Steep Slope Mowing Questions/Thoughts?

[JWR]

OK, here 'tis.

View attachment 659249View attachment 659250View attachment 659251

TBN insertion of pictures is full of bugs, unnecessary complexity and just plain berserk at the moment but HOPEFULLY you can see these.

The way I did this model was:
-- Used a 1x2 four feet long
-- Stapled the printout of the angles to a stiff backing paper just to minimize wind effects, etc. and make it a little more durable.
-- Used a staple gun to staple the stiffened page to the wood. No trimming of the page with scissors is needed.
-- Placed the printout and backing on the wood roughly near the middle so there is plenty of wood both up hill and down hill from the angle page
-- Used nylon upholstery thread (because my wife had some and because it will be more durable than cotton or poly thread)
-- Used a "badge holder" clip normally used to attach a badge to your shirt pocket for the weight rather than a paperclip. I started to use a 1/4" nut for a little more weight than
a paper clip but decided on the pocket badge clip because it is plenty of weight and allows me to clip the thread and weight onto the screw so it does not get lost, accidentally pulled loose, etc.

This took 5 minutes to make. It will take you longer to get checked out at Lowes buying the 1x2 than it will to make this thing.

Note that in the test photo our outdoor steps handrail is shown to have a 32 degree slope and that is about 64% slope per the chart.

Seems to work fine for my purposes. Anxious to get back

 

[crashz]

I'm gonna have to try eating a leaf or two! Maybe add it to my tomato sauce!

JWR - its funny because usually I get it from my feet up. This time, I only have it on my torso and arms. Now, the shredder is right behind me. The end of the day, I'm covered in dust and shredded organics. So I think the general dust bowl is a cause. I bet if it were wet, I wouldn't have as bad of a case. but would have slid down the hill and had an uncontrollable wreck.

I need to re-think my pricing. None of the properties I do are easy. Otherwise the owners would probably cut the fields themselves. My favorite (they are not like kids, you can have a favorite) customer owns a BX. Still has me cut his field for him a couple times a year. But some conditions warrant higher prices.

 

[dragoneggs]

OK, here 'tis.

View attachment 659249View attachment 659250View attachment 659251

TBN insertion of pictures is full of bugs, unnecessary complexity and just plain berserk at the moment but HOPEFULLY you can see these.

The way I did this model was:
-- Used a 1x2 four feet long
-- Stapled the printout of the angles to a stiff backing paper just to minimize wind effects, etc. and make it a little more durable.
-- Used a staple gun to staple the stiffened page to the wood. No trimming of the page with scissors is needed.
-- Placed the printout and backing on the wood roughly near the middle so there is plenty of wood both up hill and down hill from the angle page
-- Used nylon upholstery thread (because my wife had some and because it will be more durable than cotton or poly thread)
-- Used a "badge holder" clip normally used to attach a badge to your shirt pocket for the weight rather than a paperclip. I started to use a 1/4" nut for a little more weight than
a paper clip but decided on the pocket badge clip because it is plenty of weight and allows me to clip the thread and weight onto the screw so it does not get lost, accidentally pulled loose, etc.

This took 5 minutes to make. It will take you longer to get checked out at Lowes buying the 1x2 than it will to make this thing.

Note that in the test photo our outdoor steps handrail is shown to have a 32 degree slope and that is about 64% slope per the chart.

Seems to work fine for my purposes. Anxious to get back

Dang it... your links are not working.

 

[JWR]

Dang it... your links are not working.

I am real frustrated with TBN on this. I follow exactly the instructions for inserting a picture, they appear only as attachment numbers and then no one can see them but me. In fact most of the time I cannot get them into a post at all without 4 or 5 tries. Headed to contact the management of TBN. Tks for your patience.

 

[ericm979]

My botany emeritus professor would eat a leaf after showing it to a new class or spring flower walks in the Smokey mountains national park. Explaining it is a allergen not poison. He was Scottish. My grandmother said that痴 how us Cherokee did to it to build up resistance.

Some people aren't allergic to uroshiol, the active "poison" in poison oak and poison ivy. Some people are. And some are not allergic until they are exposed enough, then they are. No one knows how to find out what's "enough" for you before you develop the allergy. I've also read of native people's consuming small amounts to build up resistance. And of people trying that now and getting an internal allergic reaction that's extremely unpleasant. As much as I would like to be free of PO allergies I've been unwilling to risk it.


Knowing the grade whatever way you measure it is fine, but then what? Few tractor manufacturers provide maximum grade specifications. The only one I've found was for a Massey, and it was 20% all around (up and down and sidehill). One gets the impression it was written by lawyers not engineers. Even with a grade spec and a measurement, unless the ground is perfectly even the actual angle of the tractor will be different- on a side hill if the rear tire on the uphill side is on a lump or the one on the downhill side is in a dip, the tractor will lean farther than the slope. I think one has to develop a feel for what is safe.

