Rotary Cutter Need advice on 6' rotary cutter

[Lineman North Florida]

Tom, just wanted to check and see if that howse mower you bought cut as good as the one I had, and what you thought of it so far.

 

[traderrik]

FWIW, I bent the stump jumper (blade pan) 2 weeks ago on my brand new $2400 Bush Hog 286, which is a 6' shredder that's *supposed to be* more heavy duty than the BH Squealer. No idea what I hit, and I was only in stuff that had been shredded before - and I was never traveling fast while shredding.

Naturally I'm disappointed, and just HOPE it was a fluke. Otherwise, BH is going to be hearing from me.

 

[JIGBUILDER]

I bent the pan on a brand new FC Agricutter 72" about 10 years ago. I was custom mowing and the left side tractor wheels dropped into a weed covered2'-3' deep ditch which left the mower high centered and the blades/pan digging dirt and rocks for a while. I thought the tractor was going over and was a bit till I found the hand PTO clutch lever on my older tractor. After shutting things down and calmed down I pulled the tractor out of the ditch and dropped the PTO lever to start the mower. The mower shook at idle but smoothed out with normal cutting RPMs with much viberation. Dropped by my dealer on the way home and left the mower with him. He called about 10 the next morning to say it was ready to go with no charge.

 

[Soundguy]

That's why we buy cheap mowers at work now for mowing road right of way's.

A 700$ brush hog explodes just as nice as a 1200$ hog when you hit an oak stump that fell off a landscapers truck and landed in 1' of grass.. or an old un needed car rim that someone threw out in the ditch.

We found that we were replacing mower at the rate of 'x' per year, reguardless of what we spent on them. the cheap ones never had time to wear out.. they got destroyed first.. same with the expensive ones.

No need to pay 2x the money for a machine that would normall last longer than a cheap one.. if'n both of them are gonna be needing gear boxes, stump jumpers, blades, and pto shafts in 6 months...

soundguy

 

[JoeinTX]

"No need to pay 2x the money for a machine that would normall last longer than a cheap one.. if'n both of them are gonna be needing gear boxes, stump jumpers, blades, and pto shafts in 6 months..."


This is the dynamic that I latched onto. No doubting that many make heavier and beafier units on the market to accomplish the same thing......they are also much more expensive. My dad has a BH 5' (not the Squealer, but the next tier of BH machine) that is obviously heavier built thany my 5' Howse. But, we use them for the very same tasks and mine was cheaper by a serious margin...$500 vs. $900. He also bought a Dale Phillips 5' serious duty rig subsequent to his BH that will put all of them to shame......and he paid for it. It's a honking piece of metal designed to whack shrubs and stobs on a routine basis and it makes that same Ford, that shrugs with the BH, grunt and groan.


Not all machines are created or intended to do the same job regardless of size, weight, or HP.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Buy cheap throw-away mowers and you can EXPECT them to "explode" when you hit car rims, stumps, ect, on a routine basis. Buy heavy duty, high quality mowers and they tend to live through that sort of abuse far more frequently than not. BTDT. So far this season, my equipment has mowed just shy of 9800 acres. I've had operators hit car rims and tires, rocks, lumber, stumps, a sawed off telephone pole, part of a gaurdrail post, a lawn mower engine block, a motorcycle frame, ect....buried in the weeds. It's a fact of life...mow enough hours and you'll hit a hidden treasure. Not one "exploded mower" yet. Parts failure was limited, so far, to ONE broken blade. If we were using "throw-away" mowers, there'd be a pile of 'em stacked like cordwood, out behind the shop by now. Use 'em HARD, use 'em OFTEN, and cheap ain't so cheap.

If the "theory" about buying cheap mowers by the dozens rather than a good mower for heavy duty/heavy use applications had ANY real world merit, you'd see a few full time large scale mowing contractors using them. And you DON'T. We can't afford the down time, the aggrevation, or the waste of money involved in using equipment intended light duty applications. Those of us who depend on our equipment to make it through a job rather than leaving a trail of "exploded mowers" don't waste our time OR money buying lightweight disposable mowers. Commercial operators who hit the ground with cheap equipment usually last about as long as their mowers. If you're in it for the long haul, your first prioity is to buy the best equipment you can get. You can shop around for that at the best price available. I see a lot of wannabe's come and go in my business. The one's who make a go of it don't bother with buying equipment that's not up to a real days work.

If you're mowing grass 4 or 5 times a year on 10 acres of clean pasture, light duty or cheap can probably do the job. Put 'em to the litmus test in constant rough conditions and cheap/disposable mowers are a complete waste of time and money and effort.

 

[Soundguy]

I'm not saying you are wrong.. I'm just reporting the facts from what our company saw in annual expense reports.

Our mowing is limited to ROW and construction site cleanup. If our mowers - don't- hit an immovable object -every- time they mow.. it is the exception .. not the rule.

