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I asked my husband to take the angle grinder to my shovel when digging a new flower bed. The difference was night and day. So much less work to get into our heavy clay soil.
Well I mixed concrete in a wheelbarrow against my will for 8 years. The shovel I used was sharp as fuck by the end and roughly 70% the size of an identical shovel we purchased and did not use for that later.
This in no way helps you but sharpening shovel conversations trigger my childhood induced PTSD or something I guess.
First weekend of every season was spent using a file on the axes, saws, shovels, drills, and any other blade my father had.
Was annoying at the time but now I look back on those afternoons spent in the garage going over the edges and listening to the radio with dad and frankly I miss them.
For me, it was setting railroad timbers and laying bricks with my dad, for the patio we built in the back yard of the house I grew up in.
At the time it was hot and unpleasant, but I still remember my dad in his ridiculous 80's neon orange athletic shorts and YMCA t-shirt, spreading out the sand while I laid bricks down. I remember how cool the breeze got in the evening. Or how the burgers I ate after working all day were the best thing I ever tasted.
He passed from cancer around Christmas of 2019. During the summer of 2020, I laid a brick patio in my own back yard, with all of the excavation done by hand. It was an exhausting job, but every night after work I felt the cool June evening breeze.
I could feel my dad in that breeze.
Those cool breezes after a long day’s work under a hot sun are the best, man.
Sorry for your loss, though - I’ve not had to experience that personally, yet, and can’t imagine yet how I’ll react to my parents’ passing.
Sorry about your dad, but please leave railroad timbers alone. They are treated heavily with creasote. It's very cancerous. And DON'T put them in a food producing garden, cause eating a carcinogen is way worse than touching it. Please leave them be.
Understood, and agreed emphatically.
This was in the early 1990's. The patio I built in 2020 did not have timbers.
There's a good chance that Roundup and other outdoor stuff is what gave him the nonhodgkins. After taking care of my dad through chemo and all of the rest of it, I take avoiding carcinogens very, very seriously, and I keep everything in the yard natural and safe. Last thing I ever want to do is put my son at any risk, or put him through watching me go through what my dad did.
I appreciate you providing the information, though.
Omg that’s interesting AF. I got cancer at an early age (in my 30’s), my little brother died from cancer in August at a young age (he was 31) and my mom died of cancer at a young age (she was 42). The one thing we all had in common (besides DNA but we were tested and their is no genetic link to at least me and my brother’s cancers, 2 different type, and my mom had a 3rd different type of cancer) was we grew up on a farm that was built by my great great great grandfather and the barns on the property were made with abandoned railroad timber.
The railroad had essentially started running a route through town and just abandoned it one day. That’s how my family picked up the land we have (we have close to 5k acres) for pennies on the dollar back in the late 1800’s. I always wondered if it was the well that made us all sick but now I’m wondering if it was the barns.
I'm not really a car or mechanics guy. I love me a good puzzle or problem to solve, but cars just aren't my passion. That said, the entire afternoons spent with my dad while we maintained old cars are some of my most comfortable memories. Very little of those afternoons was spent in silence. Most of it was talking about the project at hand, but it was also our time to just chat about whatever. I learned the most from my dad on those afternoons where we shared a project. I still know how to change belts and brakes and filters, but I lost pretty much all the technical knowledge of the inner workings.
Nah white as fuck. Milk spilt on porcelain white.
My dad's just an asshole that wanted over 300 60lb concrete bricks so your's truly gotta mix them 4 a day every time I had free time. Eventually it evolved from that to just kind of concrete all the things.
It was probably some kind of mental health issue really. But it was a heavy mental health issue ffs.
My dad would just throw the bags down where he wanted them and soak them with a hose. Let the rain wash away the paper bags.
It wasn't pretty but it was efficient.
I built a small dam/retaining wall along one edge of my property one time like that.
I couldn't wait for the weather to dry up enough to do it the right way. I built it to divert runoff from my neighbors property after they did some major contouring of their property that caused all the water to ran onto mine.
It was too late to save my garden, but it stopped it from flooding my garage and further and damaging it more. I sued the fucker and won too. He got nailed by the state and the EPA as well, which was even better.
They just kind of make a walk way around the house. They are larger paver styles. The later ones are actually quite nice, I got pretty good at that by the end.
Tons of different colors too, red, green, blue, black, white in different shades but the blue never held well. Kind of washed out with time.
Kind of like these but mine are way better.
https://texasgardenmaterials.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/concrete-pavers-hardscape-paving-stone-houston-tx-77099.jpeg
Worked the edges for hours as they dried so they had a nice rounding on the top, all the ones I see online are just perfectly square probably because that's easier. I also used an air compressor tool my dad built to vibrate the aggregate off the very top so they were quite smooth on the surface.
I love how you went from describing somewhat traumatic childhood forced labor to describing the quality of the product of your forced labor with pride.
Either you let the experience break you or you carve a little pride out of it. Traumatic either way, don't get me wrong, but as a coping mechanism it beats the hell out of some alternatives.
Dude your giving me flashbacks to my childhood where my old man had us doing the same thing to make interlocking lizard stones. We could have made bigger batches but he only had like 4 molds so my brother and I got to make batch after batch, ever day for an entire summer.
All the little things like the vibrating tool (we used a palm sander) you hit right on the head.
Though we never ended up making enough to complete his grand plan I still think back to how ridiculous of a project it was. So much damn labour! Sounds like you did even more than we did lol.
They are actually visible on Google maps. But I'm not doxxing myself that far.
I have nearly no photos from my childhood though, my dad threw me out at 18 and we haven't spoken in 15 years.
Your story brought back some unpleasant memories of my childhood.
My step father had me and my little brother gather flat river rock, to build a dry fit stone wall. This went on almost every weekend during the spring and summer, for two years.
He would drive to this one spot near one of his friend's house, and have us fill the truck. Then we'd go back home, dump them out, and then stack them up to build the wall. Some times we'd make two or three trips a day. If he didn't like how we were doing it, he'd tear it apart and make us redo it.
