Hello I'm Austin Jarrett from Allett Mowers today I want to look at a new development a new optional
extra that you can apply to some of our products. This is the new grooved front roller which is an
optional extra which you can purchase to fit in place of the plain roller that you may have on
your mower. So this applies to several models it's the Kensington 17 and 20 inch versions,
the Stirling 43 and 51 and the Liberty 43 that's another 17 inch so it's 17 inch and 20 inch mowers
that are using the steel front rollers. You can also fit this to old Atco models as well
and that will be the Balmoral 17 and 20 if they have the steel front roller already.
So what's this all about in the grooved front roller well the plain steel front roller is
absolutely great for the mower if you just want to achieve absolutely amazing stripes but of course
it's about the grass cutting and the precision of the grass cutting and what happens with the front
roller is going in front of the mower of course it's that perennial problem as it goes forward
it lays the grass flat and then the cylinder has to cut the grass but because the grass is laid
flat then the grass just goes under the bottom blade. A cylinder mower the bottom blade and the
turning cylinder blades just cut everything that is presented to them but if it's not
presented to them because the grass is lying flat then you don't cut every blade of grass
and we're going to demonstrate that to you in a minute but the flat roller lays the grass down.
The whole idea with the grooved front roller is this is particularly good in certain conditions
so as the grooved front roller rolls forward of course it's only touching in these places
now this roller actually only has at its absolute outside diameter about 23 percent of the roller
in contact with the ground compared with the hundred percent of the flat roller so that means
77 percent of the grass is actually not being rolled flat and as we roll this forward you
can clearly see that it's only a percentage of the grass which is actually laid down.
So what I've got here is a prism and this prism uses like a periscope idea so I can look at right
angles and when I lay this down on the grass that I've just used with the roller you can see going
from the grass here when I look down at this I can see the grass is about 30 millimetres long about
an inch an inch and a quarter and then when I hold this over the area that's just been rolled then I
can see that a vast majority of the grass is being laid down so it's lower than that. When I hold
this over the area where the grooved front roller is being used you can see very clearly the places
where the roller is in contact with the ground but there's still a lot more of the grass that's
now available and presented to the bottom blade so we're going to cut more blades of grass by
using the grooved front roller. This only works so well in certain conditions and we're thinking of
when the grass is probably longer than it really should be normally I would not let the grass get
to this length but I thought it would be good just to leave it like this for demonstration purposes.
If the sward is particularly dense as well then the front roller lays all that grass down and
we get quite an untidy cut and we'll be demonstrating how that happens maybe to
that eye when you're looking down you can't see that but actually when you use the prism gauge
you get an idea of the blades of grass that are actually being missed and stand up after mowing.
Some types of grasses and I'm thinking of Kentucky bluegrasses or a closer related
Poa Supina where the stoloniferous growth makes them very very dense then also that
dense growth presents a problem when you're laying it all down with the
flat roller and you'll get a lot of benefit from using a grooved front roller like this.
The other thing that people report that they're getting with the grooved front roller as well
is that it's easier to straight line the mower. The mower mows more truly if I can describe it
like that because of the grooves as opposed to being able to slip this from side to side
this doesn't slip from side to side quite so easily therefore keeps on track much better.
I also just want to mention as well coming standard with all the machines we've mentioned
is the front wheel kit and of course if you're getting problems where the front roller is laying
the grass down because it's too long we include this in the box when you purchase the mower new
and of course you get actually very minimal laying down at all because these rollers are just sitting
on the outside and the grass remains cut fully but I really am not getting strong striping and
we use this really just as a measure so that you are able to mow longer grass with your cylinder
mower when you fit these front wheel kits, So when I demonstrate the flat roller just to try
and illustrate that I'll put some weight on it and I'll push that forward to lay the grass down
and then when I take the prism gauge so that you can look along the surface of the grass
you can see then how the grass is lying down and would not be presented to the bottom blade
because remember the bottom blades coming from this angle now to cut the grass this
Grass will just duck underneath the blade. So to show you what the flat roller actually
does to the grass if I put the prism gauge down in this position so you can see the
uncut grass then when I just put the wheel in here just to illustrate what's going on
I need to run that right up against the grass then you can see that the grass is actually laid
down as the roller goes across and that is the disadvantage of a full roller in this laying the
grass down the bottom blade now comes in from this angle as you're mowing and of course the
grass is already laying down in that direction and so it's much easier for it to pop under the
bottom blade instead of be cut at the cutting edges. So if I try and simulate what happens
with the groove roller if I go to a fresh piece of grass here and I roll this roller I put a bit
of weight on it roll this roller across and then at the point that I stop I'll lift that roller up
and I'll put the prism gauge across here so that you can see what the differences are in the grass
and although you can see that the grass is laid down it's not nearly as much laid
down as it is with the flat roller on this side is where the roller is yet to go. First
with the wheel kit of course the grass is not getting laid down at all when it's being cut
I've got no striping hardly at all and you can still see where the wheels actually go just
like a wheeled rotary mower so it doesn't look anywhere near as attractive but when it comes
to actually looking at the cut of the grass so we're looking now at how cleanly that grass is
cut and the prism gauge is so good for doing that you can see there is just a couple of
stragglers generally within a lens width there. The quality of cut is really good there's higher
ground pressure with the wheels slightly less with the grooved roller and the least ground
pressure is with the full smooth front roller. Take a look at the stragglers that we get with
the front roller so as you'd expect the front roller lays the grass down flat and then tries
to mow it and you can see when you look at this we've got now one, two three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine we've probably got ten little stragglers on there to the eye looking at it you
can't see them but when you get with the prism gauge you can really see the difference but the
most important thing is of course with the flat roller like this you get the strongest striping
one pass-over I'm not burning these in you can see that we've got a much more defined stripe.
Let's take a look at the results from the grooved roller. When we come to have a look at the finish
this is really just as good as the wheel kit as if there was no grass being laid down at
all the sharpness of the cut is is absolutely brilliant. The stragglers that we saw on the
front roller as you'd expect the smooth front roller are are really just very very much not
there and the length of even the stragglers that are left is different so the quality of cutting is
definitely better with the grooved front roller than we have with the smooth front roller but
also just take a look at the striping there's no doubt that because the front roller isn't smooth
that striping just isn't as contrasting as it is with the smooth front roller you can also in
these this grass type in particular I think this is a rye-grass mix and you can also see that there
are lines if you're really looking for them you can see the lines where the grass is laid down
differently with that but if it's quality of cut that you want then actually the quality of cutting
is quite clearly improved by using the grooved front roller. So that's our conclusion I hope
you enjoyed this pretty geeky video and the introduction to the grooved front roller. I think
the conclusion is you get the smooth front roller as standard with the products that we talked about
the grooved front roller is definitely something to add to your armoury to make sure that you can
get good quality cutting and good quality stripes and it literally takes two or three minutes to
swap the rollers over and you just choose the right tool for the right job depending on the
time of year and also on the type of grass you've got. Remember if you've got grasses
that don't stripe up really well anyway say we talked about a Kentucky Bluegrass for instance
they don't stripe up particularly strongly anyway then striping is not your main concern it's about
getting that tricky grass cut absolutely level so make your choices. I hope you found this
video useful and please visit our website if you need any further information at www.allett.co.uk