What have you done to your Branson today?

[Branson Bob]

I can see where that would be much nicer with two people,
especially with one on the tractor to inch it back and forth to keep the auger square with the world.

What do you mean by this?

That’s how I operated mine. The safety police would cry foul but I did a risk assessment and it worked for me. Before operating, I applied the parking brake slightly so the tractor would hold position yet allow HST power to move it. This way I could press the petals to inch it fore/aft to keep the auger centered in the hole. Mind you, it was in low gear and I maintained fine control be “grasping” both forward & reverse petals and “twisting” my wrists to move it slightly in the direction I wanted it to go. (If you understand what I mean, thank you. If you don’t, oh well)

The 3PH drop speed is set by the knob beforehand so that’s controlled well.

I agree about stopping the PTO and raising it. I turn it on very briefly to let the dirt fly off before dropping it back down to dig more.

I would avoid moving the tractor with the auger in the ground. That could bend the shaft.

I start with the tip where I want the hole, then moved the tractor slightly forward before engaging the PTO. Then the auger straightens the hole as it goes down. It takes a few holes to find the sweet spot, but I don't need to move the tractor at all.

Nice set up though.

I used my auger to put in umpteen lodgepole pine fence posts. I stopped the auger and put a level across several blades in both directions to make sure I was going straight down once I started the tip. I'd check this plumb-ness before I started going down and maybe a couple of times early on as the auger went deeper. After a dozen or so holes I got a feel for how much and when I had to move the tractor forward to keep the auger perpendicular to the world. Hitting a rock or tree root could screw you up, but fortunately I was working with clean, deep, loamy Palouse soil. I have drilled holes in hard clay ground before. It helps to water the heck out of the area a few days in advance of using the auger. One thing I learned the hard way is that a 9' auger isn't big enough for 6" round posts.

I recently put in a bunch of round posts and found the 9" auger did fine for the about-5-inch-ish round posts.

I had a helper who held a level to the auger while I adjusted it from the seat after it started to bite; I realized that the square protective box around the top of the auger would probably be a good spot for some stick-on bubble levels - I'm looking for some that are big enough to see well from my tractor seat; of course I won't be able to see the ones on the side very well...

Thanks for all the great feedback on how to use the auger. I'm gonna experiment with some of the tactics mentioned.

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

Got roped in to helping some folks that were up against a pretty severe time crunch. They needed some areas mowed because they have survey crews coming in next week. So an "excuse" to get some tractor time, and some mowing time. So we started yesterday, after some short heavy rains and thunderstorms delayed our start time to almost 10 am.

First, had to mow a staging area so they can come and setup some equipment, and have a place to drop off jobsite materials.





Field was pretty rough, has been ignored for the last 3 years straight. I ended up raising my mower height later on, to try to compensate for the rocks and thick grass. I had this set up to do my own road ditches with, and it was set up pretty low since I don't have rocks or debris to deal with.

EDIT-- The thumbnail at bottom is supposed to be here. Don't know what happened, or how to fix...



Getting there on the initial staging area. The hawks were having a field day sniping mice out of the cut grass. I couldn't get a pic of one getting taken, as the hawks were hitting them pretty fast and getting away before I could grab my phone for a pic.



Cutting paths deeper into the fields for the next staging areas. Some areas the grass was pretty thick, and was hood height or higher. Other areas were more brush and I could go faster. Sure found a bunch of rocks. Only time I broke a shear pin was hitting a rather small rock (the exposed portion), but it was buried in the ground. Some of the rocks I did hit that didn't break the shear pin were pretty big, like head sized or bigger. Go figure.



One of the areas next to a creek bottom that the survey crew needed opened up so they can get it staked.



Too busy to take pics after that one. Got tractor stuck in the mud only once, but was able to use the FEL to push my way backwards and out again. Got home just at 10 pm, had to work my day job today. But we're going out tomorrow to finish up the southern end of the job. More creek bottom work too, so hopefully no "I'm so stuck" pics to add to the stuck in the mud thread.

SATURDAY MORNING--

Finished up the job this morning. Didn't take many pics as we were trying to beat a storm system coming at us, so not much dilly-dally-ing for picture taking.



While loading up to move to next site location, was watching the storm cell coming at us.



The storm actually ended up going around us, but it was looking pretty serious for a while. Got everything done and headed for home before 11 am.

 

[Branson Bob]

Thanks for the pictures Slim.

I don't have a bush hog/brush hog/rotary cutter yet.

At any point did you have to make a decision between what you have in the pics and a flail mower?

That's the decision facing me as I have 7-8 acres of wooded grasslands that should be mowed to reduce the wildfire hazard.

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

Bob,

I'll be honest, a flail mower wasn't even on my radar. I'm on a pretty small place right now, just shy of 4 acres. I do mow our neighbor's pasture too, mostly for weed control. We've always planned on moving to bigger acreage, but not until we "get there" would I know if we would mess with haying. So I was just thinking "rotary mower" when we bought ours. If we got onto a place that we wanted to hay, then I'd look at other options like sickle, flail or drum mower. But for just knocking down weeds, brush and junk pasture grass, the rotary mower does well enough. I'd rather not have the clumping up of the rotary, but if I'm not cutting really tall stuff (like in the pics), it usually doesn't clump bad enough to be an eyesore. I'm just trying to knock it down, not really trying to make it "pretty".

I have no experience with a flail mower, never knew anyone that used one either. It is my understanding that they don't clump up grass when they cut, but that they also don't really survive as rough a treatment as a rotary mower. I would defer to someone with experience with those. Growing up, we had a sickle mower for the hay fields, and rotary mowers for the "trash" areas that we didn't grow hay on. I know the sickle mowers don't take abuse well at all. But a rotary mower with a stump jumper will take some pretty good beatings from rough fields, rocks, stumps, etc. Some of the stuff I hit with my rotary over the course of this job would have destroyed a sickle mower (and gotten my Dad's belt across my backside when I was a kid, lol).

