haybines

[dan_d]

The knife should physically be touching the bottom of the guard/ledger plate. If it's in the middle of the slot it is too high and won't cut well at all (also a major cause of plugging.)

Ooohhhhhh... maybe i've got a little more work ahead of me than i first thought! :confused2:

Thanks for all the tips! (and sorry to the OP for hijacking the thread )

 

[5030]

I agree. Our JD 1219 MoCo is over 25yrs old and the rollers are in perfect shape, it's had thousands of acres of hay through it over the years. We also make sure to send only hay through it (mostly) :thumbsup:

The biggest gripe I have with disc mowers is the lack of ability to pick up downed or lodged hay. I haven't seen anything that beats the reel on a moco for getting every last bit of hay up and cut. With our disc mower (616 NH) you have to really angle the cutter bar down in those conditions and even still you end up with a fair bit of uncut hay laying on the ground. The disc mower is nice for new or unknown fields where there could be rocks, stumps, etc however.

I have a discbine as well, a NH but it seems to stay in the barn. Probably because on first cut, nothing beats the MoCo. The reel 'combs' the downed forage and twisted stems over the cutter bar. Here in Michigan, prevaling winds always twist first cut. I've been doing this over 10 years now and it's always the same.

Problem with a disc mower is if you strike an object of mass (rock, scrap metal, fence post, etc.,) and it shock loads the disc assembly, you can be in a situation where it takes some serious mechanics to repair. Blades aren't bad but internals are expensive. I tried angling the head in hopes of getting twisted forage, but like you, I found out that it still won't pick it up, hence the sickle bar MoCo.

I contract ditch bank mow for the township and I run a side mount disc mower and I've hard faced the underside numerous times and added wear plates. You never know what you'll be cutting, tires, rims, hubcaps, bed springs, you name it, it's discarded in the ditch. People are generally pigs.

My toolbox on the sidemount always has sets of blades and wrench's for roadside repairs.

 

[5030]

Ooohhhhhh... maybe i've got a little more work ahead of me than i first thought! :confused2:

Thanks for all the tips! (and sorry to the OP for hijacking the thread )

That's why ledger's (at least SCH) come with 4 useable sides. The conventional ledgers wear a groove from the back and forth motion and the base of the knife (hardened) starts riding the groove and lifts it.

The roller ledger (again SCH) eliminates the sliding wear altogether and no I don't sell SCH, just use them.

If the knife section isn't centered (and floating) in the guard, it won't cut properly so the forage is literally pulled and it fouls the guard and plugs the unit.

I never cared for the NH or JD screw style hold down's. It's just added friction and wear, more adjustments and more hardware.

 

[5030]

One other thing to keep in mind and that is, you really should operate and disc (and especially a sickle bar crimp roller haybine) at rated (540 or 1000 pto rpm).

Slower operating speeds lower the lineal speed of the cutter bar (sickle) and blade tip speed (disc mower) and cause problems. Your barber don't run his hair clippers slow for a reason. Your barber's clippers work on the exact same principle as a sickle bar and you want your hair 'cut' not jerked out.

Your lawnmower is the same principle as a disc mower. if you lower the rpm on your lawnmower, you lawn gets a ragged cut.

 

[slowzuki]

Darryl you need to try a disc mower with quick change blades. We can't see the rocks here in the hay, although I try to run the atv through all the fields in the spring to see what the frost has pushed up. I can change the entire set of knives in my discbine faster than I can undo the sickle bolt on the old 489.

The rubber on the 489 was damaged from the cutter bar scooping up rocks and sending them through, we pick our fields every year immediately after cutting, I pry out everything that sticks out, but rocks still crop up. The lip the guards mount on is all bent from rock collisions as well.

I would never consider taking my discmower along the side of the road, I wouldn't even take my bushhog along there in some places! One piece of wire would be pretty pricy.

My only complaint about the disc mower is the little bit more fuel it uses.