sickle bar mowers love them or hate them?

[sweettractors]

Sickle mowers do better if the bar is raised above the old dead grass cuttings and rat nests. Also, adjust the tractor toplink longer to pitch the leading cutting edge upward. These mowers were designed to cut a hay field. Then it was raked into a windrow and baled. The following cuts on the same clean field would not have mowing impediments to clog the sickle. When I was a kid, I clipped pastures with a "clipping wheel" attached the the end of the sickle. This allowed me to cut 4-5" above the junk that would normally clog the mower. Ken Sweet

 

[joeu235]

Around here, fire ant hills and sickle bars are a bad combination.

 

[sweettractors]

Around here, fire ant hills and sickle bars are a bad combination.

How tall do the fire ant hills normally get? Ken Sweet

 

[joeu235]

How tall do the fire ant hills normally get? Ken Sweet

An 8 inch mound is not uncommon, especially if it has rained recently.

 

[sweettractors]

An 8 inch mound is not uncommon, especially if it has rained recently.

If they were very prolific, they sure would play havoc with any mower's cutting edges. I have had disc mower customers say when the hit one, it made a big cloud of dust. Thankfully, we only have ground hog mounds and rocks to contend with. Ken Sweet

 

[ovrszd]

I have 2 rotary cutters, 1 flail mower and 1 sickle mower. I use them all. For the money, nothing can replace a sickle mower.

 

[rbtjr]

I have a BEFCO 7' sickle mower that I bought new. I tried to find a good used one but gave up. I use the sickle mower mostly for a/ mowing around a pond bank and b/ in its 90-degree up position, mowing the sides of roads and trails. In the 90-degree up position mowing applications, it saves me a huge amount of time, although it took a little seat time to get comfortable with hearing those blades churning so close to you. For my applications, the sickle mower works great. But because I don't have and will never have a lot of hours of use for the sickle mower, it probably wasn't cost-justified. The one maintenance issue I had is that the so-called conic bolts, which anchor the operating arms that are attached to the sickle blades, loosened and came all the way out. It was a real chore to get them replaced, plus they were very expensive when bought from BEFCO. I was already accustomed to tightening the conic bolts frequently, but now I make doubly sure every time I hook up the mower to tighten the conic bolts with a torque wrench.

The one thing I would for sure do differently is buy a 9' sickle mower. I could use the extra 2' when mowing around the pond bank and also it would be better to be able to trim the tree-limb overhang on the roads a little higher.

 

[sweettractors]

We have a 7 Ft International 1300 beltdrive sickle mower that we use on the farm for mowing under electric fences, pond dams, creek bank, trails and along the county road right of way. The weed eater would do most of what I use the sickle mower for, however, I am not as young as I used to be and I had rather be in the tractor seat than on the ground where the Copperheads, ticks, bees and chiggers call home. Ken Sweet

 

[Dozernut]

Quote! "The one maintenance issue I had is that the so-called conic bolts, which anchor the operating arms that are attached to the sickle blades, loosened and came all the way out. It was a real chore to get them replaced, plus they were very expensive when bought from BEFCO. I was already accustomed to tightening the conic bolts frequently, but now I make doubly sure every time I hook up the mower to tighten the conic bolts with a torque wrench." End quote!

Just curious, why don't you use a blue thread locker on the conic bolts. Blue can be loosened with brute strength, Red on the other hand will have to have heat to be removed. I do not have any experience with sickle mowers, but I do with thread lockers.

 

[Briar Hill Brittanys]

I got my #9W for $175.00, and found a #9 for the same price. Bought the #9 for parts. Got a manual and started fine tuning it. After a little trial and error operating it, I can actually mow hay pretty good. Here's a video of it in a small patch of cereal rye, although you can barely see the inner shoe. The rye was drilled heavy (150#/acre) and lodged with a bunch of grass. Later baled it for bedding straw for a neighbors chicken house. Listen to it, sounds like a well oiled machine.

#9WMower - YouTube

 

[KYErik]

I cut about 6 acres of hay with a JD #5 mower for about 7-8 years. If there were any mouse or birds nests along the ground, they would get stuck on the tips of the guards- which would stop that section up. I just had to watch it closely, backing up would usually clear it out and then I'd have to lift it over the cut section and drop it back down right at the edge of the tall grass. I like disk mowers better, but for the price sickle mowers aren't the worse thing.

Every 2 years or so, I would pull the bar out and touch up the sections with an angle grinder. Oh, and I learned that if the Pittman arm bolts start to get loose, you will be buying a new wooden arm soon... Keep them all nice and tight.

 

[powerscol]

It can be a love/hate relationship. Now once I got my hydraulic top link the love came back as I can adjust the pitch on the fly for a good cut. I have an IH 1300 9" model.

 

[rbtjr]

Quote! "The one maintenance issue I had is that the so-called conic bolts, which anchor the operating arms that are attached to the sickle blades, loosened and came all the way out. It was a real chore to get them replaced, plus they were very expensive when bought from BEFCO. I was already accustomed to tightening the conic bolts frequently, but now I make doubly sure every time I hook up the mower to tighten the conic bolts with a torque wrench." End quote!

Just curious, why don't you use a blue thread locker on the conic bolts. Blue can be loosened with brute strength, Red on the other hand will have to have heat to be removed. I do not have any experience with sickle mowers, but I do with thread lockers.

Good point. If I had thought of it I would have use the thread lock.

 

[bigmannh451]

I have a NH451 that was advertised as 70 down 90 up. I have not used it yet. I ordered an operators manual and it said 15 down 35 up. I see Sweet Tractors has them for sale and they say 70/90. What is the correct operating range of a NH 451?

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I don't know what is correct, but I have a steel bar made that locks my 451 straight up, and I've used it that way to trim trees, without any problems at all.

I also mow around my ponds, and sometimes the bar goes down pretty steep, no problem at all...

SR

 

[bigmannh451]

Thanks, Sawyer Rob.

 

[Jarrod32]

For what it is worth, on our farm my father kept an old (early 50's) John Deere MT with a belly-mount sickle mower and used it for mowing ditches right up until the late 1980s. He always felt that the sickle mower did a better job than any of the rotary cutters he ever tried. Other than pulling the sickle out and touching it up with an angle grinder every year (like someone else mentioned), I don't remember any major problems with that mower.

Eventually, he went to a disc mower because - in his words - "it does almost as a good a job as the sickle".