How To Sharpen Lawn Mower Blades Without Removing Them
Information technology'southward recommended that you sharpen the blade of your lawnmower at least once a yr. To some homeowners, however, that may seem unnecessary. After all, even if the blade is a niggling deadening, they'll nonetheless cut grass, right? Well, yeah, but that'southward not the point.
Tedious blades will roughly rip through grass, leaving behind raggedly torn tips on the ends of the individual grass blades. And that can cause the grass to plough brown and leave your lawn more susceptible to disease and pests. Sharp blades, on the other mitt, cutting grass apace and cleanly, resulting in a neatly trimmed, healthier lawn.
So, each yr, prior to the start of the mowing season, sharpen the bract of your lawnmower. And if you regularly scalp the ground or hit rocks, yous'll need to acuminate information technology again midway through the flavor.
At that place are few unlike ways to sharpen lawnmower blades, including using a bench grinder, mitt file, rotary tool, or angle grinder. But hither's a quicker, easier and more accurate method: apply a drill and sharpening stone that'south specifically designed for putting a cutting edge back onto dull lawnmower blades.
The following instructions explicate how to remove the bract prior to sharpening. Only, depending on the design of your mower, you might exist able to sharpen the bract without removing it, which will salvage a considerable corporeality of time. Withal, I prefer taking the bract off, which allows greater access to the cutting edges and permits better visual inspection of any impairment to the blade, such as stress fractures or excessive clothing.
Eight Steps to Sharper Blades
1. Disconnect the ignition wire from the spark plug. (If it's a cordless mower, remove the battery pack.) That'll eliminate any hazard of the engine accidentally starting upwardly while you're working on the mower. Also, drain the gas tank so it won't spill any fuel while you remove the blades.
ii. Tip the mower onto its side to expose the retaining nut or commodities that secures the blade to the underside of the mower. To keep the blade from turning, wedge a short woods cake between the end of the bract and within surface of the mowing deck. Next, use a big ratcheting wrench and socket to loosen the nut or commodities. If the fastener is rusted on, apply some penetrating oil, such as Liquid Wrench, wait 10 minutes or so and try again. And to increase leverage when loosening a detail stubborn fastener, skid a metal pipe over the wrench handle.
three. After removing the retaining nut or bolt pull off the mower blade, making note of which side of the blade faces downward. It'south important that the bract gets bolted back on in the aforementioned orientation.
4. With the blade removed, take a minute and scrape clean the underside of the mowing deck with a narrow-blade putty pocketknife. Remove all caked-on grass, mud, leaves and other debris. Also, clean both sides of the lawnmower blade by first spraying with penetrating oil, and so scrubbing with a strong-bristle castor.
five. Lawnmower blades typically have a cut edge on each end, which are positioned on contrary sides of the blade. Each cut edge is only near 3 or 4 inches long; it doesn't extend the length of the blade. Clench the blade in a vice at an angle with one of its cutting edges facing up.
6. Next, you'll use a drill-powered blade sharpener. It consists of a round abrasive stone, flat sharpening guide, and ¼-inch-bore steel shank. The rock has a beveled surface that grinds the platonic cutting bending onto the blade.
Chuck the sharpening stone into a drill. Put on some safety glasses. Squeeze the trigger to run the drill at total speed. Slip the spinning sharpener over the edge of the bract. Be certain the dull cutting border faces the beveled side of the stone, and the apartment surface of the guide is against the rear of the blade. Slowly move the stone dorsum and forth forth the cut edge using moderate pressure.
After four or five back-and-forth strokes, stop and bank check the sharpness of the blade. If necessary, repeat until all nicks and chips have been footing off and the blade is sharp. Remove the bract from the vise and rotate it to sharpen the contrary cut border.
7. Once both cutting edges have been sharpened, there'southward i more important footstep: balance the bract. Sharpening can occasionally remove more metal from 1 end of the bract than the other, resulting in an unbalanced blade. Mowing with a bract that'due south out of residuum will cause excessive wobbling, which can damage the motor and put undue stress on the mower.
One way to make up one's mind if a lawnmower blade is properly balanced is to simply slip the blade's center hole over a smash protruding from a wall. Hold the blade in the horizontal position and let go. If it remains level, and so it'southward balanced. Nevertheless, if either terminate rotates downwardly toward vertical, the bract is out of balance; sharpen the heavier end to remove some metal and then retest information technology.
While the nail-in-the-wall technique does work, for more precise results, utilise a lawnmower blade balancer, a multi-tiered, cone-shaped metal fixture.
Place the balancer on a flat surface, then ready the blade on top; the pointed, stepped designed accepts blades with diverse diameter centre holes. If the balance is balanced, it will remain level. If not, it'll list to i side or the other, indicating which terminate is heavy and needs boosted sharpening.
8. Once the blade has been sharpened and counterbalanced, place it back onto the mower in its original position. Employ the wrench to snugly tighten up the retaining nut or bolt. Reattach the ignition wire, fill the gas tank and take your newly sharpened mower out for a test run.
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Source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/lawn-garden/a27194487/how-to-sharpen-lawn-mower-blades/
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