1st time at my new property & 1st time ever brush-hogging - some lessons learned

[danielk]

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A stout 5 or 6/foot pry bar also makes it easy to shift rear implements back and forth as needed to line them up to mount.

A fence t-post is my fine-adjustment tool. That and a 3lb mini-sledge. The combo is wonderful.

 

[EmeraldCity]

My previous brush hog experience was in grassy fields that were pretty clean. But now I live in central Texas where rocks grow out of the ground. I have ten acres that are flat with a couple flood swales. My concern is hitting rocks. What can I expect if I hit a rock? Does it fire out like a missile; does it damage the blade? My mower has heavy rubber shields on the rear. If I hit a rock, should I just continue or do something? Do you notice more vibration after striking a rock? Most rocks that I miss while walking through would most likely be up to softball size, which means the mower should miss them as cut height is about 5 inches.

Thanks
Rich

 

[ning]

My previous brush hog experience was in grassy fields that were pretty clean. But now I live in central Texas where rocks grow out of the ground. I have ten acres that are flat with a couple flood swales. My concern is hitting rocks. What can I expect if I hit a rock? Does it fire out like a missile; does it damage the blade? My mower has heavy rubber shields on the rear. If I hit a rock, should I just continue or do something? Do you notice more vibration after striking a rock? Most rocks that I miss while walking through would most likely be up to softball size, which means the mower should miss them as cut height is about 5 inches.

Thanks
Rich

How big of a rock?
I hit a lot of smaller (up to a few inches) rocks; I look behind me after and if I see a big enough rock I pick it up and put it somewhere else where hopefully I won't hit it (sometimes just chuck it into the pond).

If there's big enough rocks, mow with your bucket skimming the ground best you can so you can deal with them before the cutter does.

 

[Jaygyver]

May be a simple fix, I had the same problem with the binding.......
Be sure and check the linkage, #3 in @BCT's picture, I'm not sure if yours looks similar but mine is set up a little different and can fit two ways. My dealer had mine reversed so it would bind when getting to the bottom or coming UP out of a sharp dip, think of the bottom of a U. Got to looking at it and tried reversing it and all is good now. I have the top link adjusted to where when I lift my mower up slightly it stays fairly flat. I can go thru the ditch's now with no issues. So in my soggy or extremely high areas I can lift it up and still cut a fairly flat swath until the next dry mow or second cut.
The only draw back is when you crest a steepish hill the cutter will lift a little and you'll have a bit of taller grass, until you turn around. I'm not cutting a golf course so not an issue for me.

When I bought my house it was on raw land (but only 5 acres) and ended up getting a 24 hp JD770 with a 5' Sitrex finish mower. If you plan on making your new property look new then I would definitely upgrade sometime to a 35+ hp just if you have a lot of trees you want down or just major work. If you want to keep most of it looking rugged then I would just see how the Kioti works and go from there.

Like it's been mentioned, just bite the bullet and make a couple of pass's first with the cutter raised a bit that way you can find the not so cuttable stuff and can then map out your plan of attack. Hitting the wheels on hidden stumps sucks. Once you get it down to a manageable level then the cutter should be able to keep up.
The previous owner of the cutter may have wanted a smoother "no rut track" behind it hence the rubber tires. Swap them if you're just going to use it in the field, it will definitely save you headaches going back to hard rubber tires.

 

[Hay Dude]

Rocks can certainly bend/break blades. Both times in recent years I bent or broke one, I did it while backing up.

Here’s a bent blade-real bent.

 

[Hay Dude]

And, so what? The OP has an even smaller machine than me, and the guy who said to never used a hydraulic top link for brush hogging has a small JD1070. Some times you bigger farm guys forget that most of us on this site are actually just homeowners.

He’s not a “bigger farmer guy”. He likes to portray himself that way, but he’s not. Like not even close. lol

 

[americium100]

Here’s my mowing rig. I have 5 acres that are uneven, not hilly, but not flat. There are a lot of rocks in some areas. In this picture I haven’t actually used the flail mower yet, that’s why it looks so clean (you can see the PTO shaft isn’t hooked up yet). So far I’ve mowed most of the 5 acres twice. It works well except that I’m on my 3rd set of belts (it uses 3 matched belts). It is very good at finding old poly irrigation pipe and wraps it up fast on the cutter. Usually the first indication that it’s stopped is the smell of burning belts. A couple times I caught it and was able to cut the tubing out and keep going. I have a friction clutch at the PTO shaft for hard stops but the belts seem to be the weak link. But for mowing, it’s a beast. I mow through tall weeds and some small brush at a pretty good clip.

 

[California]

Don't worry too much about hitting rocks with a rotary mower. As noted above, first pass set it high and remove visible rocks. Then subsequently it would be rare random bad luck, if a rock damages it.

In 20+ years of occasionally hitting rocks with my 4 ft rotary mower, there's only one minor nick in the (blunt) leading edge of its blades. It would take many such, before the mower wouldn't cut well. The rotary mower ('shredder') is a crude brute force tool.

 

[Hay Dude]

Don't worry too much about hitting rocks with a rotary mower. As noted above, first pass set it high and remove visible rocks. Then subsequently it would be rare random bad luck, if a rock damages it.

Wish I could agree. I hit a rock a couple years ago and it fractured the blade and threw it so far, I lost track of it. Went through the safety chains like paper. Hitting rocks works out most of the time, but when it doesn’t, look out.

In 20+ years of occasionally hitting rocks with my 4 ft rotary mower, there's only one minor nick in the (blunt) leading edge of its blades. It would take many such, before the mower wouldn't cut well. The rotary mower ('shredder') is a crude brute force tool.

It is, but it must be treated with respect and one must be very careful of their own safety and the safety of others.

 

[ptsg]

I hit rocks all the time... And stumps, stoves, walls, whatever. The list goes on. Just makes a loud banging noise, raise the cutter up, keep moving or move over and lower it back down and cut along. Chains just don't care about any of that.

If I don't know the land I'm cutting and it's tall brush, at last over 2 ft or so, I go in reverse. I let the cutter find all the "treasures", rather than risk damaging the tractor.

Worse case scenario, it shears the shear bolt. An 8.8 grade M8x50 mm bolt is easy to change and much much cheaper than a stump pulling on the suction line an dump all the fluid on the ground or breaking the hydraulic filter housing.