Sharpening Lawn Mower Blades

Sharpening lawn mower blades is an essential part of your lawnmower maintenance and should be done on a periodic basis to ensure that your mower works at its best efficiency.

Benfits

Your lawn mower blades are one of the most critical parts of your mower. The blades need to be sharp for several reasons: firstly, sharp blades means higher efficiency; cutting your grass will be so much easier if the blades cut it first time round, rather than you having to double-back all the time to re-do clumps that the mower didn’t get the first time.

Secondly, sharp blades are important for the health of your lawn; if your blades are sharp they will ‘cut’ the grass, whereas blunt blades will more likely ‘rip’ the grass and damage it. The result is that your lawn doesn’t look so nice immediately after mowing, and you may find that some of the grass has been damaged and takes a while to repair itself. So you can see that sharpening lawn mower blades is beneficial in more ways than one.

But how do you go about sharpening lawn mower blades and wouldn’t it be easier to simply buy new blades?

It’s true that you may prefer to simply buy new blades for your mower. After all, mower blades are quite inexpensive and usually readily available, so there’s nothing stopping you from doing this. But sharpening your lawn mower blades is really quite an easy job to do and if you do it fairly regularly it shouldn’t take much work to get them like new again.

To effectively do the job of sharpening your lawn mower blades, all you need is a metal file and a vice in which to secure the blade. Your blade(s) is held onto the mower with just one bolt usually, so once you’ve ensured that the mower won’t start accidentally by removing the cable or spark plug, turn the mower over on its side and unscrew the bolt.

Inspect the blade and remove any debris then secure it in a vice. If there are any nicks in the blade these should be filed out first, then you’re ready to continue sharpening.

Using a metal file, make sure you follow the angle of the blade edge which is there already – don’t try to form a new cutting edge! This should be at about a 45 degree angle. What’s also very important is that you pass the file over the blade the same number of times on each side. By doing this you’re ensuring that the blade will remain properly balanced when you fit it back into the mower and therefore it will cut the grass evenly. If you’re not sure whether the blade is balanced you can actually buy a blade balancer from your hardware store or garden center.

So how often should you sharpen your lawn mower blades?

There is mixed opinion as to just how often you should do the job of sharpening lawn mower blades. Some experts recommend doing it every 4 to 6 weeks though it obviously depends on how often you mow your lawn and how big a lawn you have. This frequency sounds a little over the top. Other experts say you should do it just once a year as part of your annual maintenance.

The best advice is to check the blades often to see how they’re looking. If they look like they need sharpening then do so, don’t wait until the end of the year to check them just in case. Basically the frequency you decide on sharpening lawn mower blades is up to you, just use your common sense!