Flail: Knives or Hammers?

[BrokenTrack]

I have a choice, I can either run a flail with knives, or switch over to a head that has hammers. So far I have only ran the flail with the knives, and it is okay.

It does really well on stemmy stuff like wild mustard, kudzu, bamboo, and hardwood saplings up to an inch in diameter, but can jam if it is getting a faceful of tall, wet switch grass, even running at full throttle. On wetland grass it stirs it more than cuts it, and can take on a 2 inch sapling and win, but it usually take two passes, or one pass if I pancake the tree. Any sapling over 2 inches just breaks knives or shackles, and is not worth taking on.

The knives seem to do pretty good on the rocks. I got into one today pretty hard, and busted a few knives, but the rock jammed underneath the mower and I could not shut it off, or pick the mower up fast enough. That is an unusual situation though.

At $1 a piece, I am okay with the price, but do sharpen my knives to save a few bucks. Bouncing off rocks, the knives can roll the edge, so I take that off with a hand grinder, then flip it over and put a consistent bevel back on. If the knives have some time on them, the tips can get rounded, so I grind the leading edge back to a point since this is where the majority of the cutting takes place. It takes about 30 seconds to sharpen each knife, so it does not seem like a waste of time, and sharpened knives cut just as well as new knives. I seem to get between 5-6 sharpening out of them before they break. In acres, this is around 150 acres per knife.

My flail has four rows of knives, so I change (2) rows out in the morning with new/sharpened knives, then change out the other (2) rows at lunch.

So how would hammers compare to knives under these conditions?

I would like to take on bigger and badder saplings, but just cannot with knives. But I am not sure how the hammers would work beating upon rocks all day? Also, what is their cost, and can they be resharpened...and how many times before they break? It seems most people on here run hammers and not knives, and I am wondering if I should switch mower heads?

 

[leonz]

The great majority of us use side slicer knives and several owners use the sheet metal formed scoop knife or the lighter weight chinese made cast hammers which have preformed gussets in the hammer castings on chinese made flail shredders.

If your dealing with that much second growth forest deciding on the mower of some type will be an issue for you as any cast hammer flail shredder will not handle that type of large diameter growth very well unless its dead.


You have a decision to make:
The only way your going to manage larger second growth is either with a heavier wider orchard and vineyard shredder or a small dozer to strip the ground. A large tractor forestry mower is going to cost a lot of money with a larger tractor as the type you will need has a different type of clearing head that crushes and breaks the wood in its path in one operation.

If you can afford to clear a few acres per year or all of it in one year it will be less of an effort and less costly to rent a self propelled FECON forestry mulcher to clear all the ground right down for a couple of days to clear it all to the ground level as they are equipped with a wide clearing head that breaks and shreds everything it comes in contact with.

Short of renting a small dozer to clear more and a few acres per year and burning it or burying it all I do not see another economical option for you as the largest Italian or Czech crop, orchard and vineyard flail shredder will do the work but you will be replacing many shattered hammer knives and wet grinding the knife edges on the good cast hammer knives almost weekly.

You need a forestry mulcher and if you do not have a high horsepower tractor to enable you to own one, renting a FECON mulcher will be the best way to manage your property as once its cleared of all the second growth you can manage it very well with a cast hammer knife Orchard and Vineyard flail shredder from MASCHIO or Del Morino or any other Brand of Italian or Czech crop shredder like the INObrece line or a Vrisimo flail mower with heat treated side slicers.

I am not trying to burst your bubble, I am only trying to help you not spend your money as you have second growth forest to clear for what ever purpose you intend to have use of it for.

 

[Freep]

I wonder if you might pull up or cut the larger saplings out, removing the major problems before moving through with the mower. Sounds like a lot of work, but it could save a lot of money. (All of Leonz' excellent suggestions sound expensive to me.) You might try slowing way down when taking out thicker stuff, and better quality knives that will hold up better to the abuse might be a time-saving investment. My experience has been with higher quality knives ($3/ea, so I am assuming they are better... maybe not) and with a front-mounted flail mower that I can slow to a crawl to chew up bigger material more slowly. Just some ideas...

I appreciate your description of how you sharpen your blades! I've worn both sides of mine and need to sharpen them, so your experience is very helpful.

 

[BrokenTrack]

I wonder if you might pull up or cut the larger saplings out, removing the major problems before moving through with the mower. Sounds like a lot of work, but it could save a lot of money. (All of Leonz' excellent suggestions sound expensive to me.) You might try slowing way down when taking out thicker stuff, and better quality knives that will hold up better to the abuse might be a time-saving investment. My experience has been with higher quality knives ($3/ea, so I am assuming they are better... maybe not) and with a front-mounted flail mower that I can slow to a crawl to chew up bigger material more slowly. Just some ideas...

I appreciate your description of how you sharpen your blades! I've worn both sides of mine and need to sharpen them, so your experience is very helpful.

Hey, no problem, glad I could help.

Sharpening does save some money. I just finished up one town where last year it took 100 knives to do, and this year...with sharpening...I went through only 25. 75% savings is not bad!

As for the forestry mulcher, we got one, but it goes on an excavator. It works really good, but has a price per hour to match, and the municipalities don't like to pay that price. Most budget $15,000 for grinding (what you call tree mulching), but that only gets a few miles of road per year. So they prefer to get as many trees as possible with the flail mower...a $5000 per year budget for all their roads (per town).

I would like to help the towns out more, and thought maybe the hammers instead of the knives would work better, but I guess it is just asking too much from a little ole boom mower.

 

[oldnslo]

County uses Diamond brand flail mowers on brush in their his area. They cut some heavy brush and vines but I have no clue on how long the flails last. Would estimate around 4 foot cutting head on these units.

 

[BrokenTrack]

County uses Diamond brand flail mowers on brush in their his area. They cut some heavy brush and vines but I have no clue on how long the flails last. Would estimate around 4 foot cutting head on these units.

That is pretty small, but they are probably using smaller tractors too.

I have an 8 foot flail on the 3 point hitch which is offset some, and then a 6 foot boom mower. Together (due to overlap) I can mow 12 feet. Most of the time this allows the inslope of the ditch to be done in one pass, Then a second pass to get the outslope of the ditch, or further out into the ditch.

The only real problem with the rear mower is that it does not pick up very high, so you can get stuck in a ditch pretty easy. But it saves a lot of time.

 

[oldnslo]

BrokenTrack,
The county mowers were also boom mowers. I just referenced Diamond brand as an option to see if they have knives meant for larger brush. Only flail mower I ever used was chopping corn stalks and that was a dusty mess.