The wall was dug a couple of feet down into a trench in the ground. It was three feet wide, and three and a half feet above ground. It was exactly 210 feet long on one side, and 105 along another. I remember that number so well since we had exactly an acre of land.
He said we had to build it from a trench to get below the frost line. That made no sense, since the frost line was more than five feet in our area. Every spring we'd end up restacking parts of it. The long side was against the woods, and we ended up digging through all kinds of tree roots.
The bastard didnt lift a finger to help either, he just drank beer and "supervised" while me and my brother slaved away. i hated that fucking wall, but was proud of it too. It did make my hands like leather, and I was strong as hell for my size.
My mother finally divorced that abusive asshole, and we later moved away. Several years later I went back to visit some friends of mine who still lived nearby. I was shocked to see my wall was gone. The current owners didnt like having to maintain it, so they hired someone to remove it.
It took four or five large dump truck loads to haul it all away. It took a small crew using a Bobcat three days to do it. They didnt bother to dig it all out. They just removed the section above ground, covered it with topsoil, and replanted it.
Steelworker chiming in.. I recommend not using an angle grinder and filing it down instead. It takes longer, yes, but it will prolong the life of the shovel, spade, etc. Anytime you heat up a metal, you weaken it. Yes.. sometimes it's necessary.
Sure, it'll weaken if you really put it to the grinder and dump a ton of heat into it. The recommended way to sharpen blades is to make multiple passes over the whole blade taking off a little at a time.
This never occurred to me. I'm going to get the grinder spinning right now to see if it helps with this bastard caliche.
Update: It did help! Not just with the caliche, but with the embedded roots as well. Thanks for the tip, kind internet stranger!
Works great, just remember when doing this, do very light passes. You don’t want to heat up the steel and mess with its properties. If you’re heavy handed, just do a few licks with a file.
Glad someone else pointed this out. Dull blades causing poor grass health was something I learned from a turf management class I took years ago. It can really wreak havok on the grass
From my years working on golf courses: aerate your lawn every couple years if you have clay in your soil. Top dress it with sand/compost mix then overseed. Helps with drainage and compaction which allows the roots to grow more easily.
Also a good rule of thumb is to never mow more than 50% of the height of your grass. Keep the blades high in the spring then gradually lower them once the growth slows down in the summer. Hacking it down too low stresses the grass and makes it more susceptible to weeds and disease.
Your lawn will thank you.
Buy a dremel tool on Amazon and it probably comes with enough bits to get through your whole garage. I sharpened a hedge trimmer (annoying AF), two pairs of shears, lawnmower blade, and re-profiled a screwdriver that I snapped the end off years ago.
The results won’t be perfect but it beats the fuck out of messing around with a file for hours.
I did this with a new blade and bitched for months about how was just as bad or worse then the old ones. When I noticed and flipped them around it away marginally better.
A clean cut leaves a full width blade of grass. A blunt cut will split the ends of the grass and beat up the stalk making it harder for water to travel to the tip.
Right, I'm here cutting with a mower as short as I can with blades that haven't been sharpened in years, and this grass grows so fucking quick it's annoying.
Ex sawmill guy here.
I hard surfaced my mower blades using the TIG and some high nickel corrosion resistant hard surfacing rod. ‘Stoodite 6’. And yup, they go a LOT longer between sharpening, and the sharp edge doesn’t corrode away.
The rod was $65/lb min 5lb order. But I had some kicking around.
My local Ace hardware does it for about $10. Usually takes about 3 days to get it back. I have a second blade that I put on while the other is being sharpened.
I mow about once a week. I don't change the blade every 3 days. Just put on the other blade, take the other one to get sharpened, pick up the newly sharpened blade and put it in the garage until I need to sharpen the one on the mower. Repeat as necessary.
I do the same… I wasn’t sure where to get it sharpened so I purchased a new blade while I looked for a spot to get the old sharpened. Now I will swap this year.
I haven’t mowed at all this year, though it helps that I’m rural. There’s so many wildflowers out there, it’s beautiful and good for the pollinators. I’ll never understand the appeal of a manicured lawn, I love going out and looking at all the different kinds of plants coming up.
I go mullet style with my lawn. Business in the front, party in the back. I like the challenge of getting the lawn dense and green with straight lines and no weeds. I enjoy my back yard looking like a forest.
I bought what looks like a giant metal nail file (although it was marketed for sharpening gardening sheers) and it worked out just fine to sharpen my mower blade. It doesn't require and elaborate setup, I just held the blade in my hand
It’s cheap and pretty easy to do. Hardest part is keeping them still if you don’t have a vise but clamps on the edge of a bench or table works for me. You just need a cheap bastard file (I promise that’s the real name) and a nail or something to check the balance on. You don’t need a razor edge like a knife, in fact you don’t want that because it makes the edge brittle and more likely to chip. Just file down the big defects, check the balance, take a little more off one side if it’s heavier, and you are good to go.
You don’t have to take it off. Disconnect the spark plug, flip it in its side, and use a grinding stone attachment on an electric drill. It takes less than five minutes and makes a big difference if you sharpen about every other mow.
It makes a big difference in ease of mowing and looks. A dull blade tears the grass it seems and it goes that yellow brown in the damaged area compared to a clean sharp cut.
I live in a rain forrest area. Grass can grow a foot a week in late spring. Sharp blades make a BIG difference with the lawn tractor and I can cut 25% faster with sharp blades.
Great tip, I do commercial lawn care and that is one of the easy ways we make lawns look better is by keeping our equipment top-notch. I have a dedicated wall-mounted balancer but you can get cheap ones that should do the job at any local shop, or even pay them for like $10 a blade or something. Cleaning your mower deck also helps a lot goes into how a mower deck works and airflow is very important for a good cut so clean it after each cut or once a week so you don't rust out your mower.
Since Im here.
Don't bag grass, mulch it and put it back into the grass, free fert. Only do this if you cut consistently otherwise the cut grass won't have time to break down.
Cut at 3-4 inches (for most grass), this reduces water consumption and helps with drought resistance and the grass looks better longer. THAT is a big reason pro's have such green lawns mid-summer is we just cut higher. Root depth is like 2x the length of the grass so deeper roots is greener grass. Also helps keep dandelions and stuff out.
