Sickle Bar sickle mower

[Anonymous Poster]

Has any one out there used or own one of the new double acting sickle mowers from sitrex, tonutii, beefco or the other brand from Italy. If you have please post your opinion and evaluation of these mowers.

 

[Darren]

I bought an Enorossi about two years ago. It beats my old NH 451 hands down. The scissors action does an excellent job. Mine has a hydraulic cylinder that raises or lowers the bar. The design enables it to to cut both below and above horizontal which makes it great for ditches and banks.

The downside is the local dealer doesn't carry sections for it. Some sections have two rivet holes while others have three holes.The rivets are also metric and come in two sizes. If your dealer doesn't carry parts you'll have to buy sections in boxes of 25 for both sizes plus boxes of the two sizes of rivets. That means, I'm estimating, you'll lay out about $110 to $150 for parts to get what you need.

Knowing what I know now, I suggest getting the dealer to supply the spares up front with the sickle bar purchase if they're not going to stock them. It's only a matter of time before you snap one off.

 

[MarkV]

Darren,

A Sickle mower to do ditch sides and a bank is something I have been interested in but know nothing about them. Is it even practical to consider on a small compact tractor(B21)? What sizes do the mowers come in and any rough price ranges you might know would be a big help.

MarkV

 

[Darren]

According to the manual the 7' model weighs 530 lbs. and requires 20 to 30hp. It will cut from straight up (vertical) to 75 degrees below horizontal. Cost was $2,925.

The 6' model weighs 496 lbs. and has the same hp range. I don't know what the cost is.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

I have looked at photos of all the double acting sickle mowers. All of them look the same mechanicaly. Sweet Tractors at www.sweettractors.com has the Gribaldi with one extra knife priced at $1689 for the six foot and $1789 for the seven foot.

 

[MarkV]

Darren,

I appreciate the information. It does sound like my little tractor could use one of the smaller mowers, but the $$$$ are a bit high for me. (that is a recurring situation /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif) Where I use my tractor is in a small mountain community and I do what I can do for the community roads, which the landowners have to maintain. Unfortunately, about the only time anyone is interested in the road is when they are so bad you can hardly use them. As much as I enjoy the time on the tractor, there is a limit to what I will do.

I understand that a sickle mower will not work as a rotary mower, is there a rule of thumb as to how rough of brush it will cut?

MarkV

 

[Solo]

Take a look at the Tonutti web site. They have some small models from 4' on up. I priced a 5' model the FD-J-150, it only requires 12 hp and weighs 385 lbs. The price I got was from the distributer not a dealer so he couldn't sell me one but it cost around $3000. God only knows what knd of markup he put on it but I think a dealer would be cheaper. You may also want to check out the Enrossi web site. Just do a search for either of the two, there not hard to find. I can't remember the address' right off hand to include the link.
Solo

 

[MarkV]

Solo, thanks for the info, I'll check them out.

MarkV

 

[Darren]

You didn't hear this from me, but I know it'll do 1 1/2" stuff easy. You just ease into it and let the knives "nibble" at on it. I cleared a bunch of sycamore trees that way.

 

[skipperbrown]

When I was a kid I used to mow w/ an ancient JDeere sickle mower. The tractor was about 20 hp and did a fine job on all but the thickest fescue. That was some 30 yrs ago.

One thing that sticks out in my mind was that when you were finished mowing and disengaged the PTO, the blade would just stop where-ever. If it stopped in the furtherest position from the tractor, the blade would slide down due to gravity as you manually lifted the blade to the storage/transport position. That dang thing was heavy! Anything short of a 1" stick would be neatly sliced off if b/w the blade guards ... including fingers. It used to scare me to death to raise that blade and watch the blade fall like a guillotine. I wonder if the new sickles have a safety feature to prevent finger loss?

I also remember my granddaddy mowing thick stuff one day and he was unaware the neighbor's beagle was in the thick grass where he was mowing. I distictly remember the dog yelping and granddaddy hightailing up to the house to get the shotgun.

Great tool, be careful.
mark