Yeah.. the hd mowers lasted a bit longer.. maybee they hit 2 things and blew up. It's just at the price increase of the HD mowers you can sometimes buy 2x or 2.?X cheap ones.

At the end of a few years of going both ways.. we were actually a few bucks ahead buying a 400-500$ 5' KK or howse hog, vs a 900 or 1200$ big hd brand.

I'm sure if we were doing a more conventional mow job.. we would have seen much increased lifespan, and thuis return on investments into the HD mowers.. but basically buying a mower to mow a jobsite filled with rocks?.. it's hard to plunk down 1000$ and know it will be getting a new gearbox before it moves off the job. Again.. years of cost anylysis proved this true for our company and our circumstances. Just black and white numbers. I'm not claiming this will hold true for anybody else. Add to this that now the price difference between HD mowers and the economy has now closed a bit.. No longer can you find a 5' hog int he 4xx-500$ range like you could a few years ago.. economy unit prices went up far more percentage than the HD units.


soundguy

Buy cheap throw-away mowers and you can EXPECT them to "explode" when you hit car rims, stumps, ect, on a routine basis. Buy heavy duty, high quality mowers and they tend to live through that sort of abuse far more frequently than not. BTDT. So far this season, my equipment has mowed just shy of 9800 acres. I've had operators hit car rims and tires, rocks, lumber, stumps, a sawed off telephone pole, part of a gaurdrail post, a lawn mower engine block, a motorcycle frame, ect....buried in the weeds. It's a fact of life...mow enough hours and you'll hit a hidden treasure. Not one "exploded mower" yet. Parts failure was limited, so far, to ONE broken blade. If we were using "throw-away" mowers, there'd be a pile of 'em stacked like cordwood, out behind the shop by now. Use 'em HARD, use 'em OFTEN, and cheap ain't so cheap.

If the "theory" about buying cheap mowers by the dozens rather than a good mower for heavy duty/heavy use applications had ANY real world merit, you'd see a few full time large scale mowing contractors using them. And you DON'T. We can't afford the down time, the aggrevation, or the waste of money involved in using equipment intended light duty applications. Those of us who depend on our equipment to make it through a job rather than leaving a trail of "exploded mowers" don't waste our time OR money buying lightweight disposable mowers. Commercial operators who hit the ground with cheap equipment usually last about as long as their mowers. If you're in it for the long haul, your first prioity is to buy the best equipment you can get. You can shop around for that at the best price available. I see a lot of wannabe's come and go in my business. The one's who make a go of it don't bother with buying equipment that's not up to a real days work.

If you're mowing grass 4 or 5 times a year on 10 acres of clean pasture, light duty or cheap can probably do the job. Put 'em to the litmus test in constant rough conditions and cheap/disposable mowers are a complete waste of time and money and effort.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

I'm not saying you are wrong.. I'm just reporting the facts from what our company saw in annual expense reports.

Our mowing is limited to ROW and construction site cleanup. If our mowers - don't- hit an immovable object -every- time they mow.. it is the exception .. not the rule.

Yeah.. the hd mowers lasted a bit longer.. maybee they hit 2 things and blew up. It's just at the price increase of the HD mowers you can sometimes buy 2x or 2.?X cheap ones.

At the end of a few years of going both ways.. we were actually a few bucks ahead buying a 400-500$ 5' KK or howse hog, vs a 900 or 1200$ big hd brand.

I'm sure if we were doing a more conventional mow job.. we would have seen much increased lifespan, and thuis return on investments into the HD mowers.. but basically buying a mower to mow a jobsite filled with rocks?.. it's hard to plunk down 1000$ and know it will be getting a new gearbox before it moves off the job. Again.. years of cost anylysis proved this true for our company and our circumstances. Just black and white numbers. I'm not claiming this will hold true for anybody else. Add to this that now the price difference between HD mowers and the economy has now closed a bit.. No longer can you find a 5' hog int he 4xx-500$ range like you could a few years ago.. economy unit prices went up far more percentage than the HD units.


soundguy

The fly in the ointment in your "clinical test" is what you term a "heavy duty mower". There is no such animal even close to the $1000 to $1200 range. Buying a more expensive light duty (even if the manufacurer refers to it as medium/heavy duty), you're still talking about something that's essentially a "toy" compared to a real genuine heavy duty mower. $1200 won't TOUCH a true heavy duty mower, and that's been the case for 20 years or more. Some manufacturers call their mowers "heavy duty" just because it's a little bit more substancial than their light duty. I've seen plenty of those "pretend" heavy duty mowers. To get into the genuine heavy duty realm, you're looking at $3000+ (and closer to $4000) for a simple 6' single spindle mower. Even a GOOD medium duty mower will cost north of $2000 now. But that $3000 to $4000 mower will outlast and outperform a dozen $600 mowers in rough conditions, and do it without the downtime and effort chasing several light duty mowers. Seen it too often to even consider the possibility of any other option.

