Flail Mower Caroni TM1900 flail mower vs. Woodmaxx FM-78 flail mower, which to buy, any others?

[tommott77]

Looks like my Woodmaxx flail finally arrived at the local delivery point this afternoon. I'll be bringing it home tomorrow and will follow up with comments once I have it in use.

Somehow happened upon this thread via a generic 'google' search and just noticed that it's literally up to (today's) date. Kind of a shock after reading so many several year old flail discussions. I've read a couple pages here and there of the 'flail' thread here but my ADD quickly acts up. Subscribing myself to this thread for the follow up on the Woodmax.

Going to be in the market for a 60" flail once I get my new JD 3025e. I've been using a previously mentioned here Betstco 42" flail on my little JD 1023e that I'm selling tomorrow with great success. After initially using the flail for a very successful, large mountain kudzu clearing effort I decided to try it out as a finish mower on my lawn at my house with the hammer blades.....it has now been a couple months since I've even used my mid mount mower if that tells you anything. The love for my flail is one of the reasons I've decided to go with a new bigger tractor sans a mid PTO. And again the Betstco is a 'cheap' Chinese made unit. I really only initially bought for the mountain clearing effort where it paid for itself...almost twice.

I'll be looking for something bigger to go with the larger tractor though. Had been doing some research and was considering a Del Morino, Coroni, and even possibly another Betstco. Wasn't aware of the Woodmax until I happened upon this thread and it does appear to have the most impressive specs of all the moderately priced flails on the market after some quick research. Hope it performs as well as it looks.

As also mentioned, it does look like there is a shortage of flails in the around currently and maybe they are catching on. I ordered my Betstco a little over 2 months ago, and they now out of stock of just about all of their flails...and they offer a bunch, after getting a large shipment in early Spring. The Caronis are out of stock at Agrisupply as previously noted.

 

[Z-Michigan]

I have the flail mower home from the delivery point, but haven't had time to uncrate it yet and may not for a few days. What I can see from the outside looks good - it's in a metal pallet/crate sort of thing with clear plastic wrap to protect it from water and dust. I'll update once I have some real use on it but that may be several days.

(I'd like to just edit my prior post but I don't see how to do so.)

 

[leonz]

There is 24 hour time limit on editing.

Welcome to the "Flail Mower Nations"

 

[dalola]

Somehow happened upon this thread via a generic 'google' search and just noticed that it's literally up to (today's) date. Kind of a shock after reading so many several year old flail discussions. I've read a couple pages here and there of the 'flail' thread here but my ADD quickly acts up. Subscribing myself to this thread for the follow up on the Woodmax.

Going to be in the market for a 60" flail once I get my new JD 3025e. I've been using a previously mentioned here Betstco 42" flail on my little JD 1023e that I'm selling tomorrow with great success. After initially using the flail for a very successful, large mountain kudzu clearing effort I decided to try it out as a finish mower on my lawn at my house with the hammer blades.....it has now been a couple months since I've even used my mid mount mower if that tells you anything. The love for my flail is one of the reasons I've decided to go with a new bigger tractor sans a mid PTO. And again the Betstco is a 'cheap' Chinese made unit. I really only initially bought for the mountain clearing effort where it paid for itself...almost twice.

I'll be looking for something bigger to go with the larger tractor though. Had been doing some research and was considering a Del Morino, Coroni, and even possibly another Betstco. Wasn't aware of the Woodmax until I happened upon this thread and it does appear to have the most impressive specs of all the moderately priced flails on the market after some quick research. Hope it performs as well as it looks.

As also mentioned, it does look like there is a shortage of flails in the around currently and maybe they are catching on. I ordered my Betstco a little over 2 months ago, and they now out of stock of just about all of their flails...and they offer a bunch, after getting a large shipment in early Spring. The Caronis are out of stock at Agrisupply as previously noted.

Can you provide a little insight to your 1023E/Flail experience? I'm pretty sure (~80%) I'm going to order the 54" Woodmaxx for my KB BX2380, with the Y-blades. The bulk of my mowing will be finish mowing, with a 3-4 times per year of about an acre of tall (2') thin grassy lane. How did your 1023 handle the mower overall? Sounds like you were happy with it. Did the hammer blades provide a nice finish cut? I don't really have any heavy cutting of any kind, so that's why I'm thinking Y-blade....but if the hammers cut just as well, it may be more broad suited in case I ever do get into heavier stuff. Any other details of your experience would be greatly appreciated!

Z-Mich, anxious to get you detailed review of your new Woodmaxx!

 

[leonz]

The Y blades are actually referred to as side slicers. Cast hammer knives are mounted on orchard and vineyard flail mowers with linear or spiral mounting systems on the flail mower rotor.

Scoop flail mower knives are not "cast hammer knives", scoop knives are used on flail shredders as one of two optional knife methods for the end user, these specific knives are made from machined steel that has been formed and then heated to hold its temper.

