OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Welcome to Outdoorking Forum HELP Area Introductions Gday all from Brisbane

Because you have shiny marks on the reel, it appears to have been touching the bedknife, which should never happen. At some point you'll need to adjust it so it comes very, very close to the bedknife without actual contact anywhere across the whole width.

Yeah, it has been, because that's how I was always taught to have them set, to have the blades lightly "kiss" the bedknife in order to produce the scissor cut action. I have read lately (on here and elsewhere) about the idea of them not touching but being very very close and cutting with a scythe type action where the blades pull the grass against the bedknife edge and it cuts the grass, I could be wrong but it seems to be a relatively new idea. I've noticed on mine it doesn't cut at all when set that way, and I'd say that's because the blades aren't as sharp as they should be, however from what I can see the bedknife cutting edge would have to be ground on an angle similar to that of the cylinder blades to get the edge sharp enough to work that way, rather than a right angle edge like they usually are.

Kelsey, I think the practice of having actual contact between blade and bedknife has always been something people did when their reel and bedknife were blunt and they didn't want to spring for a re-sharpen. It is like using more pressure on your chainsaw when it gets blunt, instead of sharpening it: it's just a bad idea. After you allow contact the blunting becomes far more severe, and more metal will have to be removed to get it cutting properly. Also, if you continue with actual contact you'll eventually find some of the grass is being pulled instead of cut, due to uneven clearance across the reel.

I recall when I was a kid the guy who cut our lawn at home (using a huge two-clutch ATCO) used frequently to be seen with an oilstone, touching up the front vertical surface of his bedknife. With no contact, and bedknife touch-ups, you can go quite a while between sharpenings (unless you hit a stone of course).

The practice of having blade contact is the sort of thing you expect of people who use rusty Ogden push-mowers and leave them out in the rain between uses.

On the Model 45 manual it actually states: "The cutter is correctly set when it LIGHTLY touches the bottom blade across its FULL length."

That would suggest to me that having them set not touching is incorrect. Try cutting with a pair of scissors that don't touch, they don't work at all. The way cylinder blades pass across the bedknife is the same as scissors so it makes sense to have light contact in order to cut properly. If the blades and bedknife are lapped correctly, there shouldn't be any real problems with blunting the cutting edge, because they would line up uniformly, much like a pair of scissors do.

Kelsey, if you talk to greenkeepers at bowls clubs, I'm told the response will be that it mustn't actually touch, because if it touches the blades wear and become blunt. The newspaper test in the SB is correct - serious enthusiasts use tissue paper though - and this can be done without contact between reel and bedknife. The SB manual seems to be trying to offer a crude but easier adjustment standard for amateurs.

If you read the past threads here about adjusting reel-type mowers, it appears that provided the mower is in as-new condition, and the owner is careful, the proper standard can be achieved by Outdoorking members. The main problem that occurs is when the mower cutter clearance adjuster has been over-tightened in the past, the thread on the adjuster will have been stretched out of pitch, which makes it extremely difficult or impossible to adjust. The cure is to replace the adjuster if it shows signs of wear.

I'm a greenkeeper by trade myself, at a golf course rather than bowling green, but we never had them set with no contact. They were backlapped with a paste when necessary, and always cut well. Maybe it's different for a golf course than a bowling green, maybe my old boss who taught me was old fashioned, he had been in the biz for about 50 years, I don't know. I'm pretty sure at TAFE they taught us as he did, but I will dig out the old books and check it out. It actually recommends light contact on the Toro commercial website as well. Everywhere I look it's saying light contact, I think we'll just agree to disagree. The way I was taught works for me in my situation, and that's the main thing.

That sounds reasonable Kelsey - and it may be all in the definition of "light contact". I'm used to hearing them make a sort of quiet hissing when they run, but Bruce and Deejay recommend a quiet hum. The hum implies no contact, the hiss a very, very light contact. In either case the cylinder should continue to spin freely for a couple of turns if you give it a twirl by hand.

I'll leave this thread open for a day or two, to give people a chance to make further comments if they wish.

Yeah, I would say that's right, mine gets the quiet hissing sound, and seems to spin freely enough. Same as the mowers on the golf course. I gave it a lap yesterday, and it's a hell of a lot better than it was. But I do check (and adjust it if necessary) every time I use it to maintain the light contact. Tested it out on the footpath and yeah it came up superbly.

It doesn't sound as if we are in any disagreement, Kelsey - though I'd like to hear Deejay's comments, he's much more of a cylinder mower guy than I am. How do you maintain the bedknife? It may need some oilstone work on its front (vertical) surface, but that is only practical if you can keep it perfectly flat for the whole width of the mower, and parallel to the reel's axis. Also, if it has been abused in the past it may have a burr on the leading edges of the reel's blades, and if it has, they need to be removed carefully with a stone (whilst maintaining a perfectly square corner, of course). With that kind of maintenance it might go for a very long time before you need to get it ground.

Well since I've only got the mower in the last month, I haven't really implemented any sort of regular bedknife maintenance yet, just been getting it back to good shape. I have got the square sharp edge on it, and the proper edge back on the reel blades. The reel blades were blunt as hell when I got it and full of corrosion on the surface.. I'm guessing they weren't maintained, or it hadn't been used in years, so the first thing I did was to get rid of all that and restore the sharp edge. Then touched up the bedknife to get its edge right. Gave it a light lapping to get it all uniform.. judging by the way it cut, it's in pretty decent shape now, so it should just be a matter of maintaining that. I noticed when I first ran it that it was building up a lot of grass "crud" on the leading face of the blades, since I've done this, it hasn't built up any really.