Baumalight Brushcutt CP560

[Overtaxed]

That looks like it works pretty well! I agree that your footage is better than the manufacturer's. Your land and the stuff you're clearing looks well suited for it too.

Are the blades on a pivot like a rotary, just bigger and exposed and more of them?

Thanks! Photography is a hobby of mine, so glad you guys like the footage; like all things, when you get too "into it" you start to see tons of flaws in everything, and I look at the footage and only see what I did wrong. Glad it's helpful though!

Yup, blades "swing away" just like a rotary if you get into something too deep. And the blades are short, maybe a foot or two long, my rotary blades are 2-3X the length. That's because the "stump jumper" on the Brushcutt is bigger (and much heavier) than the rotary, it's small blades on a big jumper, rather than big blades on a small jumper. Probably gives you more force because you're swinging a huge stump jumper around instead of just blades. Also, the blades look very strange compared to a rotary. They are only sharp at the ends, there are two "teeth" cut into the ends so that it chips away at the tree instead of smashes the entire blade into it. Basically, most of the cutting of the tree happens at the very tips (2 tips per blade, and 4 blades on the cutter, rather than 2 like my rotary). There's no "cutting edge" at all like you'd see on a rotary blade, it's a flat piece of steel with just those tips on it. Very strange looking, I'll try to get a picture of them at some point, but, let's put it this way, you're not going to accidentally put them on your rotary, they look totally different. One thing I do want to ask Baumalight about, how do you know when you need new blades? I'm not really sure, and not sure if you can grind them if you lose the tips. They aren't that expensive, so it's not that big a deal, and with maybe 10 hours on the machine now, the blades look almost new still, so it's "awhile" anyway before you need to replace them. I have a feeling this is going to be an "it depends" answer, so I'll just need to see for myself; most mulch heads are good for a few hundred hours, but those are made to run in the dirt and are made of carbide, so I doubt that's a good comparison.

Edited, Baumalight has a great picture of the blades already, you can probably see what I'm talking about better here:

http://baumalight.com/cutters/img/features/3-point-hitch/cp560-feature04.jpg

 

[Overtaxed]

Video of the action from yesterday. You get a better view of the land here and of what it looks like working, but these trees are a little smaller than the first video. I am selectively pruning the area, so the big trees that you see me avoid, it's not because I don't think the machine can take them down, it's because I want those trees to stay there. I'm getting better at finding that "sweet spot" where it sucks the trees in and just leaves chips, you can see it do that a few times in the video, the trees will disappear under the deck and look like they are fed into a wood chipper.

This is an impressive piece of equipment; I'm honestly surprised that others haven't taken the plunge before me on TBN. But this is a common problem, and it seems like "mulcher" is the typical answer. And it's probably the best answer, but this is certainly a "very good" answer that's far less expensive. If your land/clearing needs are anything like mine, I'd have this high on the list for consideration.

Brushcutt CP56 working on some smaller trees - YouTube

 

[BLSXJ]

how close to the ground does it cut?

 

[Overtaxed]

You can get the tree trunks down to "near ground" level. Maybe 1/2" or so. But I'm using it to clear land, and have my hand on the 3PT the entire time. If you were using it differently and didn't want to constantly adjust, you'd probably want it to float about 2" off the ground so that the blades didn't wind up in the dirt. I have a hydro top link on the way, and I think that'll change things a bit, allowing me to set the 3pt lower because I can lift the back higher. But, easiest way to say it, "close to ground level" if you're willing to stop and chew with it. You'll see me do that a few times in the video, drop the deck down on top of stuff that's already cut to get as low as possible.

 

[nybirdman]

I recently had some clearing done by Skid Steers;one with a rotary and the other a Fecon head;yours does at least as good as the rotary maybe a bit better.Nice tool for sure.I have thousands of hours on my tractor mounted brush-hogs and I like your unit.

 

[mcfarmall]

That thing is awesome!

