Sickle Bar Mower for Subcompact Tractor!

Do you have to cut a field in a loop or can you easily switch which side of tractor a sickle is on?

We just bought one after we just couldn't get parts for our old 1950 German made sickle bar mower. We mowe 200 acres ever year and its been doing a great job.

How thick can it cut? Can it be used to trim fasythia bushes?

Would this work for cutting down blueberry bushes that are up to 1" to 1.5" thick and a pretty hard wood?

I could definitely use one of those got some areas under trees that it’d be great for!

Great video Tim! My dad used to cut our lawn with one. Thanks for sharing! Have a great and awesome day!

I’ve been trying to find one for my 1023. Will this work?

I bought a used 7 ft New Holland sickle bar mower about 15 years ago when I thought I wanted to cut hay on my 12 acres. Decided it was too much work. Sold everything except the mower. Use it about 4 times a year to cut pond dam and ditches. Best $800 I ever spent.

This seems perfect for mowing tall cover crops and then raking them onto beds as mulch.

Have you tried cutting hedges with this?

The sickle mower would be great in a few places I need to mow, but wow they're expensive.

Yes, the sickle mowers typically like faster ground speeds. A friend of mine uses their sickle mower for cutting hay. They cut 6-7 fields with their sickle mower 3-4 times a year depending on how the weather goes. It does a great job and they can go faster with it so it takes far less time.

I like your hydraulic setup, I would never have thought about using the loader hydraulics to run the hydraulics on the sickle mower without having to have rear remotes added at a much higher cost than a few hoses and couplers.

Tim, thanks for all the great videos and information. My father had a New Holland 455 sickle bar mower (7 ft). Is the limitation of the 5 ft bar shown in your video due to the 3 point mount? Do you think a 1 series (I have a 1023E lower PTO horse power than the 1025R) would drive a pull behind 7 ft sickle bar mower? To raise and lower the bar you would need the rear SCVs, which I do want. I have been browsing the internet to find anyone that has tested this out and can't find anything. Any suggestions? Thanks and keep up the great work.

Tim,the proper name is swathboard. Some people say grassboard. Early mowers such as horse drawn mowers it was made of wood with a stick that looked like a cut off hoe handle up at an angle. Keep the great videos.

Your explenations for what does what is top notch man... Great video... Really loved it... Greetings from Croatia... :)

it sounds cool and I know they work and have forever but they still sound like they are just going to fall apart at any second haha

You are better off with a bush hog in that brush/grass/weeds you were mowing. The sickle bar mower is for straight grass or hay only. The bush hog will also mulch better than a sickle bar.

You forgot about the rain after cutting the hay.

Are there requirements for the hydraulic system of the tractor? Mine is a 3035D, can I use this sickle bar mower?

hey i think it cuts great i mean i really don't see any disadvantages

That cylinder is a single acting cylinder

That thing looks awesome, especially the width for the power you are using.

Its brutal irony that for most of the time sickles were used the issue was the "goldilocks" issue. Too fast too slow just right. Well since all the tractors were geared and you need engine speed for PTO speed youd be trying 3 low 1 high 2 high 4 low. All day you would fight clogging up when going too fast or you would be bored to tears creeping along. What I would have given for a hydrostatic with a speed control lever.

I also used to have the pleasure of mowing ditches but with a narrow front deere A hand clutch with a #5 mower. And I'll tell you mowing banks and ditches on a popper is scary.

Hey my name is Chaz and I’m a big fan of your videos I have a question can you use the Sicklebar mower for mowing yard or something

I have a John Deere sickle bar mower 350 and love it thanks for your videos Tim

This mechanism is very efficient, light weight, and has low power requirements. There were horse drawn versions, after all, which were unpowered. That's one reason they're so quiet. It should use a lot less fuel to mow the same ground than other types of mowers. Especially the longer the grass gets.

That end piece is called the swathboard or grass board. Great video as always.

Need a disc mower for that tractor

Will this attachment fit on a 1023E

I remember these in the forties and fifties.

Nice mower. Cost?

Do you need hydralics to raise mower. New holland works only on 3 pt lift

Looks good. Sickle mowers are a must have!

I pulled a 7ft New Holland 450 with a TC 33 NH mower and it handled it easy in difficult going.

You need a floating valve to mow really well and flat, else the end of the bar will be raised up when the tractor tips to the left (you can see this in your video if you look close enough)....

We had one of these on our old John Deere M.

Only a farmer with a second source of income could consider spending $30,000+ on equipment to produce $500 worth of hay...but it does look like fun except for the money part....maybe the wives would prefer a vacation in Italy? Love your videos.

Just bought a used 2014 Frontier . Paid $4200. Canadian money . A bit of sticker shock . But a new one costs $8000. 😂

Is that an extension attachment on the back? I have a LS compact mower and the sickle mower I bought hits the tires.

Tim good video. I have the frontier model I bought second hand I think I'm missing the pool cord and the bar that helps support on the cylinder so I'm gonna check into that. One concern I had and it may be an optical illusion from the video was the cutting bar should be at 90 degrees to the Perpendicular to the tractor and it looked like it was dragging behind in some of the video I'm looking at the manual myself to kind of see what can be done to advance it to be 90 or even ahead to the tractor to compensate for the drag of the ground. Thoughts?

I have nothing but good things to say about my Maschio Gaspardo sickle mower. All sickle bars require routine maintenance and adjustments to operate properly. I have used mine hard for 3 years

Gaspardo mower in Italy web use so much

Is a double blede system you can work too fast

Disk mower is far better then a syickel they mow down hay and thick with ease

Swath board is the end of the mower

I wonder if they make something like this for a lawn tractor. Maybe something with its own motor.

That piece is called the sickle bar thingy. Your welcome.

Tim I’m not gonna be really critical. But I learned to mow hay with a sickle mower. And honestly I seen a few mistakes you made but I think those mistake were made because you are not used to mowing with this style of mower. There are some tricks to using this mowers that I’ve learned over the 25 years of running a hay farm. God Bless and thanks for the great video.

How far will it pivot downward for instance I have so steep banks on my pond

I build utility scale solar projects (700 ac and >) and we’re always looking for better ways to manage vegetation once the modules are installed in the array. Flinging debris and glass don’t go well together. How much debris does a sickle blade bar throw? We’re using 100hp JD tractors. Is there a scaled up model? Will this model work with a 100hp JD?

I need one of these for my Kubota! I have a few goats, a pb pig, barnyard birds, and a bunny.