Gator vs Regular Blades

[John R]

Just put a set of Gator blades on my Scag so I could grind up my leafs, works good, do the Gator blades work as good for lawn mowing as the blades that Scag put on their mowers from the factory?

Or should I change them back out in the spring?

 

[BlazNT]

Gators are very good blades. But as with all blades the cutting ability has to do with lots of factors. First Gators are not high lift so you will have that problem. I run them in the spring early summer when grass is growing and strong. Mid summer to fall I go back to high lift to pull the grass up the the blades. So this is my experience with gator blades. Use as you wish.

 

[Ric]

Just put a set of Gator blades on my Scag so I could grind up my leafs, works good, do the Gator blades work as good for lawn mowing as the blades that Scag put on their mowers from the factory?

Or should I change them back out in the spring?

Gator blades are a high lift blade, there just high lift mulching blades. The [SIZE=-1]high lift on Gator Mulching blades draws the grass up, giving it a more even cut and with a 18000 BTS or better will produce much smaller clippings. Gator blades work best when side discharging and they will bag as good as the regular high lift also. I run the G6 Gator blades all year long on both my Grandstand and Z-Master. They also do a good job with wet grass.[/SIZE]

 

[Jkluckman]

Just put a set of Gator blades on my Scag so I could grind up my leafs, works good, do the Gator blades work as good for lawn mowing as the blades that Scag put on their mowers from the factory?

Or should I change them back out in the spring?

My experience is gator blade do work well for mulching and bagging but if your going to side discharge they wont throw grass as evenly or as far out of the deck as my regular high lift blades. Dont get me wrong they still work for side discharge just not as well in my opinion.

Its almost as the back wing of the high lift blade acts like a blower impeller and help blow air along with grass out the side causeing the grass to be blown evenly and farther where the gator blades seems like the grass gets thrown out at the same distance and makes more clumps since it all lands in the same area instead of over a larger area.

 

[John R]

One thing I did notice, they make a bit more noise than the standard blades did.
They also really grind the leafs to small pieces, I'm happy with my investment.

 

[RDA.Lawns]

I run high lift on my 3 z masters until fall then I switch over to Gators. My reason is I have a bunch of biweekly accounts and a few will call. Grass is typically higher and the high lift seems to do a better job on these. Plus my high lift blades get 1 more sharpning out of them before they are wore out.

 

[Graham Burns]

I just stick to high lift blades on all my mowers, I find the gator blades will not disperse the clippings well enough, leaving the yard looking a bit messier. High lift blades are the way to go in my opinion, they work well in almost all situations.

 

[Ric]

One thing I did notice, they make a bit more noise than the standard blades did.
They also really grind the leafs to small pieces, I'm happy with my investment.

Yes I found the same thing when I first started using Gator Blades, they do make a bit more noise but after a while you don't notice it anymore. Gator blades are designed to deliver a finer, smaller grass clipping which will drop through the cut grass and fall to the soil. The clippings break down faster and delivered the nutrients to soil which helps feed and water your lawn. Some say that using Gator blades can deliver as much as 25% of your lawns fertilization needs.




[FONT=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][SIZE=-1].[/SIZE][/FONT]

 

[bertsmobile1]

My experience is gator blade do work well for mulching and bagging but if your going to side discharge they wont throw grass as evenly or as far out of the deck as my regular high lift blades. Dont get me wrong they still work for side discharge just not as well in my opinion.

Its almost as the back wing of the high lift blade acts like a blower impeller and help blow air along with grass out the side causeing the grass to be blown evenly and farther where the gator blades seems like the grass gets thrown out at the same distance and makes more clumps since it all lands in the same area instead of over a larger area.

Pure physics.
The blades are spinning at the same speed so they throw the grass out at the same speed.
But the Gator clippings are smaller so have far less momentum thus drop earlier than the longer clippings.
If you can not visualise this, consider throwing a 1/2 lb quarts rock and a 1/2 lb of loose sand.
The single rock will go a lot further than the sand.
An experiment I did many times with my students using a mouse trap catapult.
It always amazed me how many times some needed to do it before they would believe the results.
Physics as a stand alone subject was dropped from the sylabus some time ago.
Next to biology the most important thing you can teach people as physics is the description of the real world.

 

[Ric]

Pure physics.
The blades are spinning at the same speed so they throw the grass out at the same speed.
But the Gator clippings are smaller so have far less momentum thus drop earlier than the longer clippings.
If you can not visualize this, consider throwing a 1/2 lb quarts rock and a 1/2 lb of loose sand.
The single rock will go a lot further than the sand.
An experiment I did many times with my students using a mouse trap catapult.
It always amazed me how many times some needed to do it before they would believe the results.
Physics as a stand alone subject was dropped from the sylabus some time ago.
Next to biology the most important thing you can teach people as physics is the description of the real world.

That's the problem you run into. People really don't understand how Gator Blades actually work or cut.