Mowing Efficient mowing pattern?

[Reg]

The ideal field or lot would be a perfect circle..........maximum efficiency.


Since virtually all of them are not (unless you're in big irrigated farming country) you will have an angular piece of ground to cover and there is no way to keep mower or plow working 100% all of the time.

I turn the corners to keep them as square as possible meaning you leave an uncut/plowed bit at each of your corners that you then go back and cover once the main portion is done........"plowing out your corners" or mowing in this case.


In modern dryland conventional farming, as has been done for near a century now, no other method has evolved to truly replace the one I descibe above. It's how I was taught to operate and it's still the best way to cover an angular piece of ground that I have yet to find.

Just to be silly about it; from the mowing efficiency ONLY point of view a rectangle twice the width of the mower would trump a circle.
NOT the same width as the mower, since you would come all the way back not mowing and there is non mowing journey time with a circle.

As I said, "Just to be silly about it", so lets not fight about this.
I wouldn't want a 16ft wide field either.

 

[Hooked_on_HP]

I have been trying the zamboni method and it works pretty good. The problem I am having is that I always end up with with a 2 to 3ft strip left for the last pass on a section. How do you space out your sections so they come out close to even.I have a 6ft mower. The time I save using this method gets wasted mowing 2ft wide strips at the end of a section.Or is it something you just get the hang of after a while.
Bill

 

[tatra805]

Zamboni drives over the short sides multiple times.

sometimes that does not matter or even a good thing and you switch of the implement on the short sides eg during seeding/ harvesting

to avoid this during mowing as most damaging occurs when turning you simply turn in 1 pass earlier (so your long sides become 1 pass less long) As you are driving the zamboni pattern lenghtwise your turning radius does not change, only the start point of your turn. (versus any spiral pattern which makes you manouvre a lot when you get to the middle part as passes are too close for your turning circle)

Optimal point is when your turning circle is that wide that you can maintain speed without skidding the front wheels.

To not leave a half feet pass at the end the key is in a constant turning radius which has a diameter of u multitude of your cutting width.

Takes some time to get the feel and get it right, thats the difference between the farmer and his son.

You might want to start with putting some stakes in the ground at first to get the hang of it calibrate the radius to the number of turns of your steering wheel it takes.


Also a smaller field will be easier, as in the zamboni picture. If you have big fields that you have to cut over different days with eg chance on bad weather etc you will have to estimate your first radius to match the timeframe available that moment and only cut that part of the field that day. If not you end up with a field that has the first passes regrown by the time you finish the lot.

 

[PA hayseed]

The problem I see with the zamboni method as related to grass cutting, is that rinks are oval (more or less). Ice rinks do not have corners, and do not have 1800 land deed angles. Also, zambonis are designed to work with the oval configurations and have a rather tight turning radius. All rinks are roughly the same size (yes there are 1/4 sheets, 1/2 sheets, olympic sized etc) and most zambonis are 84" wide. In essence, the machine was designed for only one application with a particular radius in mine.

Here is a spec sheet on an zamboni http://www.zamboni.com/pdfs/552-Spec-web-07.pdf

I would love to find an application that would allow me to compute my most efficient grass cutting time. I cut 8 acres with a 6' mower, and no matter what pattern I have used it roughly takes about 5 hours to cut it all. I cut mine with my hst in mid range with about max rpm (2400) and as it is roughly two distinct rectangles I cut long lengths. I am curious to know if the people using the concentric circle method having obstacles in their paths. If I broke my land down into squares, or largest areas, the circle method may take me longer as I would have to go back to clean up around trees etc.

This is a great thread. I never even thought about trying concentric circles.

 

[JIGBUILDER]

I have a 50 hp tractor with a 172 Rhino mower. I have 40 acres (Midland Bermuda/Fescue/weeds/red clover) that I mow 3 times a summer. Sometimes less if were in a drouth as were getting into just now.

I found mowing counter clockwise leaves a cleaner cut field (the Rhino cuts counter clockwise). I start on the outside of the field and mow around. I've also found sharpening the blades as Rhino recommends cut cleaner and lasts longer. They recommend leaving the cutting edge 1/16" thick. Guess their theory is it leaves two cornors that cuts instead of a sharp knife edge that dulls quicker. Anyone have a favorite edge for mowing weeds and brush up to 1" diameter ??