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When I was a teenager in the late 1960's/early 1970's, my dad ran a custom mowing service with a Cub. So from the time I was about 12 years old onward, I spent a lot of seat time on one of 'em, making spare money in the summers. For strictly lawn duty, NOTHING approaches the slick job you'll bet out of a flail mower. At one point we had a Mott Hammerknife on the Cub, and for the best-looking lawns, it was THE way to go. BUT...if the grass was anything more than SLIGHTLY damp, since the flail mower doesn't have the "suction" effect to raise the grass like a rotary mower, the results were sub-par. AND if the lawn had gotten beyond "lawn" stage, the flail mower simply wasn't up to the task. My favorite all-around mower for the Cub was the Woods 42C rotary. That thing could be used as a mini-bush hog, or it could do a fine lawn job as well. I wasn't fond of the Woods 59, because it wasn't as versatile as the 42...same drawbacks with the tall stuff that the flail mower has, and in my opinion it just didn't do as pretty a job as the flail mower. The IH/DANCO 60" mower is one I would RUN away from, as fast as my feet would carry me. The Danco pulls twice as hard as the Woods 59, for some reason, and it uses multiple belts, rather than a single drive belt. I wasn't impressed with the job it did. Now, all this is based on the fact that Dad's Cub had a governor from a 50-T baler on it, which allowed it to turn 2250 rpm instead of the stock 1800, and the carb jet was drilled out to accomodate the change. With the Woods 42C in 2nd gear, we could mow an acre an hour, at a fuel consumption rate of about a gallon of gas an hour. Back when gas was 28 to 32 cents a gallon, we could actually make some decent money. Hope this helps you choose the right mower for the type of mowing you'll be doing.
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