sickle bar

[woody]

this is my new to me sickle bar that I will use in place of my Sabre to trim the driveway and perimeter of a two acre field.

 

[woody]

oh yeah the skid steer is not mine I will use it on my L45 Kubota

 

[rbtjr]

Best wishes with it. Yours looks simpler than ours. We have a 7' Befco sickle bar we use to mow around part of the edge of a pond, and also some vertical trimming of the sides of some roads and trails. The Befco is a pain to get hooked up and adjusted properly, but once you get that done it works very well.

 

[LouNY]

Nice looking attachment, good luck with it.
Have been contemplating making something like it.

 

[woody]

Best wishes with it. Yours looks simpler than ours. We have a 7' Befco sickle bar we use to mow around part of the edge of a pond, and also some vertical trimming of the sides of some roads and trails. The Befco is a pain to get hooked up and adjusted properly, but once you get that done it works very well.

Is the Befco front mounted or 3 point hitch? My Dad has a 3 point sickle bar and says it is hard to get it hooked up and he uses it for his pond.

 

[oosik]

I looked at a sickle bar a few years ago when I got my M6040. Kind of a complicated system - and expensive. I still mow the driveway edges and down one property line - total of 2.25 miles - with my trusty old riding lawn mower. Pick a day with the wind coming out of the SW and don't get completely covered in dust when I mow.

 

[woody]

Nice looking attachment, good luck with it.
Have been contemplating making something like it.

I have been using a Sabre for the past several years and has worked pretty good, saved me lots of time.

 

[rbtjr]

Is the Befco front mounted or 3 point hitch? My Dad has a 3 point sickle bar and says it is hard to get it hooked up and he uses it for his pond.

3PH mounted. You hook it up to the 3PH, raise it up, hook one end of a chain to the body of the mower and the other end to a higher point on the back of the tractor so that the bottom of the mower will not go below 22" when you lower the 3PH, then you lower the 3PH. The body of the mower is suspended at the constant 22" off the ground by the chain and the 3PH lift arms prevent the mower from moving side to side. In my case, I have to wrap the top end of the chain around one of the ROPS posts. Once you do all of that you are ready to go and the mower works well. But, every time before you mow you have to check the torque on two "conic" bolts that hold in place the part of the mower that provides the reciprocating motion to the sickle blade. And to do that you have to remove a cover. I learned the hard way that if the conic bolts are not torqued well they can come loose and are the devil to put back in. And of course the mower won't work with either or both of these bolts out.

 

[Thomas]

Like the setup. :thumbsup:

 

[woody]

Thanks working some long shifts right now but I hope to get back on it in about a week. this working crap keeps getting in my way.

 

[woody]

so my job canceled some overtime and I got to work in the shop and on the sickle mower found some things put together wrong and then tried it out down the driveway and then a ditch that has not been cut this year. my neighbour has a bank that they do not cut because of how steep it is so I cut it while I was in the area, the mower worked good on my L45 and I think it will do what I was hoping.

 

[VroomVroom]

You guys probably don't have what we call alder up here. Grows near a lot of standing water, or ditches. Probably doesn't get over 15 or 20 feet in height or 3 inches round at the butt. When it dries its very light as it holds a lot of water. It grows in on the sides of the road by about 2 feet a year. Grows very fast. 2 feet a summer I'd say. I was wondering if the sickle bar would cut them on the roadsides, mostly the limbs and smaller ones growing up, maybe 1 .5", 5 feet tall along the ditches well?

 

[VroomVroom]

Their soft tree, and no strength to them so I'm thinking a sickle bar would work. I'm thinking a flail mower would work but I have no experience with those either. Most of what you would get would be the very tiny leaved branches. The stumps woud then be cut off if they weren't cleaned already from the machine. Left along the bushes would grow 2 feet by end of next summer. What would the difference in size of bushes that a sickle bar would cut off compared to a flail? My father mowed a lot with a sickle bar before my time but he passed away.

 

[keegs]

You guys probably don't have what we call alder up here. Grows near a lot of standing water, or ditches. Probably doesn't get over 15 or 20 feet in height or 3 inches round at the butt. When it dries its very light as it holds a lot of water. It grows in on the sides of the road by about 2 feet a year. Grows very fast. 2 feet a summer I'd say. I was wondering if the sickle bar would cut them on the roadsides, mostly the limbs and smaller ones growing up, maybe 1 .5", 5 feet tall along the ditches well?

I have two 7' sickle bar mowers (an MF and a NH) and I use them both for cutting back small (nothing > 2") alder and aspen. I go slow. I recently broke a weld and bent the bracket that holds the cutter head on on one of the mowers that may have been due to how I've been using it. The guy who repaired it told me they're for cutting grass.

 

[woody]

I don't have ant experience with Alder but from what I cut the other day I think it will work, my Dad uses his to cut around his pond and it works good.