Finish Mowers on Rough Terrain

[Beltzington]

I thought I had decided on a rotary cutter until a actually saw the size of the blades, I can understand why you might need a 1/2" thick blade for a 3" tree but for cutting grass and light brush it seems to be complete over-kill.

In other posts, several of you expressed feelings that a HD finish mower is better fitted for most jobs however I did not find opinions on how a 600LB mower handled hilly or rough terrain? Since the weight of the mower is supported by four wheels instead of the 3-Point hitch it seems it would beat itself up pretty bad on anything but smooth relatively flat ground. Any thoughts or experiences? TIA

Sorry - Could this be moved to Attachments?

 

[groundcover]

I mow a pretty rough field with a 60" woods finish mower,have bent one rear wheel backing into a rock but the field looks much better than when we used the bush hog on it. It usually only gets mowed a couple of times a year so it can get pretty tall but it cuts through fine. I'll have to cut it a second time to get it to look good though.

 

[RickB]

I own a Woods RM990 finish mower which has a 90" cut using 3 spindles each with a pair of free swinging blades. It does a wonderful job on "semi-rough" mowing such as my side yard which has not been improved since it was a hayfield. It is more forgiving of the occasional rock than a finish mower with traditiional fixed blades. The carrying wheels are a little larger and wider than most FM wheels. Cut quality degrades when cutting much over 8" growth, but it's not a rotary mower.

The rotary cutter blades you label as overkill for mowing grass will last just about indefinitely under those conditions. Many rotary cutters do a very nice job mowing grass if the ground speed is kept reasonable and care is taken to travel so the wheel track is picked up on the following pass by the blade coming at the top of the grass rather than the base of the stem.

 

[kthompson]

If the ground is really rough, I would not put my finish mower there. At same time the speed you will be driving will have impact on how hard it is for the mower to follow the land. I would suspect the mower will handle the land as fast as you will unless there are lot of holes small enough the mower's wheels fall into them and your tractor wheels roll over them.

 

[kycontrols]

I cut my neighbors field using my rear finish mower. It did fairly well. I did lift the front wheels slight off the ground so that I wouldn't get build up under the deck. I also stayed out of areas that looked like they might contain large branches and such.