Ditch mower from bush hog?

[Maknwine]

Tks for reply. At present,I would need to use a hyd. motor that would be powered by the pto. I have to sell a too large JD 4010 before my wife will let me buy a mid size tractor with remotes. My only other tractor ,8n, of course has no hydraulics but its what I use to mow the alleys with.

Basically this mower will be a 3 point attachment with say a 42-48" cut on the leftside and same on the right side pulled directly behind tractor.

Poor drawing attached.

 

[Stampeder]

For years and years people of farms used sickle mowers to do the ditches. You can get them up to 9 feet in length and they are light compared to the ditch mowers shown here. Best of all if you look around you can pick these up pretty cheap. Dowse it in a ton of WD 40 and you'll free it up. The replacement parts for most all of them are still readily available. They work great for down slope mowing.

 

[J_J]

Tks for reply. At present,I would need to use a hyd. motor that would be powered by the pto. I have to sell a too large JD 4010 before my wife will let me buy a mid size tractor with remotes. My only other tractor ,8n, of course has no hydraulics but its what I use to mow the alleys with.

Basically this mower will be a 3 point attachment with say a 42-48" cut on the leftside and same on the right side pulled directly behind tractor.

Poor drawing attached.

Are you wanting to cut the slope on the berms, and the flat area? What is the width of the flat area. A 16 in hyd mower head would cut the berms, a flail might cut the wide area. You mentioned an 8n, is the base that wide, if so , the flail would work very well.

Someone in a post awhile back mentioned something about the need to keep the grape vine foliage down by using a hedge type trimmer. A boom mower could cut the berms and trim up the foliage on the grape vines.

If you take a look at the hyd driven flail mower on the Power-Trac website, can you envision a 6 ft flail mower or three bladed finish mower out front, with bat wing hyd 16 in mower decks. If you set up the bat wing mowers to float, you would drive up the the end of the row, lower the bat wing mowers in the float made, and run down the row until the end , raise the outside mowers and continue down the next row. Every thing out front driven by the hyd PTO pump. Are the rows set up similar to say a 16 in berm on either side, and say a 6 ft flat surface for the tractor to run? I believe it is doable if you build it correctly.

 

[Maknwine]

tryin to attach another attempt at a pic. Each row is 11 ft on center. Poles/vines at top of hill and center of alley at low spot. From low point to top of row is 5.5 ft. Presently have to take a trip down one side of row(left tire is in the low spot and right tire is up by the poles and vines. The ideal thing would be to have a bat wing that flexes right in the center so that tractor could ride in the middle of row staying away from upper berm.

 

[J_J]

OK, I understand a little better now. A PT with a 48 or 60 in mower sounds like it would fit in there pretty good. What is the slope angle?

 

[Maknwine]

Have been using a Bush Hog 5', Ford 930A 60", and Woods RM59 for some time now. The finish mowers do a great job and ideally I would like a mower that does a similar job except in just one pass cutting both sides. I use a micron herbaflex to keep the weeds down within the grapevine rows. So really a 48" cut will work fine. (48" on the left and 48" on the right).

The slope is approx. 18" from trough to peak.

I'm going to have to learn how to build this with hydraulic motors and such. I would think two blades for a 48" cut each side would be better than a single blade. But I'm not positive.

 

[J_J]

Have you tried cutting those berms with a 48 in ZTR?

Take a good look at the PT-425 with 48 finish and rough cut mowers and all the available attachments. It could probably do most anything you need in your grape orchard.

You could do the 48 in with two blades, side by side, if you used a cogged belt and aligned the blades 90 degrees from each other. Then you could overlap for say 47 or what ever blade width you want. The other way to use two blades side by side, would be to skew the deck so many degrees to eliminate the gap in between the blades.

 

[scott_vt]

For years and years people of farms used sickle mowers to do the ditches. You can get them up to 9 feet in length and they are light compared to the ditch mowers shown here. Best of all if you look around you can pick these up pretty cheap. Dowse it in a ton of WD 40 and you'll free it up. The replacement parts for most all of them are still readily available. They work great for down slope mowing.

Good Afternoon Stampeder,
Keep in mind that the older sicklebar mowers used a pitman arm and could only mow something slightly above or below horizontal. The newer bars have the wobble box, which enables you to really tilt that bar for inclines and grades !

 

[jmc]

Someone in a post awhile back mentioned something about the need to keep the grape vine foliage down by using a hedge type trimmer. A boom mower could cut the berms and trim up the foliage on the grape vines.

J J,

Does some company or did somebody make such an implement?

I always enjoy your pictures.

BTW, OP's slope is 16 degrees.

John

 

[J_J]

J J,

Does some company or did somebody make such an implement?

I always enjoy your pictures.

BTW, OP's slope is 16 degrees.

John

Yes. I will see if I can find the manufacturer.

Power-Trac builds most of their own equipment.

I am thinking, that the small boom mower can be articulated to do just about anything, such as flat ground mowing, slope mowing, if tilted vertical, could trim trees/vines along of right of way, or run down the top of the grape vine, and level it off and trim it as much as desired. Now as to whether a single operator could manage this is uncertain. However if the second person could operate the boom only and the driver keeping a straight line, I think the both of you would be able to trim and maintain those grape vines, and grounds.

Hedge Trimmer --- Danelander

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