Flailing About With My Mower

07 Jul 2024 | ~5 minute read

Back in May I wrote about an evening stroll in the field and leaving the grass to grow. Since then, things have escalated...A LOT.

Ok, quick recap; we last left it with me saying that we were enjoying the paths that I had mowed into our second (and much larger) field. So we were going to leave it like that and maybe plant a wild meadow in the future.

Things have been gong great and the field is looking fantastic. Here's the top end after freshly mowing the paths:

As you can see, at the top the grass isn't all that long, but down at the bottom, it's a different story. The grass is now as tall as I am (6' 2" / 188cm), here's a quick video of me driving around on the mower at the bottom of the field to give you an idea:

This luscious long grass is fantastic, but it'll still need to be maintained - the grass will need to be cut back at the end of the season (especially if we're gonna plant wild flowers), and I wanted to mow some more paths into the field.

It's clear that my plucky little mower is never going to plough its way through that stuff, so I did a lot of research and bought myself a flail mower that I can tow behind the current mower.

I spoke to the company that sold the flail and explained my predicament. They confirmed that a) my mower would tow it (it's 250kg, so I wasn't sure) and that b) it would be able to get through our grass. So, I handed over my credit card and bought the flail. A few days later this monstrosity turned up:

My initial reaction was that this thing is a beast and I was out of my depth. But screw it, I thought, you only live once. So I took it out of the crate, set it all up, and off I went:

Testing the flail

The first thing I did was take the flail for a little drive around. I wanted to tow it around some of the steeper parts of the field to make sure my mower could actually tow it.

Everything went great and my little mower didn't let me down. However, as I was putting the flail away in the barn, I noticed that the tow bar wasn't looking right:

Fuck. Was my first response when I saw that the entire tow bracket was bent. The bracket was made of 4mm steel, and I honestly didn't think it would bend.

I assumed this was because the tow bar was too far away from the mower, so I cut the bent piece off, re-drilled the tow bar hole so it sat closer to the mower, therefore reducing the leverage on the bracket. I also drilled and tapped some additional mounting holes, just in case. Physics, yo.

Tow bar v2 looked great:

Tow bar version 2

My new and improved tow bar was fitted and I was confident there would be no more bending. So off I went to use my new flail in anger - there were new paths to cut!

The first pass was obviously long, and I'll need to do numerous passes going shorter every time. All was going well until I returned to the barn and checked the tow bar again.

Double fuck.

This time the bracket had bent where it was bolted to the mower. But hey, at least the bolts survived, so it wasn't a complete waste!

At this point I decided to admit defeat and called a professional...my younger brother, an engineer. The conversation went something like this:

A few days later, Jimmy text me to say the new bracket was ready. I met him at our parents house and he produced a ridiculously thick (10mm) bracket. For reference, here's the new one next to the old one:

I think you'll agree that bracket v3 is a lot more substantial than the old bracket.

Testing bracket version 3

The new paths needed a second, much lower, pass. This would put a lot more pressure on the bracket since the grass gets more dense the further down you go, plus it had to contend with the mulch from the previous cut.

Bracket v3 was fitted, and off I went to complete the second, much lower, pass on the paths. At no point did the flail snap off the tow bracket, so that was a good sign, but was the bracket bent?

After flailing about for an hour or so in the field, I headed back to the barn to hunt for any damage...

Get in! The bracket had stood up to all that difficult flailing and hadn't even budged. Good job, Jimmy!

What now?

Now that I have a fully working flail that I can tow behind the mower, I'm free to manage the land a little better. I no longer need to worry about letting the grass get out of control, because if it does, I'll just flail it. The flail will also be useful for keeping things like brambles in check.

This also means that we now have the equipment to start working on creating our wild flower meadow. So that's what I'm researching at the moment. Exciting times!

I do think that the flail is at the upper limit of what the mower can handle, so I'll probably upgrade to either a proper little tractor that would have no problem towing the flail, or a 4x4 quad bike. We'll see, because, you know, money.

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