Mowing Flail mower

Anonymous Poster · Apr 28, 2001

I have just purchased a JD 4300 to replace my 10 year old 855. I am looking forward to mowing easier and digging faster with the new tractor. I have read about the JD flail mower; the claim is that it will work well on uneven land and is less likely to throw rocks etc. This sounds good to me since I live on an Ozark hillside that sometimes has more rocks than dirt.
I would appreciate more info if anyone has experience with one.

Anonymous Poster · Apr 28, 2001

flail mowers work ok, untill time to sharpen blades,or what you want to call them,there are 40 or so ? small knifes on short chians atached to a rotor horizontly. a real pain to remove an sharpen,or turn around,the JD i ussed had revesable knifes,but still must be removed to turn,or sharpen. Not fun in my book.

dieselpwr · Apr 29, 2001

Jim

Flail mowers have their place just like anything else. They seem to be a compramise between a brush cutter & finishing mower. I have one & decided that for 90% of the time I would rather have a finishing mower - so I bought one of those too. The finishing mower gives a much better cut, however when I am in an area where I may be pretty likely to hit something, I will still use the flail. The only problem is that the flail mower is pretty limited in the size of the stuff you cut if you want to move along with any speed at all. It seems to just bend woody stalked stuff over if your not just crawling - & even then... If I had it to do all over again - I would buy a finishing mower & a brush cutter. My personal feeling weather you use a brush cutter or a flail mower is that you need chain guards on the tractor side with both if you like your rear tractor tires. I have a chain guard on the front of my flail unit & wouldn't be without it. If you raise it up to where the chain can't do its job you will see a lot of junk kicking / flying forward. As you mentioned the Flail mower does tend to give a fairly flat cut as opposed to a brush cutter though. As for replacing & keeping you blades sharp - they last until you hit something - then keep your wallet handy. If they break or bend you need to replace them fairly soon to keep everything in balance. For what its worth - I'm sure I will eventurally get rid of mine & get a brush cutter. (I bougght a used flail mower because of the $$ but from what I can remember after pricing new ones you could by a finishing mower & brush cutter for the same money & then really have the best of both worlds)

It would be best if you could find a dealer with a demo to let you play with if your really thinking about dropping the $$ on one.

Troy

heehaw · May 2, 2001

the local college here in town uses a large MF tractor pulling a 6 ft Flail mower to mow their massive amounts of land around the campus, and along the main road. it mows great and they go very fast...but they mow really often too. the flail mower doesn't appear to throw things like other mowers, but i do wonder about the cost of replacin the blades. i have a small flail mower i have used a couple times, it does ok, but like the others said, it doesn't cut stuff a rotary finish mower wouldn't even notice..
heehaw

DocHeb · Jun 6, 2001

How about one of the so-called "orchard" flail mowers? The advertisements say they can be used for grass and branches. These have massive forged hammers instead of "T" shaped blades, and some are rated for mulching 4" diameter branches! They are pricey but they may replace several attatchments such as a mower, chipper and rotory brushhog. See this site for an example:

http://www.thestgeorgeco.com/catalogue/Farm_Forestry/Orchard/body_orchard.html

Does anyone have experience with these?