Sharp Knives, Healthy Turf: The Key to Preventing Grass Damage

The Importance of Proper Maintenance: A Closer Look at Grinding Machines By Wijnand Meijboom

While reel mowers have come a long way since their invention in 1830 by Edwin Budding, the essence of a mower has not changed. This is and remains a cylinder with blades that rotate along a base, so that each blade of grass is cut at a predetermined height. To ensure that machines can continue to do their job properly, maintenance is a necessity, especially the sharpening of the blades, including the bedknife.

If you don't sharpen your knives, you run the risk of seriously damaging the grass plant, with all the consequences that entails. The leaf tissue is not neatly mown by a dull knife, but pinched off, as it were. The grass is torn and tears. This 'bad cut' makes it more susceptible to fungi, among other things. Blunt blades also lead to a kind of bad 'scissor movement', while the old-fashioned scythe movement cuts the grass and therefore damages fewer cells of the grass plant. With a reel mower, it is mainly the speed at which the cutting edge hits the bedknife that makes the difference between 'scissors' and 'scythe'. A properly sharpened and tuned mower makes a scythe-like mowing motion that is four times faster than a dull, poorly adjusted cutting cylinder.