 

[ericm979]

I don't have a flail yet, only a rotary, but I've been talking to people and researching flails for a while. I think if you have a large area where you can mow forwards nearly all the time, and not many rocks, the flail would be better. But I'm still doing a lot of mowing in reverse and flails are not good for that as the roller smashes the grass down. With the rotary I can back up without changing anything and since it sticks out I can back it under trees and brush. When I hit a rock or pull a part buried rock out of the ground the rotary isn't damaged much.

The flail costs more and requires more maintenance. But it cuts better and doesn't throw stuff like a rotary can.

 

[Branson Bob]

I don't have a flail yet, only a rotary, but I've been talking to people and researching flails for a while. I think if you have a large area where you can mow forwards nearly all the time, and not many rocks, the flail would be better. But I'm still doing a lot of mowing in reverse and flails are not good for that as the roller smashes the grass down. With the rotary I can back up without changing anything and since it sticks out I can back it under trees and brush. When I hit a rock or pull a part buried rock out of the ground the rotary isn't damaged much.

The flail costs more and requires more maintenance. But it cuts better and doesn't throw stuff like a rotary can.

I had heard that flails generally cut nicer regardless of the type of flails used and that they are just as destructive to small stumps, brush, etc.

I had not considered or heard the forward/reverse aspect to this topic.

Good stuff. Thanks Eric.

 

[Branson Bob]

Thanks for all the great feedback on how to use the auger. I'm gonna experiment with some of the tactics mentioned.

I've used the 24" auger a bit more now and my techniques have evolved.

Because the 3 point control is on the opposite side of the tractor from where I dismount I now operate from the seat rather than dismounting and having to walk all the way around to the other side to operate from the ground.

I overestimated the swing arc adjustment and find that starting the hole 6" (not 12") in front of the target mark puts me where I need to be.

I find that at some point in drilling the hole that if I release the parking brake the tractor will self-center and I get good results this way.

I still don't know how to defeat the hardpan I run up against. In some situations even with no rocks, gravity alone will not compel the auger to go through the hardpan.

Any suggestions would be welcomed.

 

[ptsg]

Yesterday had someone interested on a "lowboy type trailer" I had for sale. I made this trailer a couple years ago, to move my crawler tractors around without destroying the pavement. Anyway, the guy offered a 16" reversible bottom plow as a trade in for the trailer. I went and looked at it, realize it's too big and it's actually a Cat 2 implement, but still accepted the offer and took it home with me as it actually holds a better value than my trailer and it's easier to sell.

I don't really need a plow but I've always wanted to play with one. I will keep it for now and maybe sell it later, if I really need to.

This is a mechanically or automatically (as we know it) reversible plow. This means at the end of the furrow, you can turn the tractor around, flip the plow to the other moldboard by just lifting the 3pt all the way up, then start plowing again. Instead of having to reverse all the way back to the starting side. The specs for this asks for a 40 to 50 HP tractor, goes 16" deep and 16" wide.

The plow has some wear and was missing a couple parts for the trip mechanism. So after about 1 hour on remaking this missing parts, hooking it to the tractor and finding that since it's a cat 2 implement, I had to spread the lift arms much more than cat 1, which pushes the implement closer to the tractor, therefore, the trip mechanism would hit booth the hydraulic top link and the hoses and here I go, dig out the mechanical top link and everything was ready to go.

Here I go for my first plowing adventures with about 8 passes of about 50 ft long with barely enough room to move the tractor around

Everything went really nicely. I had to adjust the top link a bit and set the draft control also. I went about 14" deep with the plow and besides the plow being too big for the tractor, it handled it just fine and easily. Anyway, this soil is more like sand, although when compacted, it's still hard. I still want to take this to another place we have, about 45 miles away, where the soil is red clay that hasn't been touched for over 25 years, so it's really compacted. And there I can push it harder and faster and actually see how the tractor handles on some harder soil.

Here are some pictures of the trailer:



And pictures of the plow:



Some pictures of the furrows:



And a video (my phone just messed up the sound really badly for some reason):

 

[LouNY]

Nice plow, around here we only be plowing about 8-9 inches deep with a 16 inch bottom.
I like your deckover trailer, nice looking unit.

 

[houska]

Well, today (yesterday) I found all the pieces and put it together again!

I was driving along my forest road and looked back. To my amazement, I was sorta mowing on one side of the road, not very effectively. Well, I do have a rotary cutter on order, but you generally have to have one, not only have ordered one, to mow! So I investigated.

My backhoe stabilizer on one side was dragging, horizontally, on the ground. Am I that dumb to have forgotten to raise it after last digging? Even so, it wouldn't be completely down, would it? I tried to raise it but nothing happened.
Turned out, I had lost the pin that connects the hydraulic cylinder to the stabilizer.

With a few choice curse words, I tied up the stabilizer with a ratchet strap I happened to have along, and with a feeling of likely futility set off back the way I came in case the pin was easily visible somewhere. Fortunately, playing Sherlock Holmes was effective: the "mowing" continued for about 1 kilometre back, and 10 metres beyond that, in the tall grass, was the pin. In it went.

And that's when I remembered the cotter pin I had come across on the same road a week back. The road is full of lost items from the previous landowner, so I hadn't been surprised, and had put it in the tractor drinks holder to store in my workshop in case ever useful. Fortunately, I had forgotten to take it out, and it was indeed the cotter pin from the stabilizer pin that was supposed to be holding it in. So all's well that ends well...