The Caroni scoop knives are made using heat treated flat stock. that is bent to form.

 

[dalola]

The Y blades are actually referred to as side slicers. Cast hammer knives are mounted on orchard and vineyard flail mowers with linear or spiral mounting systems on the flail mower rotor.

Scoop flail mower knives are not "cast hammer knives", scoop knives are used on flail shredders as one of two optional knife methods for the end user, these specific knives are made from machined steel that has been formed and then heated to hold its temper.

The Caroni scoop knives are made using heat treated flat stock. that is bent to form.

Thanks Leonz! Which blade type would you suggest for the Woodmaxx unit, considering 80% finish, 20% semi-rough tall stringy grass? They offer the scoop or the Y.

 

[ericm979]

Woodmaxx's options are hammer blades and Y (side slicer) plus center slicer.

 

[leonz]

side slicers. once you see how it looks at a 2 inch cutting height your going to want to mow more often anyway.

 

[dalola]

side slicers. once you see how it looks at a 2 inch cutting height your going to want to mow more often anyway.

Thank you!

When set at the 2" height, what would the actual grass blade height be after it's cut? Assuming it's not a direct translation, as 2" would be way too short for the blade of grass. With my ZTR, I mow to where the grass is ~4" after cutting.

 

[tommott77]

Can you provide a little insight to your 1023E/Flail experience? I'm pretty sure (~80%) I'm going to order the 54" Woodmaxx for my KB BX2380, with the Y-blades. The bulk of my mowing will be finish mowing, with a 3-4 times per year of about an acre of tall (2') thin grassy lane. How did your 1023 handle the mower overall? Sounds like you were happy with it. Did the hammer blades provide a nice finish cut? I don't really have any heavy cutting of any kind, so that's why I'm thinking Y-blade....but if the hammers cut just as well, it may be more broad suited in case I ever do get into heavier stuff. Any other details of your experience would be greatly appreciated!

Z-Mich, anxious to get you detailed review of your new Woodmaxx!

Overall I'm very pleased with how my flail performed with my 1023. I'll break it down into the how it did in both clearing and lawn maintenance performance.

I originally bought the flail after buying a foreclosed 11 acre mountain property which had over a decade of unmitigated kudzu growth after it a driveway and several building pads had been cut out some time ago. I got a quote for around $3000 to have somebody clear it out for me. So I decided to take a chance on $1200 Betstco flail, trailer my 1023 and have a go at it myself. It knocked down just about all the kudzu I could access all the way down to the ground. There was a layer of live active growth but several inches worth of the many seasons of an extremely compacted past growth.

That being did it was a bit of a struggle for my 1023. The flail I got was only 41" and rated at 18+ PTO HP. My 1023 is only rated at a little above 15 PTO HP. Now after looking at all these ratings and PTO ratings ad naseum over the last couple months I do feel that both the quotes tractor and implement ratings are a bit arbitrary. The sales rep at Betstco felt I'd be ok because with the hydro trans I could slow down/stop the tractor and got more power to the PTO when it bogged down. I was aware of these limitations going into but was fine and knew I'd be working on sloping terrarin, up to 20+ grade on the driveway, and knew it would be a slow job anyway. Once up there it it was quite easy to bog down the tractor, but I was quickly easy able to find the limitations of my power at hand and it was fairly easy to work around it by only taking half a mowers width of material at a time, sometimes making a high and then a low pass, etc. I'll share some of my videos of the project below but all and all it did a great job, saving well over a thousand dollars in the process....albeit a slow job.

When I got back I had missed a mow at at home property during the mountain trip and my grass was a bit overgrown. When it gets overgrown like that my 54" MMM mower makes quite a mess with clippings and even bogs down in spots. I decided to give it a go with my flail as an experiment. I was astounded with the results. It lefty virtually no clippings and never bogged down once. Since then I have not used the MMM, infect I just sold the 1023 yesterday. The cut quality is just as good as the MMM in my opinion with a lot less clippings. My favorite part of the flail though is that it can access spots my mower can't by backing into spots and although it's significantly smaller than my mower it would actually cut time on my overall lawn job, all of which being the dreaded post-mow trimmer touch up.

All this was done with the hammer blades. I had inquired about getting some of the glass y-blades after the fact, but they'd be about $150 and I'm very satisfied with the result with the hammer blades so I passed. The hammer blades supposedly mulch and leave a lot less clippings than the y-blades. I've also come across several instances, there's a thread on the Kubota forum about the Caroni flail that comes to mind, where people started off with the y-blades, were quite unhappy, switched to hammer or at least the duck bill type blades and felt it transformed the quality of the cut even when it came to finish lawn performance. I'll likely stick with those types of blades on my next flail.

Hope this helps