trail brush maintenance - Samurai Cutter - Sicklebar or similar option?

   / trail brush maintenance - Samurai Cutter - Sicklebar or similar option? #1  

JCoastie

Platinum Member
Joined
Aug 29, 2020
Messages
664
Location
Coastal AL
Tractor
LS MT240HE
We live on a wooded lot of just over 6 acres. We have paths cut along the fence line for maintenance. We've mostly kept them up with just a battery operated hedge trimmer and a pair of manual loppers, but as time goes on, it gets harder and harder for us to maintain, and it usually takes a couple weeks for us to get it completed.. The paths we maintain (left and right side of each path, and along 4 sides of the property) are a bit over a mile combined. We service them about twice a year. About once every 10 years we have a forestry mulcher come in and widen the paths that have enclosed a bit over time.

brush_1.jpg

brush_2.jpg

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Would a sickle bar such as the Samurai Cutter SABRE SAMURAI CUTTER | Cutthat.com - Your Cutting Edge Technology Expert work well in this situation? The near $2k investment is about all I'd like to spend, I see things like the laneshark LANE SHARK PRODUCTS – Lane Shark USA at near double the cost, and I don't think I'd pull the trigger on that due to the price.

Are there better options within the price range that I am missing?
 
   / trail brush maintenance - Samurai Cutter - Sicklebar or similar option? #2  
A sickle bar is a highly efficient machine that will cut almost anything that fits between the teeth (probably including the wire strands of the pictured fence). Power requirements are low--old models were horse drawn, ground driven, The efficiency and low power requirement is because they only cut once--you will be left to clean up the slash which will be a chore. I have a sickle bar for my 2-wheeled tractor. It works well for briar patches that hide cobbles and boulders as the bar will slide under them. Sharpening a sickle bar is tedious--two edges on every tooth. I also have a rotary deck for the same tractor that fares poorly with hidden rocks and stumps but would be what I would use to mow the paths you depicted. I would suggest you would be better served with rotary deck, which may be had in your price range, or even a flail mower. The point being to mulch what you cut.

I have some reservations about the Samurai you linked to. Their web page shows it mounted at the side of a FEL bucket. That is likely wider than your present trails (and some of the saplings shown appear large enough to require a saw--a major clearing project). The width is narrower than your tractor so the Samurai would not clear the full width even if you could mount it to the leading edge of the bucket. I am not a hydraulic engineer, but I am given to understand that tractor hydraulics do not have the cooling capacity to continuously run attachments even though the flow rate is supposedly adequate. That is something I would ask the tractor people as opposed to the Samurai sales force.
 
   / trail brush maintenance - Samurai Cutter - Sicklebar or similar option?
  • Thread Starter
#3  
a little more info. The paths are about 10 feet wide, my tractor and bucket are both 5 1/2 feet wide, and I do have a 5 foot rotary cutter. My main concern is with the growth encroaching on the path from the sides, not what lands on the ground from cutting, or grows up in the middle of the paths. I'd like to keep the branches from growing into the pathway, not so much worried about saplings trunks coming up from the ground, just new branches, vines and shrubbery. I can keep the ground level clear, but the branches grow to close off the pathway.
And yes, we have cut accidentally fencing even with the manual hedge trimmer lol
 
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   / trail brush maintenance - Samurai Cutter - Sicklebar or similar option? #4  
I maintain many similar trails. My technique is back at angle with my rotary cutter. A rotary cutter will cut any brush and small saplings.
 
   / trail brush maintenance - Samurai Cutter - Sicklebar or similar option? #5  
You are fighting a never-ending battle. Cutting lets in light, and the plants grow toward the light. From the picture it appears the forest canopy is not dense enough to stop underbrush. A handlebar equipped brush cutter with saw blade could clear the undergrowth between sapling that might grow to provide some canopy. The saftey police would abhor using such a brush cutter to cut vertically, but I am sure it is done. A polesaw powerhead with a hedge trimmer might be faster and more efficient than your battery powered hedge trimmer.
 
   / trail brush maintenance - Samurai Cutter - Sicklebar or similar option? #6  
A Rotary Cutter, invented by Bush Hog in Georgia, is designed for your task.

No USA manufacturer produces Sickle Bar Mowers today. Sickle Bars Mowers have been pushed out of the implement market by Rotary Cutters.
 
   / trail brush maintenance - Samurai Cutter - Sicklebar or similar option? #7  
I maintain miles like that. I use a Stihl Kombi chainsaw. I walk along the path cutting the saplings at ground level and any overhanging branches. I let them fall into the path preferably perpendicular. Be aggressive in cutting. Don’t trim branches but cut the whole tree. Or you’ll be doing the same tree each year. Then I come back with my tractor and grapple skimming the ground collecting all the debris and push it into piles. Having a box blade on the back helps to grab any branches that I miss. Having two people-one cutting and one on the tractor makes quick work of it. I try never to touch the limbs. Just let them fall.

Of course the fence line would take more care to avoid the wire. I would keep it sprayed to minimize growth there. Using your loppers is crazy. No wonder you’re tired. A Kombi chainsaw will be a hundred times faster.

Then bush hog it as needed occasionally.
 
   / trail brush maintenance - Samurai Cutter - Sicklebar or similar option? #8  
I would also use my grapple to widen it where possible. Rip out all that small growth if the big trees don’t prevent that. IMG_0746.JPG
 
   / trail brush maintenance - Samurai Cutter - Sicklebar or similar option? #9  
Make your trails twice as wide. Just slowly back into that brush with your rotary cutter.
 
   / trail brush maintenance - Samurai Cutter - Sicklebar or similar option?
  • Thread Starter
#10  
Make your trails twice as wide.

can't do that. We have those trails, then about a 20 foot thick privacy buffer of shrubs, and the middle is clear, but wooded.
You can see that here, on the left side, you can see that 20 foot privacy buffer, and just beyond that is the path and the fence.

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