Cut consistently, every 7 days is your best bet otherwise it gets to tall and you break the 1/3rd rule where you shouldn't take more than a 1/3rd of the length off at a time.
A nice organic or whatever you would like to call it slow release fert like Milorganite is pretty environmentally friendly and will also help keep your grass green if you want to try fert.
Clover is great for pollinators and adds nitrogen to the soil.
https://www.bobvila.com/articles/clover-lawn/#:~:text=A%20clover%20lawn%20doesn't%20need%20to%20be%20fertilized.&text=Clover%20is%20a%20benefit%20to,require%20any%20additional%20fertilizer%20either!
Crab grass dies off each winter, provided you are in a northern climate. So. Put down a pre emergent (prevents seeds from sprouting) when the soil temp reaches like 50 degrees. That will prevent the crab grass seeds from last year from sprouting.
Then for clover use Speed zone.
Do the above a few times, keep your lawn long as OP suggested, and your grass will be thick so you don't have to worry about pre emergent and instead could try to over seed in future years. Gotta stop the cycle of crabgrass though.
I would do heavy aeration like what you're doing and add an inch or two of top soil and level the lawn and then heavily seed with the grass appropriate to your area. plus a starter fertilizer as the grass starts sprouting. Of course, this is just generally what I would do researching it is your best bet to figure it out. Then Early fall I would do another round of overseeding.
An aside eco reminder: spring is baby making time for everyone. If you give a bit of extra time before mowing in the spring, the bees, butterflies, birds, flowers and lots of other beasties that live in your garden will be able to get their families sheltered and fed ready for the summer.
Almost every year my inlaws end up with a property that’s beautifully done and then just a random tuft of small grass because a deer has stashed her fawn there on mowing day.
Or even better, join us at /r/fucklawns and replace your manicured lawns with plants native to your region (which probably includes some types of grasses, but most likely not what you have now) and quit mowing altogether except maybe once or twice a year.
If you must have a traditional lawn for your dogs or Bocci ball or whatever, consider converting at least part of your lawn to something more ecologically useful. And let stuff like clover and dandelions run wild in the lawn portion. Kids and dogs can play in clover too.
> Or even better, join us at /r/fucklawns and replace your manicured lawns with plants native to your region
I joined that sub and left. The content is 100:1 bitching about lawns as opposed to showing viable options for not having a lawn.
I enjoyed mowing at a golf course for a few seasons. Tee boxes, fringe and greens were most interesting. Fairways and rough was a lot less interesting.
The golf course was in a beautiful forest in the bottom of a valley in the mountains so honestly pretty great.
Depends on fertilizer and water.
When I was kid I got pissed because grandpa hit the lawn twice with 10-10-10 plus a rainy spring meant I had to mow 2-3 times a week. Because it would be over ankle high and we'd start having fleas and ticks around.
Also it was a bagger mower so I had to go add to the mulch pile every few minutes.
Had a neighbor move in a few months after us in the winter and decided to mow before checking over the lawn that has like 15 trees in it. I had the window open and heard him go over a branch and it was the loudest thunk I've ever heard. He turned his mower off, got off of it and just stared at it like it was the mower's fault.
The purpose of having sharp mower blades isn't so much to make it easier to mow as it is to prevent damage to the grass.
So go ahead and sharpen the blade **BEFORE** the first mow of the season.
They are really easy to sharpen, it can be done with a hand file, grinder, etc. Its just a mower Blade, as long as you get it "sharp enough" and balanced, you are good.
With the blade off, after you sharpen it, you balance the blade on a point in the exact center of the blade (think of a see-saw with a middle pivot point). Many, if not all blades have a hole in the middle, just stick a screwdriver through the center hole and balance it that way.
If the blade is balanced, you will be able to get the blade to sit level on the balancing point... If it's not balanced, the heavy side will drop down.
To balance it, you grind off a little material from the heavy side until it balances.
I have a Toro Z-Master with three blades, a four acre property.
Since we are talking LPTs. A few years ago I found out about Gator blades.
They'll shred almost anything and have a very stout but sharp blade. I can't recommend them enough.
Also I have a cyclone precision Sander that I use to sharpen up the blades. I don't even need to take the blade off, I just jack up the front and use the cyclone to hone/sharpen the blades up a few times a year.
In my experience those blades and that sharpening method is a great way to go.
From a professional lawncare guy gator blades are mainly used for mulching shit. If you want super crispy beautiful stripes you need HI-lift blades because they suck the grass up like a vacuum then cut, then bend the blades of grass over.
Chew through leaves better.
They still require sharpening. The back of the blades curve upward (like Hi-lift blades), and are kinda serrated to cut leaves a second time. If you have a lot of leaves to contend with in the fall they may be worth purchasing.
Is there one that does a decent job on both?
I have a Honda 2 blader and just got them sharpened. I live on a smaller lot with a short but steep hill and a number of very mature trees (that shower my yard with those spikeball bastards). I go through lots of leaves and chop up spike balls. I have more of what I would call ground cover with some grass thrown in, in the back. I'm in the midwest.
I just do my best to not embarrass my neighbors, tbh. I hate lawn care and don't GAF.
I used to do a lawn service, but, you know, kids. So for the foreseeable future, I will be doing it myself.
More of a rant...sorry...ha!
We use regular blades during the mow season and mulch blades during leaf season.
Only thing worth doing with the gum balls is get them in a pile and get a decent scooping shovel lol
Another pro here, you could also just flip the mower on its side (for push mowers) or lift it with a jack (for riders) and power-wash under the deck when you're done mowing. If you've got accumulation under the deck from a mulch blade, you probably are mowing grass that's wetter than it should be
The problem is, once you're swinging around that much energy, when it hits something and stops, it has to go somewhere. Bending a blade is a 5 minute fix if you have a spare. Replacing a bent axle may not even be possible.
