Cylinder Cut - Narrow or Wide Stripes?

Sorry mate, it was yesterday

Yup. That's the top-and-bottom of it. Not sure about your extra-overlap calculation as there must be some overlap included between outer and central gangs, but ... it is fixed-width and won't be subject to me judging it "by eye" and probably wasting more on the overlaps with my 24" cut. (Actually they sell it as a 72" width cut, so perhaps the individual reels are actually a bit more than 24" wide). In addition to that there will be 66% less turning at the ends of the rows ... so on any areas where the "length" is quite short the overall reduction in time [due to turning] will be significant.

This is great ... I think I can talk myself in being able to justify the higher price of the 5-gang model with Mrs K !!

(Photos of machinery at the top of the thread)

Yup, either one-leading and two-trailing or, most commonly, the other way round. They are usually arranged so that they are in front of the wheels - so the two outer gangs cut where the two front wheels will then run behind them, and quite a lot have a single back (steering) wheel which is behind the central gang.

We used to have an Allen National at my parent's house many many years ago. Excellent piece of kit, and relatively cheap for a wide cylinder mower. Looked like a flying-bedstead - so wasn't anything poncy looking (which kept the price down I expect). That had the wheels in front of the cylinders though, and you could always see a slight mark from where they pressed the grass ahead of the cutters ... IIRC it's cutting speed was 2 acres-per-hour

Allen National (real cylinder is wider than the two wings):


The Ransomes ones talk about cutting at 4 mph which is nearer 3 acres-per-hour - that would make me happy

Its a good point that Jiffy made though - about cutting when wet.

I had to cut the lawns on Saturday as we had people coming on Sunday, and the lawn was wet. Typically at this time of the year (not much to actually cut off) I leave the box off as it is quicker, but I knew that because it was wet cutting with box-off would produce "turds" off the roller, and people would be walking clumps from the lawn into the house ... so I mowed with the box on.

This all probably seems very trivial and tedious to folk with smaller lawns? but the act of emptying-the-box is significant. I push a trailer [normally towed behind the tractor] onto the lawn. I can get about 5 or 6 box-loads into it ... but it strikes me that on a mower that has 3x the box-capacity it would be time-efficient to just "drive" to the grass clippings pile, empty the 3x boxes, and drive back ... so it will save the time to get the trailer onto the lawn, push it to the clippings pile, and so on and so on.

... on that basis I will be able to convince Mrs K that I need the 7-gang version The debate over narrow-vs.wide stripes is replaced with the concept of "single stripe"

All joking apart I have considered getting the 5-gang version and "lifting" the even-numbered gangs, so that I can cut 24" stripes and mow the in-between-stripes on the return leg. But the 5-gang is going to be very unwieldy on any narrow path sections though - My grass paths through my borders are either 4 or 6 [24"] stripes - and the real wheels run behind the even-gangs, so with them up I'll be flattening the grass before cutting.

Yes, I usually have to rotary-mow a few times in the season to catch any seed-head-stalks that the cylinder is squashing rather than cutting.

Here's a 5-gang

 

Nah, flying a Chopper inverted will give me a rotary cut!