My grandpa once brought home a workbench grinder. Anything in the garage with a blade for sharpened. Even did the lawnmower blade
It’s actually really important to keep your lawnmower blades sharp. Makes the whole process much easier, and the engine won’t have to work as hard.
Just make sure they're balanced before putting them back on!
Unbalanced blades cleans the inside of the deck though via vibrations
And sometimes the outside of the deck via through-deck action!
Uh does sharpening really do enough to unbalance it?
One or two times probably not but more than that likely will. Especially if there were major dents you grinded away. You can buy a cheap plastic tool to check the balance and then just grind away from the non blade side to balance it out.
If you grind the same on each side without trying to get rid of any dents, it would still add up?
It can, yes. Remember these are rather heavy blades spinning really fast, so it doesn't take much.
It really depends on your definition of balanced and how bad someone is at sharpening.
The blades are torqued down on there, if it's a combustion engine mower, nothing's you do to this blade sans taking an inch off is going to make much more vibration than the motor will itself.
The biggest worry is that you put enough vibration into it too cause it to loosen the blade.
If you're even half reasonable sharpening you're just taking off a fraction of a gram.
Yep. Grew up with my grandfather working on small engines (read:lawnmowers, either push or driven) and one of things he would do when doing maintenance on them was to sharpen the blades with an angle grinder. Mades mowing a lot easier and generally looks more uniform as well. The other thing was that it almost always is the carb if the engine has issues.
It also helps keep your grass healthy, because a dull blade will rip the grass instead of cutting it. If your grass clippings look frayed, it’s because they’re ripping.
I usually keep a pair of blades. The one off the mower gets sharpened for next time and then I do an oil change + swap yearly.
It's better for the grass too.
I hate my grass. It needs to suffer, get over exposed to the sun, and never watered.
Can't wait to replace it with something not grass next year.
Until then, next time I need to cut it, I'm going to use a lawn mower blade supplied by the Chuck-e-Cheese kitchen to do the worst hack job ever.
Slowly replacing mine with a clover/daisy/fern fescue mix and it looks great and does so much better than grass
Painless and smell less
Absolutely! I had no idea until I mowed after that.
we had a handyman working on the house once and he asked my dad if he had a grinder and my dad brought out this hand cranked grind wheel
My grandparents had one too. I never once saw them sharpen anything, but it moved around the front yard every once in a while, so they must have been keeping it out for something.
My grandparents had one too.
A handyman? Yes, they do tend to move around the front yard.
Squirrelly little fellas
Shovel is a common item many don't realize needs sharpening too
Wat!?
Like a spade for digging. Don’t sharpen your scoops for clearing snow.
It's a bladed tool. You can absolutely notice a difference between a sharp and dull shovel. The edge rounds out in use. A quick touch-up with a file helps a ton.
My grandpa once brought home a workbench grinder. Anything in the garage with a blade for sharpened. Even did the lawnmower blade
It’s actually really important to keep your lawnmower blades sharp. Makes the whole process much easier, and the engine won’t have to work as hard.
Just make sure they're balanced before putting them back on!
Unbalanced blades cleans the inside of the deck though via vibrations
And sometimes the outside of the deck via through-deck action!
Uh does sharpening really do enough to unbalance it?
One or two times probably not but more than that likely will. Especially if there were major dents you grinded away. You can buy a cheap plastic tool to check the balance and then just grind away from the non blade side to balance it out.
If you grind the same on each side without trying to get rid of any dents, it would still add up?
It can, yes. Remember these are rather heavy blades spinning really fast, so it doesn't take much.
It really depends on your definition of balanced and how bad someone is at sharpening.
The blades are torqued down on there, if it's a combustion engine mower, nothing's you do to this blade sans taking an inch off is going to make much more vibration than the motor will itself.
The biggest worry is that you put enough vibration into it too cause it to loosen the blade.
If you're even half reasonable sharpening you're just taking off a fraction of a gram.
Yep. Grew up with my grandfather working on small engines (read:lawnmowers, either push or driven) and one of things he would do when doing maintenance on them was to sharpen the blades with an angle grinder. Mades mowing a lot easier and generally looks more uniform as well. The other thing was that it almost always is the carb if the engine has issues.
It also helps keep your grass healthy, because a dull blade will rip the grass instead of cutting it. If your grass clippings look frayed, it’s because they’re ripping.
I usually keep a pair of blades. The one off the mower gets sharpened for next time and then I do an oil change + swap yearly.
It's better for the grass too.
I hate my grass. It needs to suffer, get over exposed to the sun, and never watered.
Can't wait to replace it with something not grass next year.
Until then, next time I need to cut it, I'm going to use a lawn mower blade supplied by the Chuck-e-Cheese kitchen to do the worst hack job ever.
Slowly replacing mine with a clover/daisy/fern fescue mix and it looks great and does so much better than grass
Painless and smell less
Absolutely! I had no idea until I mowed after that.
we had a handyman working on the house once and he asked my dad if he had a grinder and my dad brought out this hand cranked grind wheel
My grandparents had one too. I never once saw them sharpen anything, but it moved around the front yard every once in a while, so they must have been keeping it out for something.
A handyman? Yes, they do tend to move around the front yard.
Squirrelly little fellas
Shovel is a common item many don't realize needs sharpening too
Wat!?
Like a spade for digging. Don’t sharpen your scoops for clearing snow.
It's a bladed tool. You can absolutely notice a difference between a sharp and dull shovel. The edge rounds out in use. A quick touch-up with a file helps a ton.