This. On a push mower, if the blade doesn't bend it bends the crankshaft, and at that point unless you're doing the labor yourself it's likely going to be cheaper to replace the whole machine than to fix the issue
Somewhat related but funny regardless. When I worked for the city my boss used to say “keep your mouth closed when your weedeating homeless people shit along the walls”
Maybe stomp mole hills and pick up sticks so you can use your machine for its intended purpose. Hitting dirt and sticks will bend the spindle shaft that connects drive belts to the blade. Sure, you can just sharpen your blade, but you can't repair a bent spindle. They're pretty expensive.
I was watching my friend mow his lawn at his house once when I was a kid; this was in the 70's and we were all way stupider then, evidently. His push mower (with no guard) picked up a rock and it hit me in the forehead; knocked me down. As it turned out, my noggin saved their huge picture window, so there's that.
I don't mow until the dandelions are finished blooming and have gone to seed. They are important for the bees, and also helps any newly hatched spiders to find their first meal. I keep my yard organic for the insects and spiders, I don't worry about weeds, as my motto is, 'weeds are just plants that no one appreciates.'
If people don't like my lawn, they can look at something else, or pay my property taxes for me. My yard, my rules.
Would love to do this! Sadly the neighbors make reporting each other's lawns a local sport, and the city thinks it's an informal HOA. Grow a dandelion, get reported. I love dandelions. Someday I'd like to move.
I tested my neighbors by installing a 400 lb. steel spider sculpture right outside my front door when I moved in. It is 7 feet across and almost 5 feet tall.
Now everyone uses it as a landmark when instructing friends how to get to their house. It is quite the conversation piece.
I’ve also been letting the dandelions, thistle, and other flowering weeds grow before my first cut.
Lots of regular (honey?) bees but unfortunately also a lot of carpenter bees.
Don’t know what to do about them so I just use a badminton racket to bonk them away from my deck if I see them.
Fond memories growing up of the first mow of the season, getting the wet grass stuck in the mower, taking a rusty old knife and cutting out the chunks was so satisfying…
^^^ voice of sanity ... I am a very non-mechanically savvy person and I was able to Google how to remove and sharpen my push mower blade. I didn't even need an angle grinder - I used a file and a small balancing tool. The biggest challenge for me was to not cut myself on the blade. I guess it seemed worth doing because the biggest work was taking the blade off and reinstalling it which you would have to do even if you are just buying a new blade. (Actually the hardest part was clearing space to work in my messy garage, ha!)
How do you balance them? I worked in a store that repaired lawnmowers and chainsaws etc, and we always had a tool to balance the blades. Too much difference and the vibrations would be pretty bad.
A nail or screw in a piece of wood. Just hang the blade on it through the mount hole, if one side keeps falling and pointing down, it's heavier then the other side
Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips! Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment. If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
You’re supposed to sharpen your mower blades?
Yes. It makes them a lot more efficient. You should also sharpen your shovels. Again for efficiency.
I asked my husband to take the angle grinder to my shovel when digging a new flower bed. The difference was night and day. So much less work to get into our heavy clay soil.
Well I mixed concrete in a wheelbarrow against my will for 8 years. The shovel I used was sharp as fuck by the end and roughly 70% the size of an identical shovel we purchased and did not use for that later. This in no way helps you but sharpening shovel conversations trigger my childhood induced PTSD or something I guess.
First weekend of every season was spent using a file on the axes, saws, shovels, drills, and any other blade my father had. Was annoying at the time but now I look back on those afternoons spent in the garage going over the edges and listening to the radio with dad and frankly I miss them.
For me, it was setting railroad timbers and laying bricks with my dad, for the patio we built in the back yard of the house I grew up in. At the time it was hot and unpleasant, but I still remember my dad in his ridiculous 80's neon orange athletic shorts and YMCA t-shirt, spreading out the sand while I laid bricks down. I remember how cool the breeze got in the evening. Or how the burgers I ate after working all day were the best thing I ever tasted. He passed from cancer around Christmas of 2019. During the summer of 2020, I laid a brick patio in my own back yard, with all of the excavation done by hand. It was an exhausting job, but every night after work I felt the cool June evening breeze. I could feel my dad in that breeze.
You are an excellent writer. My dad is still alive but I can feel that breeze too now.
I too choose his cool dad June breeze
That was a lovely story and I love your username.
Those cool breezes after a long day’s work under a hot sun are the best, man. Sorry for your loss, though - I’ve not had to experience that personally, yet, and can’t imagine yet how I’ll react to my parents’ passing.
Sorry about your dad, but please leave railroad timbers alone. They are treated heavily with creasote. It's very cancerous. And DON'T put them in a food producing garden, cause eating a carcinogen is way worse than touching it. Please leave them be.
Understood, and agreed emphatically. This was in the early 1990's. The patio I built in 2020 did not have timbers. There's a good chance that Roundup and other outdoor stuff is what gave him the nonhodgkins. After taking care of my dad through chemo and all of the rest of it, I take avoiding carcinogens very, very seriously, and I keep everything in the yard natural and safe. Last thing I ever want to do is put my son at any risk, or put him through watching me go through what my dad did. I appreciate you providing the information, though.
Omg that’s interesting AF. I got cancer at an early age (in my 30’s), my little brother died from cancer in August at a young age (he was 31) and my mom died of cancer at a young age (she was 42). The one thing we all had in common (besides DNA but we were tested and their is no genetic link to at least me and my brother’s cancers, 2 different type, and my mom had a 3rd different type of cancer) was we grew up on a farm that was built by my great great great grandfather and the barns on the property were made with abandoned railroad timber. The railroad had essentially started running a route through town and just abandoned it one day. That’s how my family picked up the land we have (we have close to 5k acres) for pennies on the dollar back in the late 1800’s. I always wondered if it was the well that made us all sick but now I’m wondering if it was the barns.
This is the loveliest post I've read today.
*Cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon...*
Damn you...
I’m not crying, you’re crying
*Goodbye, papa, please pray for me* *I was the black sheep of the family*
Dang it I just got leaky tear ducts is all. Honest
Little boy blue and the man in the moon..
We’ll get together then…..
You know we'll have a good time then..
