Someone Wise Guy Would Sell a Product to Make Them More Comfortable

Yesterday, I resurrected my bush hog after several years, and I learned a few things that could help other people.

There are different names for bush hogs. “Brush hog.” “Rotary cutter.” “Brush cutter.” I call it a bush hog because that’s the term my grandfather used.

It’s a giant lawnmower you pull behind a tractor. A shaft connects it to the tractor’s motor, and a huge apparatus somewhat like a lawnmower blade spins underneath it, cutting weeds and even small trees. I call it a giant lawnmower, but it’s not for lawns. It’s for getting rid of stubborn plants you hate.

It’s a very crude tool, but when stuff gets deep, you need it. It’s also a cheap substitute for a flail mower, which is what you really want if you can afford it. A flail mower will really wipe out brush. It will have problems with saplings a bush hog will take down easily, though.

My bush hog is a 72″ model, so it’s very heavy. The tractor hitch keeps the front off the ground, and there is a little pivoting wheel in the rear that serves a similar purpose, although it’s perfectly okay to run the cutter with the rear wheel off the ground. I think it’s mainly there to keep the cutter from bottoming out.

When I tried to put my cutter back on the tractor, I ran into problems. There were two mysterious chains attached to the front, and I could not figure out where they attached to the tractor.

When I asked for help on the web, I was told these were “check chains” or “limiting chains.” They keep the rear of the cutter up. I was told you can omit the top link and rely on these chains instead. Because chains bend, they give when the rear of the cutter hits the ground, allowing it to swing up. This supposedly prevents pressure off the top link, which would otherwise be compressed.

It looks like this is a giant load of steaming BS. The chains appear to be unnecessary. My cutter, which is still made, doesn’t come with chains. The guy who sold it to me must have bought them.

There is a company that has gone so far as to manufacture these chains as a kit, complete with little bars to use to connect them at both ends. To me, this seems like selling people umbrellas because they’re too dumb to come inside.

My tractor’s first owner was a dentist. He and his wife seemed like wonderful people, but he was not a mechanical or landscaping genius. If you’ve seen the way he had my old brush fork tines attached to the tractor’s bucket, you know what I mean. It was a disaster. He used 4 turnbuckles to chain the tines to the bucket, bending it, and the tines were never rigid. They moved around all the time. He jammed two pieces of 4×4 in the bucket to resist the pressure from the chains.

The tines probably cost him two or three grand. They were made very well, apart from the design. They appeared to have been made in the USA. I didn’t care, because I could not stand using them any more. I cut them to pieces and reassembled them as one quick-attach unit, and it’s fantastic. I converted the bucket to quick-attach, too, so now I have two useful attachments instead of one attachment what works poorly.

If you can’t do steel fab, you are at a big disadvantage in this life.

I still have maybe 45 pounds of steel to throw out. Not sure what to do with 4 huge turnbuckles.

He also sold me a tractor with serious hydraulic leaks, which I cured in a short session with one wrench. Two fittings weren’t tightened enough. He told me I would need new fittings, or I could do what he did: top off the tractor after every use. Meanwhile, the shop floor kept getting oiled.

To get back on topic, I found out my cutter was put together wrong. This appears to be the sole reason it needed chains. I don’t think the chain company puts this information in its ads.

My cutter has a couple of flat bars that reach up to the tractor’s top link. At the top, between them, there is a U-shaped bar with two sets of holes in it. Whoever put this cutter together ran two bolts through the bars and the U-shaped part. In this configuration, the U-shaped bar serves no purpose, and it can’t move.

In reality, the U-bar is supposed to be held in place by one bolt. It’s supposed to swing freely. The other holes are for the top link pin. When the rear of the cutter hits something, the U-bar swings, allowing the cutter to swing upward.

I learned this stuff from a great video, which I will embed here. It will explain the situation so I don’t have to post pictures.

I learned something else about my bush hog. It has parts it may not need.

On the front of the deck, there is a bar with little places where short chains can be attached. There are only a few chains on the cutter now. They are maybe a foot long, and they hang down in front of the cutter, which is open so weeds can go in. It looks like they’re supposed to stop flying objects the blades kick up.

I used to think I should go to Tractor Supply and get more chains. I now suspect the dentist had a totally useless item welded onto his cutter. It’s obviously not factory.

When things are thrown out from under a bush hog, they can move pretty fast. I know this because there is a hole around 5″ long in the side of my bush hog. Something took off from under the cutter while he was using it, and it flew so fast it went right through steel plate. This probably happened right before he got the hanging chains.

It may be that the item that flew out was a piece of a blade. I think this is probably the case, because it left a long, thin hole. A rock would have left a round hole. Actually, a rock that small would surely have broken up.

I see some people on the web saying chains are great, but if objects can fly so fast they go through steel plate, what is a little wimpy chain going to do? Maybe they work. I don’t know. I plan to keep researching.

I don’t get off the tractor while the blades are moving fast, and I wouldn’t let anyone get near me while I’m using the bush hog. Best to keep them off the whole parcel where I’m working.

Hooking the PTO shaft up was no fun. The button that releases the coupler was stuck, so I had to hit it with a hammer. I got some good tips about making it easier.

I want to replace the shaft with a better one. Squirrels chewed up some plastic shielding around the shaft, and it looks like it’s so messed up it can’t be used without falling off. I don’t want to buy replacement parts if I can get something superior.

The shielding is hard to put on correctly, unless I’m doing it wrong. Far as I know, I have to use a huge screwdriver and pry a tough stainless ring out in order to remove the shields, and then I have to find a way to get it back in. I didn’t put it in yesterday, and the shields slipped back and let the weeds wrap up.

I only need to bush hog a couple of times per year. Thank goodness for that. But even at twice a year, I don’t want to spend 40 minutes attaching or detaching an implement.

If your bush hog is rigged up wrong, this post should be very helpful to you. If you know anything I don’t, let me know in the comments.