Grass Board / Stick

your rod looks too steep it needs to be bent down quite a bit .it should be a smooth rod rebar with its ridges will allow the hay to hang up .if you are cutting hay with vetch there can always be some problems at the best you can do ronnie tucker tn logger

My experience is that the grass board/stick does what it is supposed to do in the best average conditions. It is virtually impossible to solve EVERY condition. Sometimes you just get frustrated. It is part of the art. Give yourself more time next mowing. Mow a little less. Whatever it takes to get the job done.

Your set-up looks different than some I’ve seen, and different from mine, but it looks like it would work fine. Sometimes it isn’t just a matter of raising or lowering the stick, but of decreasing the working angle against the cutter bar, so that it pushes the grass back more aggressively. However with tall heavy grass you want the board/stick to be high enough to catch the grass above its center of gravity so that it can fold it back onto the swath. I would think outside the box. Jury-rig something on there. Make the board wider. Put on two sticks.

I put a outer shoe on my mower from an old Farmall sickle bar that had a spring loaded adjustable set of pronged grass sticks. Not only can I adjust the angle, but I can also spread the prongs apart.

Like so many aspects to farming, I have seen so many different variations of this grass board/stick combo that it leads me to believe that as clever as you are, you should be able to fix something up. You may have to stop in the middle of a field and run back to the barn because the solution will hit you as you watch the grass fall over the board.

Good luck, Carl

George,

A few years back an elderly women wanted to buy a working mower from me, she wanted a guarantee. I laughed. I’m not sure she knew what a wrench was. Constant tinkering is the name of the game with the old HD gear.

Neal