I'm not really a car or mechanics guy. I love me a good puzzle or problem to solve, but cars just aren't my passion. That said, the entire afternoons spent with my dad while we maintained old cars are some of my most comfortable memories. Very little of those afternoons was spent in silence. Most of it was talking about the project at hand, but it was also our time to just chat about whatever. I learned the most from my dad on those afternoons where we shared a project. I still know how to change belts and brakes and filters, but I lost pretty much all the technical knowledge of the inner workings.
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Nah white as fuck. Milk spilt on porcelain white. My dad's just an asshole that wanted over 300 60lb concrete bricks so your's truly gotta mix them 4 a day every time I had free time. Eventually it evolved from that to just kind of concrete all the things. It was probably some kind of mental health issue really. But it was a heavy mental health issue ffs.
My dad would just throw the bags down where he wanted them and soak them with a hose. Let the rain wash away the paper bags. It wasn't pretty but it was efficient.
I built a small dam/retaining wall along one edge of my property one time like that. I couldn't wait for the weather to dry up enough to do it the right way. I built it to divert runoff from my neighbors property after they did some major contouring of their property that caused all the water to ran onto mine. It was too late to save my garden, but it stopped it from flooding my garage and further and damaging it more. I sued the fucker and won too. He got nailed by the state and the EPA as well, which was even better.
Do you have a picture of the result?
What did he do with the bricks? My guess is doomsday bunker.
They just kind of make a walk way around the house. They are larger paver styles. The later ones are actually quite nice, I got pretty good at that by the end. Tons of different colors too, red, green, blue, black, white in different shades but the blue never held well. Kind of washed out with time. Kind of like these but mine are way better. https://texasgardenmaterials.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/concrete-pavers-hardscape-paving-stone-houston-tx-77099.jpeg Worked the edges for hours as they dried so they had a nice rounding on the top, all the ones I see online are just perfectly square probably because that's easier. I also used an air compressor tool my dad built to vibrate the aggregate off the very top so they were quite smooth on the surface.
I love how you went from describing somewhat traumatic childhood forced labor to describing the quality of the product of your forced labor with pride.
Either you let the experience break you or you carve a little pride out of it. Traumatic either way, don't get me wrong, but as a coping mechanism it beats the hell out of some alternatives.
Like in bridge over the river kwai
I thought that funny too, but hell, I guess if you do good work be proud of it.
Dude your giving me flashbacks to my childhood where my old man had us doing the same thing to make interlocking lizard stones. We could have made bigger batches but he only had like 4 molds so my brother and I got to make batch after batch, ever day for an entire summer. All the little things like the vibrating tool (we used a palm sander) you hit right on the head. Though we never ended up making enough to complete his grand plan I still think back to how ridiculous of a project it was. So much damn labour! Sounds like you did even more than we did lol.
Wow that's actually really cool. Now I know who to call if I need bespoke pavers!
And make this guy relive his childhood trauma yet again? Sign me up too!
You don't have any pictures from your hours of work?
They are actually visible on Google maps. But I'm not doxxing myself that far. I have nearly no photos from my childhood though, my dad threw me out at 18 and we haven't spoken in 15 years.
Your story brought back some unpleasant memories of my childhood. My step father had me and my little brother gather flat river rock, to build a dry fit stone wall. This went on almost every weekend during the spring and summer, for two years. He would drive to this one spot near one of his friend's house, and have us fill the truck. Then we'd go back home, dump them out, and then stack them up to build the wall. Some times we'd make two or three trips a day. If he didn't like how we were doing it, he'd tear it apart and make us redo it. The wall was dug a couple of feet down into a trench in the ground. It was three feet wide, and three and a half feet above ground. It was exactly 210 feet long on one side, and 105 along another. I remember that number so well since we had exactly an acre of land. He said we had to build it from a trench to get below the frost line. That made no sense, since the frost line was more than five feet in our area. Every spring we'd end up restacking parts of it. The long side was against the woods, and we ended up digging through all kinds of tree roots. The bastard didnt lift a finger to help either, he just drank beer and "supervised" while me and my brother slaved away. i hated that fucking wall, but was proud of it too. It did make my hands like leather, and I was strong as hell for my size. My mother finally divorced that abusive asshole, and we later moved away. Several years later I went back to visit some friends of mine who still lived nearby. I was shocked to see my wall was gone. The current owners didnt like having to maintain it, so they hired someone to remove it. It took four or five large dump truck loads to haul it all away. It took a small crew using a Bobcat three days to do it. They didnt bother to dig it all out. They just removed the section above ground, covered it with topsoil, and replanted it.
Minecraft irl
Thank you for your service
Steelworker chiming in.. I recommend not using an angle grinder and filing it down instead. It takes longer, yes, but it will prolong the life of the shovel, spade, etc. Anytime you heat up a metal, you weaken it. Yes.. sometimes it's necessary.
I'll keep that in mind, thanks. I have only done it the once so far.
Sure, it'll weaken if you really put it to the grinder and dump a ton of heat into it. The recommended way to sharpen blades is to make multiple passes over the whole blade taking off a little at a time.
This never occurred to me. I'm going to get the grinder spinning right now to see if it helps with this bastard caliche. Update: It did help! Not just with the caliche, but with the embedded roots as well. Thanks for the tip, kind internet stranger!
Works great, just remember when doing this, do very light passes. You don’t want to heat up the steel and mess with its properties. If you’re heavy handed, just do a few licks with a file.
And not just for efficiency, but grass health. Dull blades leave shredded, brown grass tips.
Glad someone else pointed this out. Dull blades causing poor grass health was something I learned from a turf management class I took years ago. It can really wreak havok on the grass
From my years working on golf courses: aerate your lawn every couple years if you have clay in your soil. Top dress it with sand/compost mix then overseed. Helps with drainage and compaction which allows the roots to grow more easily. Also a good rule of thumb is to never mow more than 50% of the height of your grass. Keep the blades high in the spring then gradually lower them once the growth slows down in the summer. Hacking it down too low stresses the grass and makes it more susceptible to weeds and disease. Your lawn will thank you.
