Doesn’t matter, you can use it as is. They are whipping around at such speed that it will cut grass whether dull, dented, chipped, or sharp. I’ve had blades that rusted/wore down to slivers and they just keep cutting.
If you think about a weed-eater (string trimmer) and how it cuts with a nylon string that should help understand
There would be a difference in certain conditions… Smaller electric mowers going up against thick grass for instance… Or someone who has weed species that are particularly woody, mallow weed perhaps.
I sharpened my small electric mower this spring for the first time since owning it for some years, and the difference is extremely noticeable. Stalls out much less easily.
lol no.
If you care about the health of your grass, a cut vs being pulverized is significant, regardless of whether your mower of choice can handle plowing through grass.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’ve been using an absolute hacksaw of a mower blade for years and my grass is thriving, so I have doubts. I think it depends where you draw the line of “significant” but if your standard is “I still have to mow” then I don’t think it matters much
lol well yea, it usually takes more to outright kill grass, but that doesn’t make it healthy for plants.
Similar to how tree breaks can be healed. If it’s a ratty strayed mess, it’s much harder on the plant to heal.
Does that mean the grass won’t grow as tall? Maybe this can be a strategy
Grass is effectively a weed, so … not really.
You’re a no fuss guy, we got some Hank Hills and even some competition grade lawn people here no doubt.
Different strokes for different folks.
Handheld grass trimmers use plastic cable to cut grass, so yeah, any piece of metal will work, the question is only efficiency (and also apparently grass health, but I just learned about the problem from another comment, so I will read up about it first)
My thoughts exactly. More important is the overall shape, because it controlls lift and airflow.
You could sharpen that, sure, but to get all the nicks out you’ll want to use power tools.
Me being me, at the beginning of every season I use my belt grinder to rework my mower’s blade to the extent that you can shave arm hairs with it, or handily chop a Post-It note clamped in the bench vise in twain. My mower is electric so I tell myself this is for battery efficiency purposes. It certainly doesn’t stay that sharp for long, but it’s nice to know that it’s possible.
If you remove any meaningful amount of material, make sure the blade’s weight distribution is even between both ends before you mount it back up. There are fancy jigs you can buy for this purpose, but I just stick a pencil through the mounting hole and let it balance itself out. If one side winds up higher than the other, grind a little material off of the spine of the blade on that end until it wants to naturally settle parallel to the Earth if it’s allowed to freely seesaw like that. Then mount it back up and send it.
Running a blade that is significantly out of balance causes expensive and inconvenient crankshaft or bearing damage eventually. So don’t.
Update: worked with a manual file, coarse side got it vaguely somewhat straight (took your collective advice that it didn’t actually need to be fully straight), and finer side got it sharp-ish, albeit on an irregular line… Thx for the advice, guys!
My dude(tte), go buy a cheap bench grinder and tune that thing up. Seriously. If you don’t know how to use a bench grinder you’ll pick up the basics pretty quick. Once you get one, use the coarse wheel to grind the cutting edge straight, hog down the cutting angle till it’s close, then use the fine wheel to get a nice edge on the blade. If you want to get fancy swap the coarse wheel for a buffing wheel, grab some honing compound and give that blade a mirrors edge. Once you’ve got it dialed in post a picture over on dullmensclub
cheap bench grinder
and add some soft starter on it as well, most cheapo powertools (even expensive ones) doesn’t have it. It tamps down those freaky and a bit scary startups.
A few dents would not make much of a difference. Mine always has a few (just too much stones in my garden, they reappear days after clearing) Just sharpen it but make sure it’s balanced, it will cut grass.
but make sure it’s balanced
That’s gonna be OPs problem…
They didn’t seem to sharpen, they straight up removed a shit ton of material.
An unbalance lawnmower blade can be insanely dangerous, and it’s one of those things you’d get used to how yours sound and not notice it’s fucked. Like how the person driving the car with bad brakes is always the last to notice.
The real trick is picking up sticks everytime before you mow, but that sucks.
I was worried about balance so I got one of those blade balance tools. I ground off a noticeable amount to get them sharp and yet they were still perfectly balanced.
You have to take off a huge amount from only one side for a blade to be unbalanced. Because normally you sharpen both sides so you are balancing it just by sharpening.
Spent a few minutes on the other side, and I can get it at angle, but to grind through all the massive dings… Is it worth it?
When I had a small lawn and would sharpen my blade with a hand file (didn’t have anything fancy to work with) I would just get it to a sharp edge again and could tell the difference between a cut and hacking. A straight edge isn’t that important, just getting rid of the rounded surface. And balance as mentioned above. When the pits and dings begin to affect that, then get a new blade (or try to balance it out, but that’s a bit more work).
Looks like you got 2cm or an inch of sharpening. Get it sharpened.
If you do bother sharpening it, that’s gonna likely also throw it a bit off balance too, so make a point to check its center balance as you sharpen. Whichever blade ends up heavier, well just grind a bit more off of the end of that blade until it basically balances out, otherwise your mower will be louder and under way more stress, causing other parts to wear out faster.
But hey, I’m assuming you have your own grinder, so if I were you, I’d go ahead and try sharpening first before bothering with a new blade.
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Get yourself this set and it’ll fix that right up.
I assume you already have a drill.
I run my blade through once or twice a year, keeps it in top shape. Have had the same sharpeners for over 2 years now
I used too have that type of set. It didn’t work well for me. I use an angle grinder now, with the blade clamped in a vice.
Hell yeah, that’s where it’s at