We mow in all sorts of conditions. Highway roadsides, constructions sites, abandon property, and a good bit of plain ol' mowin' clean fields to boot. Just yesterday we mowed over 135 acres on 2 jobs. By the end of the day today, the total acreage for the year will be over 10,000. The scale on which I've compared mowers and mower life goes beyond an occasional cutting a roadside. The ability of a quality HEAVY DUTY mower to withstand abuse is undeniable. The likelyhood of "exploding" cheap and/or light duty mowers by the dozens in conditions where the heavy duty mowers don't even whimper is just as undeniable once you've actually seen what a true heavy duty mower is capable of.


So, by your "figures", you AREN'T comparing the use of cheap throw-away mowers vs. heavy duty. You're comparing cheaper vs cheap, which in the end, isn't really that cheap if you're having to buy multiple mowers to do an occasional job.

 

[dknarnd]

May I step in and mediate between two what I would call "respected" members and ask for some specifics as to what each is calling a "heavy" duty mower. A brand and model of what each would consider heavy duty would be nice then we would all know what quality we are talking about.

I believe everyone will agree on what is considered "light" duty models so we don't have to go there.

Also in this post I am going to make a comment that may or may not be true in this case. Accidents happen, everyone hits hidden obstacles on occasion, we all know this; we also know that some people that work for others don't really care about the equipment they are using therefore in the mowing profession some items that could have been avoided were not. So the quality of the employee can also make a difference.

 

[Dargo]

Well, before you told me that my idea of a heavy duty cutter was over-kill. Although I couldn't see spending the money for what I could build, here is what you said of Brown; the strongest commercially made rotary cutter I've personally seen.

The Brown mower line is a niche market product. Unless you NEED that super heavy duty mower, the weight is a liability for general use. They're especially popular with land clearing/extreme rough mowing conditions commercial mowing operators, but the average run-of-the-mill end user just doesn't need that sort of mower. On a "per foot width" basis, it takes a LOT more tractor to handle one of these mowers than say a Bush Hog 200 or 300 series. I have a Bush Hog 406, which is their answer to the Brown mowers. At 6', it takes an 8000 lb (+) tractor to handle it (safely) on rough ground. When you consider the cost vs. job requirements, 99.9% of the time, a mower of that duty rating wouldn't be the "right mower for the job".

All depends on what you'll be doing and which tractor you'll be hanging the mower on.

This 7' cutter started life off as a left over unit at either Rural King or TSC (it's been so long I forget) that the store manager sold to me on the cheap because it was going into winter and the paint was faded along with a lot of surface rust. If my old fading memory serves me correctly, I paid something like $575 or $595 for it. I pretty well smoked the gear box on it the first summer using it on the couple hundred acre lot I have that is "un-improved" to put it mildly. Hmm, I shoulda noticed that the gearbox was rated for 40 PTO hp and I was using a tractor with at least 70 PTO hp. I guess the shear bolt didn't shear fast enough.

Anyway, over the next winter I took most of it apart and though I could build a better mousetrap. I bought a new (well, new to me anyway) 90 hp gearbox on ebay several years ago that was sold without any reserve. I think I paid about $125 for it. I can't read the name, but I can make out that it was made in Italy. I figured as heavy as it was, it had to be worth that. I did have to take it apart and clean it up but it worked fine. I also came across a deal for a PTO slip clutch that mounted to the gearbox on eBay as well. I think I paid almost as much for that as I did the gearbox, but it was new. I had a lot of scrap steel around the shop but needed more 3/16" sheet for the decking and bought it for scrap price from a local steel company. So, besides my time, I now have about a thousand bucks in my 7' cutter.

My cutter has 3/16" decking on it, a frame made of 3/8" wall 2"X2" square tubing (yeah, very, very heavy but I had it laying around) and 3"X4" 1/4" angle. I picked up a set of 1" blades from a small roadside implement shop that was going out of business as well for it, but I don't recall what I gave for them. Anyway, I use it as a battering ram and always chop up anything an 8k to 10k tractor will run over. It ain't pretty and it doesn't have any fancy name to it, but I feel it is right up there with the Brown cutters that would have cost me 6k or more. Here's some pictures of 'Ugly Red". I either beat the paint off it about every year or wear it off so I just use a brush and some MF red implement paint from Rural King to paint it before I put it up for the winters. So, for around a grand, I have a 7' cutter that most people consider over-kill. So, for me, it's definitely the right mower and it cost me around a grand or so total. I've hit all sorts of things with it before and have even broken one of the 1" thick blades. The worst thing I ever hit was a dead deer laying in the tall brush rotting on a 95 degree day. It definitely didn't hurt the mower, but man, was that ever nasty!!