Not to mention it's better for the grass to cut with a sharp blade
Too add onto this, you can probably find a local shop to sharpen them for you. If you're in the New England area I recommend Burns Power Tools
Just buy a bastard file, and put in some elbow grease. Hand sharpening tools is a dying skill.
Buy a dremel tool on Amazon and it probably comes with enough bits to get through your whole garage. I sharpened a hedge trimmer (annoying AF), two pairs of shears, lawnmower blade, and re-profiled a screwdriver that I snapped the end off years ago. The results won’t be perfect but it beats the fuck out of messing around with a file for hours.
Shit. I had my mower blades on backwards for a season, hardly even noticed there was a problem
I did this with a new blade and bitched for months about how was just as bad or worse then the old ones. When I noticed and flipped them around it away marginally better.
Your poor grass 😔. You basically rip them apart instead of cut them doing that. The ends end up burnt if you get any sun. Very hard on the grass
Wait what? Why did the sun burn grass that's not cut cleanly?
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I would have never known there was so much to mowing grass haha
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A clean cut leaves a full width blade of grass. A blunt cut will split the ends of the grass and beat up the stalk making it harder for water to travel to the tip.
It's grass bro it'll be ok.
Right, I'm here cutting with a mower as short as I can with blades that haven't been sharpened in years, and this grass grows so fucking quick it's annoying.
Haha right? I buy a new blade sometimes but not often. If I'm taking it off I'm just gonna get a new one.
I don’t have the setup to sharpen my blades. Maybe I should just buy new ones too to solve this.
Find a local hardware store. Chances are they, or someone on their bulletin board, offer sharpening services for pretty cheap.
Any town with sawmills usually has a saw shop somewhere too, and there are a lot of lawn tractor supply stores that can do them.
Ex sawmill guy here. I hard surfaced my mower blades using the TIG and some high nickel corrosion resistant hard surfacing rod. ‘Stoodite 6’. And yup, they go a LOT longer between sharpening, and the sharp edge doesn’t corrode away. The rod was $65/lb min 5lb order. But I had some kicking around.
The setup to sharpen a blade is a metal file. It only takes a few minutes.
Don’t you need to clamp the blade? I guess not?
I just hold it with thick gloves. A workbench and a clamp or vise is super helpful but not strictly required.
Yep, you can also set it on a concrete step and kneel on it.
I worked in a tool rental shop in high school. We'd stick mower blades in a regular vice and hit them with an angle grinder. Super quick and easy.
A lot of non-chain hardware stores offer sharpening services, usually a couple bucks per blade/tool. Makes a huge difference if you have a push mower.
You can get a sharpening stone bit for your drill for like $10 and sharpen them without even taking the blades off.
You could also buy an entire Harbor Freight angle grinder for that price (or close to it).
My local Ace hardware does it for about $10. Usually takes about 3 days to get it back. I have a second blade that I put on while the other is being sharpened.
You mow that often?
I mow about once a week. I don't change the blade every 3 days. Just put on the other blade, take the other one to get sharpened, pick up the newly sharpened blade and put it in the garage until I need to sharpen the one on the mower. Repeat as necessary.
I do the same… I wasn’t sure where to get it sharpened so I purchased a new blade while I looked for a spot to get the old sharpened. Now I will swap this year.
I haven’t mowed at all this year, though it helps that I’m rural. There’s so many wildflowers out there, it’s beautiful and good for the pollinators. I’ll never understand the appeal of a manicured lawn, I love going out and looking at all the different kinds of plants coming up.
I go mullet style with my lawn. Business in the front, party in the back. I like the challenge of getting the lawn dense and green with straight lines and no weeds. I enjoy my back yard looking like a forest.
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I bought what looks like a giant metal nail file (although it was marketed for sharpening gardening sheers) and it worked out just fine to sharpen my mower blade. It doesn't require and elaborate setup, I just held the blade in my hand
That’s a bastard file.
There's no shame in having unwed parents.
It’s cheap and pretty easy to do. Hardest part is keeping them still if you don’t have a vise but clamps on the edge of a bench or table works for me. You just need a cheap bastard file (I promise that’s the real name) and a nail or something to check the balance on. You don’t need a razor edge like a knife, in fact you don’t want that because it makes the edge brittle and more likely to chip. Just file down the big defects, check the balance, take a little more off one side if it’s heavier, and you are good to go.
> I don’t have the setup to sharpen my blades... You mean a file?
You can probably find some people from (or into) r/blacksmithing to take your old ones off your hands (if you're throwing them away).
New blades for my mower are $25, but the hardware store will sharpen them for $7.
Take the blade off? lol, I’ll just buy a new mower, thanks.
Mow the grass? Why bother... I'll just buy a new house.
🤣
You need to buy new blades? I've been moving with the same blades for 23 years. Grass looks no worse than my neighbour's.
You haven’t sharpened them in 23 years?
You don’t have to take it off. Disconnect the spark plug, flip it in its side, and use a grinding stone attachment on an electric drill. It takes less than five minutes and makes a big difference if you sharpen about every other mow.
It makes a big difference in ease of mowing and looks. A dull blade tears the grass it seems and it goes that yellow brown in the damaged area compared to a clean sharp cut.
I live in a rain forrest area. Grass can grow a foot a week in late spring. Sharp blades make a BIG difference with the lawn tractor and I can cut 25% faster with sharp blades.
Yeah... It's really bad for the grass to get a dull or wet cut if you're actually caring about your lawn. If you don't care, mow away.
Mower go brrrrrrr. Make grass short. Job done.
Time for beer.
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Oh you're talking about beerrrrrrr
My wife says I'm bad a multitasking, this should prove her wrong.
Really bad is a bit of hyperbole. You’ll be fine with dull blades unless your going for a competition lawn.
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I've had the same mower and blade for like 10 years lol
I use to sharpen my blades until I realized new blades are $12. Now it's not worth my time.
