on his 4020 and then adding a sheet of Lexan. In the end he wanted a new tractor anyway so we found one with a cab.

For the life of me I don't see how they can get from the cutter bar up the way they have.

 

[cornshucker]

Disc mowers much faster if you have the land to run the speed but much more expensive to repair. We have a 9 ft. mower condtioner that we put the SCH cutterbar from S.I. Distributing Co. on, probably the best money we ever spent unreal at the difference from the factory guards and knives. Works so well that as of now have no plans to go to a disc mower. We run two 9 ft. mowers and can usually mow around 50 acres in about 8 hours. So as long as this works we will stay away from disc mowers. however the sickle mowers do require more operator and set-up skill. It all depends on your budget. Your 4020 should handle any machine that you would get.

 

[jimg]

Good post! Ive been thinking about converting my mower to an SCH setup. In addition to the benefits you mention replacement parts will be cheaper and easier to find. I couldnt find anyone else though who had done the conversion for some feedback. Odd you should mention this b/c theres a new thread on another ag board talking about SCH and how happy folks were w/ it.

 

[disco]

Well I think I have decided to go with a discbine. I will be cutting about 50 acres of grass hay. What do all of you think would be the best machine for this? I will be using a JD 4020 to pull with.
Thanks Paul

 

[JasG]

I would go with a JD 920 with the impeller conditioner. Thats what we have, it's been a very good machine. On a 4020 once you get over a 9- 9 1/2 foot machine the problem isn't HP to run it, it's the HP to start it. We run ours with a 100 HP machine and it makes the tractor grunt a little to get it going. Once it's up to speed, the tractor doesn't have any issue with it. The farm next to ours has a 12' machine and they have told me the tractor they mow with is 120 HP and they wouldn't go any bigger on width for the same reason.

 

[disco]

Thanks for the reply.