 

[Luke'sScreenName]

I like it too! I'm just trying to decide how much more capable it is than a HD rotary cutter. Twice as good? Twice as much. Thought? Have you run a true HD brush hog with 4" blades? One that will cut 4” trees with ease?

I'm truly interested in this thing and not knocking it.

 

[Overtaxed]

No, I haven't run anything more HD than the EA cutter. The blades on the EA, I'm not sure how big they are, but the limit on that cutter isn't what the blades can take, it's what I can get under the cutter, running over a 4" tree with my tractor seems like a poor idea, and backing over it with a cutter is very difficult, it puts a ton of force on the frame and the tractor because you're trying to push it over rather than cut it (because the back isn't open). The "open back" design is just vastly different, you can ease your way into it and use it almost like a circular saw to cut the big stuff, with a closed back, you get the tree under the cutter, it pokes up into the blades and you hold your breath and hope nothing breaks. It's more stressful, at least for me, compared to letting it eat its way though in a controlled fashion.

If you back up slow enough, you could probably cut down a 10" tree with this thing, I wouldn't be the one trying it, but the design and how it works is just very different, you can "nibble" with this design, which really opens up a whole range of things that would be a piss poor idea with a regular rotary.

 

[Luke'sScreenName]

So the blades stick out the back a little and are exposed like a saw?! Awesome! I thought you had to bend over the tree and back over it just like a brush hog. Very cool. :thumbsup:

 

[Overtaxed]

So the blades stick out the back a little and are exposed like a saw?! Awesome! I thought you had to bend over the tree and back over it just like a brush hog. Very cool. :thumbsup:

Yup, that's exactly it. The blades probably are exposed about 6-8" beyond the back of the deck, it's an "open back cutter". So no, no impact at all when you are backing into a tree with the deck, the push bar bends it away from the tractor, and then the blades come at it from underneath. I've been doing nothing but clearing land like you see in those videos with it for 10-15 hours and it literally looks brand new; there's not a scratch in the paint yet. When I tried this same operation with my EA, I had the back deck bent badly doing less than you see in the video and in an hour or 2. I quickly figured out that backing down 2-3" trees isn't the thing for a bush hog like that, it just beats the life out of the deck. And think about the force on it, makes sense why it would be so tough; your trying to push over a tree from 2" off the ground using a tiny piece of metal (the impact area of the tree on the rear of the hog). Yea, it could work, I suppose you could make the deck thick enough, but if you're going to back down a tree, seems like an open back is a much better idea. There are a few out there that work like this, probably the most popular is the Brown Tree Cutter, it's a beast of a machine, and there are more videos online of how it works, but it's very similar to how the Baumalight functions, the blades hit it and chisel away, tree falls, push bar knocks it away from the tractor and then the blades catch the tree and eat it. The Brown was ~2X the price of the Baumalight and is rated for bigger trees, but it's really on the edge of what my tractor can deal with at 60HP. I know it's a good machine, there are quite a few of them out there, and I talked to some owners, they loved it, and that gave me a lot more confidence with the Baumalight because the design is pretty similar, just a bit less heavy duty. If I was doing this professionally and had a 80-100HP tractor, I would have looked harder at the Brown. But for a homeowner, I'm having trouble wondering why you'd even consider spending more than this machine unless you have enough land to clear that it's venturing into "professional use" (100's of acres). Now, of course, if I break this thing or it doesn't hold up, that would be a good reason to spend more, but no indications of anything but "built to last" thus far. By now I'd already had the pipe wrench on my EA cutter (admittedly, because I was using it for something it wasn't designed to do!) and had the paint nicely dinged up.

Oh, just wanted to add, I did hear back, a full set of blades (4) for this thing is about $160. Suggest checking them every 4 hours of use and they are reversible (if you wear away one cutting tip). As expected, the life expectancy is "it depends". I'm probably going to get 25 hours or so on the machine over the next few weeks, I'll take some pictures of the blades after that and see what they look like.