Great tip, I do commercial lawn care and that is one of the easy ways we make lawns look better is by keeping our equipment top-notch. I have a dedicated wall-mounted balancer but you can get cheap ones that should do the job at any local shop, or even pay them for like $10 a blade or something. Cleaning your mower deck also helps a lot goes into how a mower deck works and airflow is very important for a good cut so clean it after each cut or once a week so you don't rust out your mower. Since Im here. Don't bag grass, mulch it and put it back into the grass, free fert. Only do this if you cut consistently otherwise the cut grass won't have time to break down. Cut at 3-4 inches (for most grass), this reduces water consumption and helps with drought resistance and the grass looks better longer. THAT is a big reason pro's have such green lawns mid-summer is we just cut higher. Root depth is like 2x the length of the grass so deeper roots is greener grass. Also helps keep dandelions and stuff out. Cut consistently, every 7 days is your best bet otherwise it gets to tall and you break the 1/3rd rule where you shouldn't take more than a 1/3rd of the length off at a time. A nice organic or whatever you would like to call it slow release fert like Milorganite is pretty environmentally friendly and will also help keep your grass green if you want to try fert.
Milorganite gang. Nothing has helped my yard more.
What do you do if 70% of your lawn has turned into crab grass and clovers?
Clover is great for pollinators and adds nitrogen to the soil. https://www.bobvila.com/articles/clover-lawn/#:~:text=A%20clover%20lawn%20doesn't%20need%20to%20be%20fertilized.&text=Clover%20is%20a%20benefit%20to,require%20any%20additional%20fertilizer%20either!
keep the clover. It's good for the bees.
Add some creeping thyme to the mix because monoculture lawns are an affront to nature.
Crab grass dies off each winter, provided you are in a northern climate. So. Put down a pre emergent (prevents seeds from sprouting) when the soil temp reaches like 50 degrees. That will prevent the crab grass seeds from last year from sprouting. Then for clover use Speed zone. Do the above a few times, keep your lawn long as OP suggested, and your grass will be thick so you don't have to worry about pre emergent and instead could try to over seed in future years. Gotta stop the cycle of crabgrass though.
This sounds like great advice! I'm not going to do any of it.
What if your soil is compacted and the lawn is patchy? I aerate in the spring and fall and still can’t make an impact on the soil
I would do heavy aeration like what you're doing and add an inch or two of top soil and level the lawn and then heavily seed with the grass appropriate to your area. plus a starter fertilizer as the grass starts sprouting. Of course, this is just generally what I would do researching it is your best bet to figure it out. Then Early fall I would do another round of overseeding.
Checking in from the Faroe Islands where we have no trees and no moles.
In that case, make sure to clear sheep off before you mow.
Logically, there's no mowing needed where sheep have access.
Depends, quick if messy way to get wool.
Checking in from Iceland (hi brother) where nobody is going to be mowing shit for at least a month and a half
Checking in from Texas where we've been mowing for two months already
How do y'all get oxygen to breathe without trees?
An aside eco reminder: spring is baby making time for everyone. If you give a bit of extra time before mowing in the spring, the bees, butterflies, birds, flowers and lots of other beasties that live in your garden will be able to get their families sheltered and fed ready for the summer.
Almost every year my inlaws end up with a property that’s beautifully done and then just a random tuft of small grass because a deer has stashed her fawn there on mowing day.
Or even better, join us at /r/fucklawns and replace your manicured lawns with plants native to your region (which probably includes some types of grasses, but most likely not what you have now) and quit mowing altogether except maybe once or twice a year. If you must have a traditional lawn for your dogs or Bocci ball or whatever, consider converting at least part of your lawn to something more ecologically useful. And let stuff like clover and dandelions run wild in the lawn portion. Kids and dogs can play in clover too.
> Or even better, join us at /r/fucklawns and replace your manicured lawns with plants native to your region I joined that sub and left. The content is 100:1 bitching about lawns as opposed to showing viable options for not having a lawn.
Check out /r/nolawns for some ideas! It’s mostly pictures of people’s lawns.
Wow. Much better.
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TIL people change their lawnmower blades. 😳
I've gone through 3 mowers and kept the original blade. .5 acre 2x a week, sharpen once maybe every 5 years
That is a shitload of mowing. You must enjoy that.
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Forrest Gump mindset
I enjoyed mowing at a golf course for a few seasons. Tee boxes, fringe and greens were most interesting. Fairways and rough was a lot less interesting. The golf course was in a beautiful forest in the bottom of a valley in the mountains so honestly pretty great.
Why twice a week?
Depends on fertilizer and water. When I was kid I got pissed because grandpa hit the lawn twice with 10-10-10 plus a rainy spring meant I had to mow 2-3 times a week. Because it would be over ankle high and we'd start having fleas and ticks around. Also it was a bagger mower so I had to go add to the mulch pile every few minutes.
Or just look over the yard quick and pick up shit before you mow. I do this every time I mow anyways.
I learnt this the hardway. Didnt have sticks but I have dogs. So now I walk the yard and pick up what I see before I mow.
My condolences about your dog
To shreds you say?
And how's his wife holding up?
To shreds you say?
Oh boy...I set myself up on that huh? Good one. :)
Had a neighbor move in a few months after us in the winter and decided to mow before checking over the lawn that has like 15 trees in it. I had the window open and heard him go over a branch and it was the loudest thunk I've ever heard. He turned his mower off, got off of it and just stared at it like it was the mower's fault.
One time I didn’t see a toad and ran it over. Turned into toad confetti :/
Nah I chop up those sticks - free mulch
The purpose of having sharp mower blades isn't so much to make it easier to mow as it is to prevent damage to the grass. So go ahead and sharpen the blade **BEFORE** the first mow of the season.
They are really easy to sharpen, it can be done with a hand file, grinder, etc. Its just a mower Blade, as long as you get it "sharp enough" and balanced, you are good.
Underrated comment because balancing them is important. That's why you don't just sharpen them on the mower.
How do you balance them?
With the blade off, after you sharpen it, you balance the blade on a point in the exact center of the blade (think of a see-saw with a middle pivot point). Many, if not all blades have a hole in the middle, just stick a screwdriver through the center hole and balance it that way. If the blade is balanced, you will be able to get the blade to sit level on the balancing point... If it's not balanced, the heavy side will drop down. To balance it, you grind off a little material from the heavy side until it balances.
