Recent content by *CPB*

If I was cutting a pasture I wouldn't be too concerned about the finished look. If I was cutting heavily watered & fertilized lawns in upscale subdivisions, I would.

That's true, but when you cut with dull blades the grass gets torn instead of getting cut cleanly, and it's more open to disease and browning.

If you're doing that many blades then a dedicated sharpener should at least be a consideration. At the very least, I'd see if you could adapt a Magna-Matic grinding wheel to work on your bench grinder (their wheels have a 1-1/4" arbor hole). All grinding wheels feel hard if you bang your...

How many blades are you servicing each year? If it's under 20 then why even bother? Just sell them a new blade and show them their junk blade when they come to pick up the mower. If it's over 100 then buy a Magna-Matic sharpener and balancer. It sharpens all blade types including wavy edge...

Magna-Matic 8200 series and the discontinued 8000 series. Works well and really easy to use.

I'm not knocking the Oregon/Burr-King, because I've seen what it can do, but it looks like a grinder that was made to work as a blade sharpener vs. being designed as a sharpener. How messy is it? I've never seen video of one where the debris is contained; it looks like it just kind of goes...

I've sharpened over 1000 blades with a Magna-Matic sharpener and have never had one of the grinding wheels even remotely glaze. If you're using a bench grinder, its wheel is much harder and is much more likely to glaze. I can sharpen over 200 blades with one of their 1" wide 'soft' wheels before...

Mowing the lawn is a chore to most people; so is mower maintenance. The thought of an oil change, scraping the deck, and the "health" of a mower blade is the last thing such a person thinks about. To those of you who own shops.... how many blades are you sharpening each year? If it's several...

To the OP, if you're already planning on mulching wet grass that should have been mowed several days earlier, then lawn care sounds like it's going to be a chore for you. Get a Honda. They have composite decks that won't rust from having wet grass packed into them from not being scraped...

https://www.allamericansharpener.com/blade-balancer

I tell people who watch me balance their blades that goal isn't to have the blade be 100% motionless when it's on the balancer, just to move very slowly.

What's the problem? It was a great analogy.

It's not about the blade, it's about the spindle it's attached to.

That's true, but very rarely on my own lawn. There aren't any stones in the yard, and if I hit a stick it's almost always smaller than the diameter of a pencil so it just gets obliterated (it's also dry and dead, from the tree that's slowly dying. I pick up a few larger sticks once a week)...

If you hit something why would you keep using the blade without either fixing or replacing it?