 

[ericm979]

BTW - I tried the dawn trick once. I'll try again. This Saturday, I will approach the neighbor property differently. First I will shower with Tecnu, then apply Ivy block. Maybe the sunblock made the clippings stick to me. Going to wear long sleeves. Then Dawn instead of Tecnu when I get home. Dry scrub with dawn first, then shower.

When you mow stuff it sprays droplets in the air. Not a lot will reach you on the tractor seat but some can. I have gotten a reaction from mowing poison oak with a rotary cutter on the tractor, before I started doing the washing protocol any time I might have been around PO.

I think that washing with Techu before mowing isn't going to do anything- you're not exposed yet so there is nothing to wash off. I don't dry scrub with Dawn, just scrub with Dawn and water in the shower. Some people say to use cold water because warm water will open the skin pores, but I have not noticed a difference.

How to never have a serious poison ivy rash again - YouTube

If you are driving your truck back from the job site, keep in mind that you may have gotten oils on the truck. Anything you touched will need to be cleaned. Wiping off with a wet cloth like in the video will get a lot of the oil, so maybe you could do that before driving back.

My Dendrology professor put poison oak on an test where he laid out plant samples which we were to examine and identify. But only the stem, no leaves. Some people complained afterwards but he rightly pointed out that if you work in the woods you need to be able to identify PO when it's leaves are off.

 

[deezler]

Some people aren't allergic to uroshiol, the active "poison" in poison oak and poison ivy. Some people are. And some are not allergic until they are exposed enough, then they are. No one knows how to find out what's "enough" for you before you develop the allergy. I've also read of native people's consuming small amounts to build up resistance. And of people trying that now and getting an internal allergic reaction that's extremely unpleasant. As much as I would like to be free of PO allergies I've been unwilling to risk it.

UGH this sadly seems to be true for me. At age 36 I have started developing an allergy to Poison Ivy that i've never had a problem with before. My 10 acres has loads of it, including massive vines choking many of my trees. In the forest I can simply lopper the vines to save my trees, but for any tree I fell for land clearing or firewood, I have to handle the vine and try to avoid the leaves. CHainsawing through the vine means spraying yourself in the oily wood chips. In past years, I would have zero effect, or maybe one tiny small patch of bumps on my arm skin that did not really itch.

Today I sit here and my left arm is covered in rashes that thankfully only itch a few times per day, but when they do, OY. And it spreads all over my body given my fairly careless approach to handling the plant, then re-handling my gloves, work clothes, shoes, etc. It takes 4-5 days for the reaction to show up in force, and then lasts for over a week. Guess its time to get diligent and start avoiding the junk.

 

[JWR]

Knowing the grade whatever way you measure it is fine, but then what? Few tractor manufacturers provide maximum grade specifications. The only one I've found was for a Massey, and it was 20% all around (up and down and sidehill). One gets the impression it was written by lawyers not engineers. Even with a grade spec and a measurement, unless the ground is perfectly even the actual angle of the tractor will be different- on a side hill if the rear tire on the uphill side is on a lump or the one on the downhill side is in a dip, the tractor will lean farther than the slope. I think one has to develop a feel for what is safe.

A manufacturer's "maximum grade specification" is silliness all the way around. "It depends" is always true. The 20% number is butt covering nonsense and yes, written by their lawyers not their engineers or farm-based testing people.

"Then What" is that being able to measure slope gives you an objective frame of reference not colored by safety guru opinions, lawyers, wild stories, etc. When you run across a slope and feel it is uncomfortably steep and anything worse might cause you to roll over measure the slope and you are homing in on your limits with your tractor and you configuration. Then you can cross check a measured angle on a slope you have not yet mowed which gives you one more thing to consider. It is just one more thing to consider.

Up/down hill is a bit different. It varies more with soil moisture, vegetation, tread on your tires, weight distribution, etc. My up/down rule/opinion is that if I can't climb it without losing traction, spinning and having to back off then I should not be on it. You can come DOWN a bit steeper slope than that by creeping into it and "letting the machine down it" with brakes or a very low gear, always being ready to speed up the wheel rotation in order to keep better traction instead of a pure slide.
There are so many variables -- rear wheel spacing is the biggest. Whether you have 4WD of course (2WD is out of the picture entirely), good deep tread AG tires, brakes that really will hold you, weight and where the c.g. is, etc.