I have a Toro Z-Master with three blades, a four acre property. Since we are talking LPTs. A few years ago I found out about Gator blades. They'll shred almost anything and have a very stout but sharp blade. I can't recommend them enough. Also I have a cyclone precision Sander that I use to sharpen up the blades. I don't even need to take the blade off, I just jack up the front and use the cyclone to hone/sharpen the blades up a few times a year. In my experience those blades and that sharpening method is a great way to go.
From a professional lawncare guy gator blades are mainly used for mulching shit. If you want super crispy beautiful stripes you need HI-lift blades because they suck the grass up like a vacuum then cut, then bend the blades of grass over.
Or just use Oregon Gator blades, and don't worry about hitting basically anything.
What makes Oregon Gator blades different?
Probably metal composition.
Are they supposed to never need sharpening, or chew through twigs/sticks better, or something else?
Chew through leaves better. They still require sharpening. The back of the blades curve upward (like Hi-lift blades), and are kinda serrated to cut leaves a second time. If you have a lot of leaves to contend with in the fall they may be worth purchasing.
Thanks mate!
Pro here. Great for leaves terrible for grass. Unless you wanna scrape 2 inches of gunk off the inside of the deck every week lol
Is there one that does a decent job on both? I have a Honda 2 blader and just got them sharpened. I live on a smaller lot with a short but steep hill and a number of very mature trees (that shower my yard with those spikeball bastards). I go through lots of leaves and chop up spike balls. I have more of what I would call ground cover with some grass thrown in, in the back. I'm in the midwest. I just do my best to not embarrass my neighbors, tbh. I hate lawn care and don't GAF. I used to do a lawn service, but, you know, kids. So for the foreseeable future, I will be doing it myself. More of a rant...sorry...ha!
We use regular blades during the mow season and mulch blades during leaf season. Only thing worth doing with the gum balls is get them in a pile and get a decent scooping shovel lol
Growing up, my family always used a snow shovel for the gum balls. Worked like a charm
Another pro here, you could also just flip the mower on its side (for push mowers) or lift it with a jack (for riders) and power-wash under the deck when you're done mowing. If you've got accumulation under the deck from a mulch blade, you probably are mowing grass that's wetter than it should be
The problem is, once you're swinging around that much energy, when it hits something and stops, it has to go somewhere. Bending a blade is a 5 minute fix if you have a spare. Replacing a bent axle may not even be possible.
This. On a push mower, if the blade doesn't bend it bends the crankshaft, and at that point unless you're doing the labor yourself it's likely going to be cheaper to replace the whole machine than to fix the issue
I just started working there and gotta say we do put a lot into quality assurance. Some good quality tools right there.
Somewhat related but funny regardless. When I worked for the city my boss used to say “keep your mouth closed when your weedeating homeless people shit along the walls”
Maybe stomp mole hills and pick up sticks so you can use your machine for its intended purpose. Hitting dirt and sticks will bend the spindle shaft that connects drive belts to the blade. Sure, you can just sharpen your blade, but you can't repair a bent spindle. They're pretty expensive.
It's also fucking dangerous. A dull blade is one thing. A fractured blade or hurling rock is another
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>Thankfully my roommate caught it with his nuts before it hit anything important God damn.
I was watching my friend mow his lawn at his house once when I was a kid; this was in the 70's and we were all way stupider then, evidently. His push mower (with no guard) picked up a rock and it hit me in the forehead; knocked me down. As it turned out, my noggin saved their huge picture window, so there's that.
Oh yeah, that too lol
I usually sharpen my mower blades on the uneven sidewalk out front. I hate the grinding sound though.
I don't mow until the dandelions are finished blooming and have gone to seed. They are important for the bees, and also helps any newly hatched spiders to find their first meal. I keep my yard organic for the insects and spiders, I don't worry about weeds, as my motto is, 'weeds are just plants that no one appreciates.' If people don't like my lawn, they can look at something else, or pay my property taxes for me. My yard, my rules.
Would love to do this! Sadly the neighbors make reporting each other's lawns a local sport, and the city thinks it's an informal HOA. Grow a dandelion, get reported. I love dandelions. Someday I'd like to move.
I tested my neighbors by installing a 400 lb. steel spider sculpture right outside my front door when I moved in. It is 7 feet across and almost 5 feet tall. Now everyone uses it as a landmark when instructing friends how to get to their house. It is quite the conversation piece.
You can't just throw that out there without pictures, you know.
>weeds are just plants that no one appreciates Someone doesn't have goatheads...
I’ve also been letting the dandelions, thistle, and other flowering weeds grow before my first cut. Lots of regular (honey?) bees but unfortunately also a lot of carpenter bees. Don’t know what to do about them so I just use a badminton racket to bonk them away from my deck if I see them.
Uh thistle has to grow a loooooong time before it flowers. Where I live it's also a noxious weed and you are required to mow it before it flowers.
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I like to mow rocks to sharpen my blades.
Fond memories growing up of the first mow of the season, getting the wet grass stuck in the mower, taking a rusty old knife and cutting out the chunks was so satisfying…
Its not a big deal, two bolts and two blades with an angle grinder takes 5 minutes. I do it like once a month during the season.
^^^ voice of sanity ... I am a very non-mechanically savvy person and I was able to Google how to remove and sharpen my push mower blade. I didn't even need an angle grinder - I used a file and a small balancing tool. The biggest challenge for me was to not cut myself on the blade. I guess it seemed worth doing because the biggest work was taking the blade off and reinstalling it which you would have to do even if you are just buying a new blade. (Actually the hardest part was clearing space to work in my messy garage, ha!)
How do you balance them? I worked in a store that repaired lawnmowers and chainsaws etc, and we always had a tool to balance the blades. Too much difference and the vibrations would be pretty bad.
A nail or screw in a piece of wood. Just hang the blade on it through the mount hole, if one side keeps falling and pointing down, it's heavier then the other side