A question was asked about a "flail shredder". About a year ago I purchased a Kuhn VK155 (5') flail shredder for chopping grape brush our vineyards. This is a medium duty unit made in France and cost about $4100 at the time for a base unit. It has 16 forged steel hammers weighing 2.5 lbs each. Since it tends to be wet and somewhat muddy when used, I got a wheel kit instead of a roller on the rear. The rollers plug up with mud and residue and don't work well. Inside the unit there is a cutter bar, (a flat piece of high strength steel), that the hammers just miss. This is so that materials are chopped into small pieces, usually pretty well pulverised. Also at the back is a brush rake. This is nothing more than flat bar stock inserted through slots in the back deck of the unit and running edge on to the line of work. They are adjustable for ground clearance and float in the slots. They keep materials inside until it is chopped small enough to pass through the spaces between them. This unit works quite well and my wife likes it as a field mower as well. In fact, she wants a bigger flail unit for the fields. I'm just about ready to get a Caroni TM1900 BSC. I wish they made a seven footer. We have 2 Bush Hog mowers and she would like to park them both. Almost all the mowing looks way nicer when done with the flail units. Someone commented on how quiet these machines are. In Europe, all new equipment has to meet tough EU noise standards so their stuff tends to be very quiet. No real standards in the USA. It may be that bush hog type machines are too loud when in use so the flail mowers are more common over there. Another point is that farms and most properities are fairly small and lighter equipment tends to live longer because of less use and extremely high fuel costs. This has been a great thread!