Couple other comments: The MF 20% number should easily apply even with a 2WD tractor. I have an old MH Pacer 1954 2WD tractor perfectly safe and well controlled on a 40% slope and 20% is not even a hill. Well, the Pacer never was safe since it had such poor brakes but that is a different issue. On a modern tractor with decent brakes, 4WD and rear wheels spaced well, a 40% slope is quite safe and should not alarm anyone even with considerable variation in dampness and soil quality. Even with BEST modern equipment I consider a 50% slope my upper limit (and always up/down) on a rubber tired non-tracked machine. The 60% has happened but not intentionally and not comfortably.

Absolutely you are correct -- one has to develop a feel for his machine, his soil, his fears and confidence, etc. ultimately accepting responsibility for himself and his tractor behavior. Amounts to gathering experience and refining one's opinion. Different for every person.

 

[JWR]

OK, here 'tis.

View attachment 659249View attachment 659250View attachment 659251

TBN insertion of pictures is full of bugs, unnecessary complexity and just plain berserk at the moment but HOPEFULLY you can see these.

The way I did this model was:
-- Used a 1x2 four feet long
-- Stapled the printout of the angles to a stiff backing paper just to minimize wind effects, etc. and make it a little more durable.
-- Used a staple gun to staple the stiffened page to the wood. No trimming of the page with scissors is needed.
-- Placed the printout and backing on the wood roughly near the middle so there is plenty of wood both up hill and down hill from the angle page
-- Used nylon upholstery thread (because my wife had some and because it will be more durable than cotton or poly thread)
-- Used a "badge holder" clip normally used to attach a badge to your shirt pocket for the weight rather than a paperclip. I started to use a 1/4" nut for a little more weight than
a paper clip but decided on the pocket badge clip because it is plenty of weight and allows me to clip the thread and weight onto the screw so it does not get lost, accidentally pulled loose, etc.

This took 5 minutes to make. It will take you longer to get checked out at Lowes buying the 1x2 than it will to make this thing.

Note that in the test photo our outdoor steps handrail is shown to have a 32 degree slope and that is about 64% slope per the chart.

Seems to work fine for my purposes. Anxious to get back

OK,I think I have the photo attachment thing working. Here are the basic angular chart and the way I use it to make a very simple inclinometer. One little added feature -- I'm drilling a 1/4" hole in each end of the 4ft wooden 1x2 so that I can use a heavy steel wire (like those used for posting roadside real estate signs) as a "leg" on each end of the wood. The idea is to push the wire leg into the ground for each end which allows the wood to stay put while you take a reading hands-off. It also allows you to adjust the angle of the wood to match the slope you are measuring.

 

[Hay Dude]

This weekend I picked up a mowing job for a customer. Looking at the property on Google Maps, it looked great. But its very steep. So I mowed in low range, 4wd and kept a very slow crawl, going up and down the slope, only turning when I could at the top and bottom. It did it, but my tractor struggled with the hill. Fortunately RickB' tip on setting the back of the brush mower higher that the front worked really well and the thick grass didn't slow me down.

I estimate it to be an average of 3:1. Along with the very steep hill, its pocked with gopher holes, dips and a ridge about 2/3 of the way up the hill that gets steeper. Oh and its covered in poison ivy. Some spots on the ridge could only be done by lowering the loader bucket to the ground and using it to level and stabilize the tractor facing downhill.

The whole time I was cutting, I kept thinking "I'm never doing this again!". This was the most challenging job I've done yet and will be a mark at which I measure other jobs.

Customer is a nice guy and appreciated the job I did. He also paid well and gave me a tip. And I picked up another job from his neighbor. So it looks like I will be cutting this property again. But am I damaging my tractor? I have three concerns:

- Obviously rolling over. Going up and down worked, but it feels bad going over the ridge climbing uphill. The surprise gopher holes are the killers too. I think I'm going to stake them out with stakes and florescent tape prior to the next mowing. Poison Ivy be damned.

- The steep slopes make me wonder what I'm doing to my engine and transmission. Are they getting enough oil? I keep them topped up to the highest level on the dip stick and top of the observation bubble on the trans, but is that enough? I didn't have any power loss, and no oil light (but I wasn't always staring at it nor could I see it in bright daylight anyway). Very concerned with any damage in that arena. Keep in mind that machine is using every one of the 25HP+ up and back down the slope.

- Heat. I'm literally crawling uphill for a couple of hours straight. Temp gauge stays very low, bottom 25% of the gauge. But that engine temps. How about the trans?

What do you guys think?

I don稚 know what tractor you have, but if it has a pump, you should be fully lubricated.
I was baling a one time custom job in 2018 and the hills were steep. I was on the middle or lower end of my transmission fluid dipstick. I got a couple warning lights on the steep hills.
Freaked me out bad.
2 years later tractor still shifts fine.