Ever since wealthy European landowners started displaying vast, unused swaths of turfgrass as status symbols, regular folk have been chasing that perfectly mown and tended lawn for similar reasons. In the modern era, most mowers used to maintain these spaces use a spinning blade attached to a motor of some sort, but this can be dangerous especially on rocky fields like [Greenhill Forge] needs to mow. For these fields it’s best to use a different type of mower, and he’s built one from scratch.
This type of mower is called a flail mower, which has hinged, sharpened hammers attached to a central rotating drum. Since the flails have less rotational speed at the ends, they are less dangerous if they strike solid objects like rocks. To build one, he first builds the central drum and flails, then the enclosure to mount it to his tractor, and then a drivetrain to attach it to the tractor’s PTO. Since everything is getting built in [Greenhill Forge]’s metalworking shop, many of the parts needed to be fabricated from scratch, which involved several jigs for the plasma cutter as well as forging some steel to make some of the thicker parts.
Although not many of us have fully-stocked metalworking shops like this, it shows that almost anything can be built with the right tools. A forge is actually fairly accessible for those looking to start smithing; we’ve seen them built from little more than an off-the-shelf unmodified microwave or from a propane torch and some cookware.
He’s not mowing down grass.
Those mowers are in the background.
He’s knocking down brush.
Hence has reinvented the brushhog, but not as optimized.
Still, mechanical violence is double plus good.
These skills will serve him well during the zombie apocalypse.
Needs handheld power flail, usable in melee without 18/00 Str.
The bushhog I’m familiar with has a big rotating blade. It’s tolerant of rocks and small trees, but the flail sounds like a good idea if there are a lot of large rocks.
I don’t think he re-invented anything, i’ve seen those kind of “hammer” “capinadeira” (sorry for the portuguese name, i don’t know how it is called in english), i’m not sure if the hammers look the same as the one in the video (i partially watched without sound), but i’m pretty sure it works just like this one…
the American lawn is right up there with using potable water to get rid of fecal matter and diverting money from schools to fund prisons among inane things nobody questions. i know your neighbors will hate you, but they suck. just opt out!
“From schools to fund prisons” oh yea, tell that to the weeping inner-city mother whose daughter has just been raped and killed by a thug former prisoner who was released early because those necessary prisons funds when to “schools” instead.
Virtue is always easier for those who are not directly affected…
Fund neither. Let em fight.
What’s your genius proposal for how to handle sewage? Also it’s an English lawn
What are other ways to get rid of fecal matter?
1. Provide all buildings with 2 water supplies, potable and polluted. That’s expensive.
2. Provide all buildings with only polluted water; install purifiers in each building. Expensive and failure prone, resulting in many deaths.
3. Use composting toilets. Expensive, stinky, inconvenient to operate, residue still needs to be removed.
4. Incinerate fecal matter. Causes high level of air pollution and other problems.
5. Leave it in place. Abandon building after a month.
6. A huge fleet of portable public toilets. Expensive, vandalism targets, disease repositories.
In most places, potable water is fairly easy to provide in large quantities, sometimes after moderate levels of centralized processing. This is the common approach for good reason.
Collect and use grey water to refill toilet tanks when available?
It means your pumping from the bottom of showers to a tank in the attic.
Which will grow science experiments when you are on vacation.
Using a diverter to water the lawn/garden with shower drain water is a better idea.
But dirty ‘secret’, sanitary sewers require a fairly high % of water.
If you optimize your water too much, the sewer district will just have to run clean water into the system.
Also: Treated sewage is returned to the river, to be used by downriver populations.
In N Cal, we sometimes call flushing the toilet ‘fixing a drink for LA’.
They’ve been trying to steel our water for a century…
The term usually comes up when the MFers in state government push for MORE…MINE!
A couple of goats ought to do it.
Using a neighbors lawn to get rid of fecal matter. Hmm, that’s an idea.
Do you have non-potable running water in your domicile? How does that work? What’s the source for the non-potable water? An entirely separate set of plumbing? Do you also have separate sanitary sewer systems for “black” water vs. “gray” water where you are? (Is it your own gray water re-pumped through the toilet flushing system?)
you don’t actually have to poop into water at all it turns out! i built an outhouse that collects poop in a big trash can. after a year of composting, it’s pretty good potting soil. i know, you can’t really do that if you live in an apartment in a city.
You can, it’s called New Delhi.
An outhouse is not a solution for people too ill to move quickly. It’s a terrible inconvenience in cold or rainy or snowy weather, also for the elderly.
That composting had better be damn effective if you use it for soil that food plants grow in. Cholera kills about 100,000 people a year.
Flush toilets are one of the major advances of human civilization. Don’t knock it.
Grow animal food in human shit.
Grow human food in animal shit.
The Bible in retrospect.
The missing commandments.
I collect rain water in a barrel specifically for lawn use … but i don’t eat the lawn nor am I keeping a 55 gallon trashcan of human poop in my back yard for tomatoes
Too high a level of “back to basics”.
Replace the flails with hammers to break up the rocks, problem solved! :P
I own both cutting systems, including tractor mounted slasher, and large RC controlled versions of both, go with the flail. It could still kill you but it will be less messy. It really pays to be paranoid when using such gear because it will fail on you, it is just a matter of time, so know where the projectile spray field is and never enter it when the machine is operating, even when idling. The fail “hammers” can shatter too, the commercial ones are more like short thick serrated blades, they are uniformly hard so when you hit anything resilient enough the sharpnel will cut through anything, even sheet metal if not thick enough.
RC versions of mowers, OK. Does it have tank treads? I know of one. The owner is old and there are hills and drop offs. They should be able to tread lightly compared to ride-on of either type, skid or front steer. I see more skid marks and bald spots on rental lots now that one big outfit is doing all the “homes” in the hood with those heavy skid-steer double blade mowers.
And they have vast . . . tracts of land!
But father
Soo, he built a flail mower from scratch? What for?
And no, they are not made to get a perfectly tended lawn, but for rofessional farming.
I’ve had a 8′ John Deere flail mower for about 25 years. Works great for field mowing (ie keeping the grass shortish and keeping brush from growing in the field). Not sure why someone would DIY this.