How To Sharpen And Balance A Lawn Mower Blade Correctly

here we are Steve small in the saloon again guys thanks for tuning in I've had a lot of requests a lot of emails comments on my channel asking for this video can you show us how to sharpen a lawnmower blade why yes I can I'm gonna do one step better than that even I'm gonna show you how to sharpen a lawnmower blade and then I'm gonna show you how to balance it properly to which is very important also the first thing you got to do to do this job you got to go get yourself some Heineken unfortunately that's the only beer you can use for doing this job next thing you need to do get your blade off if you don't know how to get your blade off or even if you think you do go back to my channel I have a video on my channel called how to install your lawnmower blade properly that gives you a couple good tips and tricks on how to get your lawn mower blade off and then also how to put it back on properly so it's not upside-down go look at that get your lawn mower blade off next thing you need to do is you need to have something to sharpen it with if you got a big file like a hand file an axe file or something like that don't even bother you need a power tool of some kind to do this otherwise you're gonna be there all day today I'm going to show you how to do this with our angle grinder the other thing that you can use for for doing this video is a bench grinder believe it or not I don't have a bench grinder in the saloon but hopefully just so you know what I'm talking about April do you have that picture of that bench grinder there boom there you go that's a bench grinder it doesn't really matter how you sharpen the blade in in respect to how you're actually taking the metal off of there how you're actually sharpening it the real point is is the end result for how that blade adds up next thing you have to do is decide right now if your blade is actually worth sharpening or not you have a blade that looks like that right there you see that don't even bother sharpening that thing you put that on your lawnmower you just converted your lawnmower into a rototiller you got a look down that blade look down it like it's a gun barrel gun barrel that thing there's my new word of the day right there gun barrel it look down that thing like that flip it over look down that side again both sides like that until they look the same to you if it looks the same to you when you gun barrel that thing down there it's probably straight enough if you don't get it perfectly straight it's gonna vibrate on you when you're using it a lot more buy yourself a new blade if you think your blade is too badly bent if you're using a angle grinder to do it my favorite way of holding that is just to pinch that in your in your bench vise again you pinch that in there like that and then you run that blade up and down here if you don't have a bench grinder if you don't have a bench vise all those you have is an angle grinder I don't see any reason why you can't just hold that in your hand like that and just eye protection your protection gloves probably hold that in your hand and just run that blade up and down like that as you're holding it in your hand I can't see why you can't do that give that a shot the key points to sharpening your lawnmower blade is this when I sharpen a lawnmower blade I try to sharpen it back to what it looked like when it was originally a new blade now you see how sharp this edge is that is the angle of the blade what they are new this is a new blade some people will actually sharpen their blade at a steeper angle down like this because it saves time but you're not getting that original angle that real sharp angle on there you want to keep sharpening this thing on the top side of your blade only the top side that's the reason that you have to take it off of your lawnmower to do this if it's on your lawnmower there's no way to sharpen the top side of the blade without taking it off you can't sharpen the bottom side of the blade you can't sharpen this thing like a knife where you have you go on a 45 degree on one side of 45 degree on the other side shortening a lot like a knife you can't do that if you sharpen it like that like a knife or if you only sharpen it on the bottom side you don't bother taking it off what that's gonna do is it's gonna tear your grass off it's not going to slice your grass off evenly and cleanly it's going to end up ripping or tearing your grass off next day you're gonna go out on your nice manicured lawn and you're gonna see these little brown tips all over your grass because they're torn I'm gonna show you a quick demo right here I'm gonna put this in my vise right now I'm gonna use the angle grinder so you can see how I'm actually sharpening that at the proper angle for as long as you need to take off as much material as you need to until you look at the bottom side of your blade the grass side of your blade and all these little rock chips like this are all gone all these dings are gone and it looks like this nice and smooth along that cutting edge right there see the difference between those two good job guys now you got a perfectly straight blade perfectly sharp blade in your hand now when you were sharpening that blade to get a perfectly sharp on both sides there's a good chance that you actually ended up removing more material off of one side than the other side your blade might not be perfectly balanced now it might be heavier on one side or the other the reason that we want to have a perfectly balanced blade on your lawnmower is because that it'll vibrate if it's not balanced if it's really out of balance first of all it's gonna vibrate so bad that you're barely gonna be able to hold on to that thing it's gonna make your hands now holding on to it second problem with that is your lawnmower will literally tear itself apart I'm not kidding you're gonna have broken bolts coming out you're gonna have loose bolts falling out you're gonna have right where the lawnmower engine is bolted down to the body of your lawnmower the deck of your lawnmower those mounts will start cracking and breaking you'll destroy your lawn mower after time you want to balance this blade now this is easy to do here's one right here I know this is new here's a little blade balancer you can go get one of these from your small engine shop they're cheap I put this one on I know it's balanced that's balanced never been sharpened I already know it's balanced that looks great this one here not so much see the difference that's heavier on that side than it is on this side the easiest way to balance your blade is to just keep removing material off of the heavy side best way to do that in my opinion is just to keep sharpening it do what you were doing before just keep sharpening it and keep sharpening it even though it's sharp on that side you're not worried about that anymore all you're doing is removing more material keep sharpening it on that side until it's good be flat and even doubt on your balancer it's as easy as that now you don't have one of these things you don't have access to one of these things you don't want one of these things put it aside you're gonna see some videos out there that are gonna tell you how to balance a blade and they're gonna say pound a nail in the wall and just hang your blade on a nail to do that well I don't think that's reliable that's my opinion I'm gonna show you why right now there's our blade right there I know it's balanced we just balanced it on the balancer you put a nail in the wall you hang it on the wall does that look balanced it doesn't look balanced to me like you can do whatever you want on that nail and how is that reliable in my opinion that is a very unreliable way of balancing your blade if you don't want that specific balancer here's my next favorite way of balancing a blade that is a six inch extension for a ratchet put that down and put your blade on it right in the center so you can see through that central hole now grab that extension and just roll it back and forth until it's balanced you look down through that center hole and you can see whether that extension is in the dead center of that hole or not that is perfect right there here's the one that's out of balance will do with that one I roll that back and forth until it's actually balancing and you can see that there's balance right there but you can clearly see looking through that central hole right there that the extension is nowhere near in the center of that hole it's that's more reliable than putting the old nail in the wall trick I'll tell you that so I hope that was clear enough and thorough enough for you guys I hope I didn't bore you guys to death with that one but you know me I like to be as clearness thorough better than the other guy out there so if you liked it please give me that thumbs up button there and subscribe to my channel if you haven't subscribed already that'd be awesome till the next episode again guys Steve out

Channel: Steve's Small Engine Saloon

Views: 807,555

Rating: 4.9151039 out of 5

Keywords: how, to, do, diy, lawn, replace, cut, tutorial, help, broken, stroke, four, two, garden, small, engine, repair, fix, learn, hedge, brush, start, simple, basic, easy, generator, mower, riding, chain, saw, weed, eater, grass, install, blade, bar, properly, tips, tricks, efficiently, google, stihl, husqvarna, husky, echo, honda, shindiawa, hand, held, wont, dull, not, diagnose, save, money, bogging, idle, up, outdoor, power, equipment, leaf blower, lawnmower, balance, sharpen, How Do I Properly Sharpen and Balance a Lawn Mower Blade?

Id: HkTqhfydrjk

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 30 2017