Made a new purchase last weekend. I'd already had a phenomenal bank trimmer - 9 foot sickle mower modified with a winch attachment so I can run it any angle from straight down to straight up.



it works great, but I've got several sections of bank on my big pond that are too long to reach down to the water's edge.

So I ran across this beauty and brought it home last Saturday...



It's an old county ditch trimmer - all hydraulic - and will reach out a bit past 18 feet. It needs a little work, leaky cylinders, etc, but it'll be a great addition once I get it squared away. Say goodbye to cattails, black willows and darn near anything else on the pond edges!!

Oh yeah, forgot to mention - anyone in the area interested, that 4000 Ford and the sickle mower are going to be for sale soon...it really is a great solution for trimming around ponds, not to mention trees, banks etc. I just needed a BIT more reach.

Nice deal there!!! I've been casually looking for anything similar to your new toy. You mentioned that old one working with a winch, up/down, etc. The one I have, only is operable when the blade is lowered. The slide action arm (pitman?) won't move back and forth otherwise. I can lift and lower the lift arms to get some angle. Does yours still slide back and forth when angled a lot at the joint?

PS.. possibly when you get real good with the new mower, you'll be able to catch and fillet the fish before they even leave the water!

If you're gonna' use a sickle bar for mowing at an angle, trade in that pitman arm style for a belt drive cutter like what dlowrance shows in his photo. That allows the cutter to operate on an angle.

Yeah it depends in the style of mower. This one the drive mechanism allows the sickle to work at any angle.

Yeah what he said!

I'm trying to figure out how many ways I could lose a limb with those "toys"

I've seen a few three legged dogs, courtesy of a sickle bar mower.

Got a 2 fingered farmer on the place next to ours courtesy of the same....

We have run a sickle bar mower for 40+ years for hay crops. They are for sure a tool to be used with utmost respect. No animals are let loose while in operation. There have been several times when mowing I would come up to a fawn that is bedded down in the field. If the operator wasn't paying attention, I am sure they'd be dead. Those fawns absolutely stay where they are told by mom. I wonder how many get killed by the larger mowers where the mower is farther away and things are less visible.

Would a belt drive mower have less cutting torque in thicker grasses than a pitman?

As is the case in most things of a mechanical nature, heavy usage has a tendency to reveal the weak link in equipment design. In personal use, we never had undue problems with a belt driven mower...as I recall, our mower had a dual belt drive.

Also, when the afore-mentioned weak link is located, something has to give....rather a belt slipping momentarily than replacing sections, guards, or snapped pitmans.

I know that mine will shear through willow trees as big as will fit between the guides and doesn't even flinch. The belt has never slipped to my knowledge. And like sparkplug says, I'd prefer a belt to slip rather than the pitman arm breaking on the 'older' style.

Well I tried to shear a 24 inch hack berry with mine. It worked good, sheared the entire mower off the tractor. It worked great clearing the pond edge before that. Now it no work at all.

Ouch! Sorry to hear that rockytopper. You're right though, a tractor mounted sickle bar mower is the cats azz for mowing down to the water's edge, and will clear a decent swath on the backside of the dam also.

And while they don't help anything long term, watching stands of cattails fall over while using em' is somehow very satisfying......

Short term.....

I consider pond tree and weed clearing a maintenance activity just like mowing my yard. I'm not willing to use the chemicals needed to remove the weeds and/or plants, I live with ag run off being from the Midwest and in the middle of corn fields so the idea of getting rid of the nutrients ain't gonna happen.

So for me the short term IS the long term.