Sickle sections

Rebuilding a sickle bar mower to cut hay. Pretty much any sickle
type mower I have seen has fine tooth under-serrated sections
on it. Past experiences have showed me they dont self sharpen
well at all nore do they handle tough crop all that great if youre
cutting late in the evening or early morning which tends to
happen when you work a full time job and grain farm on top of
hay making. Found some deep serrated top cut grain platform
sections that will dimensionally fit the bill and they are bolt on to
boot rather than rivet on. Run the same style although slightly
different dimension sickle on my flex head and they seem to cut
grass just fine any time Ive gotten into a patch in a bean field
and they stay sharp forever it seems. Is there any reason in
particular to not use the deep serrated sections?

Certainly worth a try. I don't know how many acres of hay you cut but best thing I ever did was get a disc mower 25 years ago. Evening, early morning, wet, dry, wire grass, alfalfa, lodged hay, half a finishing swath, none of that makes any difference. Just put it in 5th. gear and go.

Only making 1.25 acres of horse hay for the girlfriend. Field is odd shaped and narrow with hills. Semi mounted sickle mower is perfect for what I have to do and it only cost me 50 bucks 10 years ago to buy it. Midas well use it since its just been collecting dust in the barn ever since.

I cut quite a bit with a JD #5 works great after spending about $700 on it for all new wear parts. Look for Webb cutting components on the net

I've used (and currently use) lots of those top serrated sickle sections and for me they work just fine! kelly

You have a pair of scissors... the top blade is only one half of the scissors... what about the bottom have that the blade cuts against.. Are they correct model and type? Are they correctly aligned? And are the hold down clips keeping the top sickle blade down flat against the guard section or bottom blade. Using matched blade and guard sections is critical, alignment, and hold downs... per the alignment process in any good sickle manual. And bolt on blades require the high clearance hold downs... usually on most.

I have Herschel Tiger Shark sections on my MH pony mower. They work awesome. Will chew through just about anything short of barbed wire and that is just because the Pony doesn t have enough power to push it through.

Under serrated is like new idea (an others) but very important on what the mower is set up to cut.
Webb manufacturer is another good one , to get advice and also .
So tell them what your cutting and how fast your machine is rated ,my new idea is 21/2 to 4 mph.
Also reall important to Replace the ledgers and set clearances between the knife and ledger with hold downs
Make sure the cutter is centered to guards and the head is leading 3 to 4 inches when the sickle is down .
Lots more good things to adjust.
Heavy hay clover and hairy vetch will make a expert out of you tuning that machine.

Those sections ARE what were desigbed for hay other than lawn type of grass then they were smoth sections. The top serated sections were designed for combiner for cutting wheat or oats straw when ripe fro harvesting the grain, Not designed for hay but it seems that is all I see in farm stores any more. The bottom serated sections are all I ever used when farming. And they are designed to be sharpened as long as any serated section is still visible. You sharpen from top side gust enough to get a sharp cutting edge at end of serations. The top serated are not designed for sharpening, when dull replace.

I use top serrated (smooth on the bottom) sickle sections. You can buy under serrated or serrated on both top and bottom, but I just use the top serrated. I have my own theory that the top serrated work better.

The guards are as equally important as the sickle sections. If the guard is worn downward, it needs replaced. If the cutting edges of the guards are rounded, they need to be ground back to a sharp square edge, or replaced. Some guards have a jagged type cutting edge (not smooth). You can't really touch those kind of guards up with a grinder. If you have those kind of guards, replacing them is about all you can do if they get rounded.

Should be wear plates both on top and bottom of the sickle along the bar. The top being a hold down plate, with a under backside wear plate underneath. If these are wore out, they need to be replaced. The new style hold downs may of had a bolt you could draw down as the hold down wore out. But this was just to add a little life to the hold down. Once hold down wore out far enough, it still needed to be replaced.

If there is some gimmick out there that suggests that serrated sections are self sharpening, I am not a believer in that. But I am a believer in them having a tougher cutting edge, and holding thier sharpness longer than a smooth section (if you stay out of the rocks and wire that is).

Combine sickle sections all seem to be a little different than mower sections. For one thing, they seem to be a touch wider. And for another thing, they seem to all be a little shorter (from front to back). They don't stick out as far into the guard. And yes, I have seen them have a more courser serration on them. But I wouldn't make the change just for the courser serration, and the fact that you found some or have some. I'm afraid the wider dimension and lesser length from front to back will hurt you more than the style of serration will help ya.

Combines are designed to cut fully matured (dying or dead) crops. Crops that are relatively easy to cut with a sickle. Mowers on the other hand, are designed to cut grasses that are as green as a gourd, and in no way dead and very much alive and green. Just because you took your combine header through a patch of dead crab grass when cutting your soybeans, doesn't mean your going to go through tough mowing grass hay with the same sickle set up. And in July versus October.

You can try it if you want, but I don't think you will be happy with the results. Especially if you are having troubles already.

For what it's worth, you can mow some types of hay such as alfalfa in the middle of the night and during the rain with a mower in good shape. But take the same mower into prairie hay (especially with wire grass in it), and you are only going to be able to mow it in the heat of the day with the sun shining. Any least bit of due or toughness is going to shut you down.
Some types of hay are just not going to be able to be mowed in evening or morning hours. Just no other way around it.

A disc mower might get you through anything no matter what the time of day or night. I don't know. I can't answer that, as I don't have a disc mower.

Like I said in the original post. The course serrated section I found is dimensionally identical to the fine serrated sections currently on the mower. There is no little bit wider and little bit shorter they are 3 wide by 3.25 long with a 2.63 hole spread. Exact match. Im well aware of how to care for a cutter bar. I just needed to know about the sickles.

I haven't farmed for several years but the Sections on the JD 45 combine or the MH 35 combine were same size as the mower sections. New machines might be different And those short sections are what the AC 60-66 combines used with top serated sections. And I have read in owners manuals, cannot remember what one about that smoth section was made for grass like timothy that was just about all there was back a hundred twenty years ago when the mower was first built. I am just going by what the manufactures of 50? years ago were saying. I started mowing with a David Bradly horse drawn mower with a tractor toumg and my first piece of machinery I ever bought was a steel wheel horse drawn John Deere NO. 2 mower. I have owned a bunch of mowers since for a time collectiong old mowers for shows some dating back to the 1880's. And I furnished horse drawn mpowers to the Amish for several years. Am too old to due things any more and Amish jocky I was working with is guiting and moving out of area.

This could be true on older combines. A change must of come about at some point in time. Any newer combine header that I've ever been around, don't use the same sections as a mower.

Local guy has a combine salvage business. Next time I see him, I'll inquire. It does stand to reason that earlier combines used equivelant sections as a mower. I haven't really been around old combines. Not enough to know what kind of sections they have. Not that I'm doubting you by talking to him. Just, if anybody could tell ya the full story, and when other manufactureres followed suite on any changes, he'd be the guy that could tell ya, and answer any questions. And, ... he likes to reminisce about such stuff.

Go for it then. If it's just the serration alone that is of any difference, people have thier own preferences when it comes to that. Probably the reasoning behind about 4 different kinds of mower sections alone, that you can get.

Maybe after you mow some hay this summer, you can post back a follow up reporting how much better these combine serrated sections mow hay? Or, perhaps that it was a bad idea. I'm guessing that if it's the latter, we won't be hearing nothing back.