Mower blade sharping jig. So easy, great results

I'm going to do a video on a lawnmower blade sharpening device I came up with it because I was I guess you might say little frustrated sometimes most of the time I sharpen my blades on a bench grinder and used to always just freehand them the only problem was that I have a good angle going and then I would stop to look at the angle and say well I gotta take a little more off and then once I go back in I find out I'm grinding on a different little bit of a tippler and what I had going really nice all the sudden turns out to not be so nice as far as a uniform and a nice consistent angle I don't know if you can see this or not but this one here already sharpened it's got the mulching portion of it these are two different angles well let's put it this way they might be the same angle on the plate but because of the difference in height I'll have to set it up for each angles this apparatus that I came up with basically it's a sliding wooden device and the blade is locked down on this here hinge it's a key hinge along with I've got threaded rod bent out of 90 degree threaded rod coupler to give it a pivot point two threaded rod toughest here to lock in my angle and if you notice if I get this one out of the way like we've opened down that way or so I want to lower so I got all this movement and I got quite a bit of adjustability here so what you really are up against is first of all locking the blade down I use a pair of I guess you could call them c-clamp see vice-grip clamped and what I did was I welded to warship fender washers on these pivot points reason for that is that with the small little pivot points on a regular pair give you an example they come like this a lot of times this one not so much sometimes this will flip there down here and when you have a set up and all of a sudden that flips down you go back to put these back on me flip the blade around it's like all of a sudden you're wondering why is it not adjusted correctly these even though they pivot around when you go in here they self align themselves they just just they're a bigger flatter surface so they just follow the shape of the blade and they self aligned and that's all I used to lock that down along with that T hinge I will do this little squirt tubing on here reason for that is the rounded portion of the key hands on some blades when you go to put them here they kind of slip off over and this know if you see this curvature here this one's fine it wouldn't do that there are some blades those curvature goes this way I mean you put up here put this on a tee hinge it'll you know slide right off and I just did that so that when you put the plate on it just adjust itself to a you know perpendicular position there clamp it down and you're ready to go now what this does is it with this sliding platform on nothing more than a plywood built base plywood built sliding table believe it or not it just works perfectly you come in and you and the best way to just this is instead of trying to just this any particular angle I usually just come in and touch off the grinding wheel flip it on I'll set this up I bow it and get it to where I think it's fairly close and then I'll get my adjustment made with the two threaded rod couplers so that I'm close at least as far as I know don't matter when you touch off on this grinding wheel it doesn't take very much of a other material off and this blade i sharpened already i've got four or five blades over there they're all they're all sharpened so I couldn't find a gun so what I did was just for demonstration purposes this one here I blackened out with a magic marker and I'll give you sort of a demonstration here on how I adjust this angle like I said I don't really care too much whether I'm really accurate on the end on the beginning because I'm gonna let this tell me what I need to do [Music] so I came in and you probably can't see it but I'm grinding way up here of hard on the angle that tells me this plate is gonna come up this way quite a bit actually so [Music] what I need to do is lower this to bring this edge up so I'll drop down this here read it wrong and I'm not gonna lock in a place all time down on that rusting on it Wow I'm already almost there they are blackened off portion of this is the wheels all the way down almost to the cutting edge be perfect come down this to hear more not be good to go and it's just as simple as that do the best thing to do is lock it down so that you keep that angle after that it's basically just straight forward it'll have a bed you don't have to be too careful it keeps the angle even though you may go a little less level of way it doesn't see the chain gang if you weren't wrestling on his flat surface and he went down like this or up like that that would change yeah this not so much it's just a piece of cake be honest with you I like it it takes the frustration out of shopping the blade it makes it almost pleasant whenever I have a lawnmower blade to sharpen I don't have that dreadful feeling like oh boy here I go again let's see what kind of a technique I can come up with this time to keep the angle nice and consistent now I have it all blackened off you can see how shiny and uniform it's just a perfect angle [Music] really really really takes a lot of a hassle I would say the hassle I love shocking a blade now being that this has got the mulching portion up here what I would do is flip the blade around so easy I found these little C clamp locking pliers through be about the best way to lock it down you got to adjust it yourself aligns and it's quick now you're ready to do the side here after I get that to where I'm happy with these two angles here then I'll come over and do the same thing here because the reason to change the angle is because it's coming up higher do this raised portion it's coming up higher on the on the grinding wheel so you'll find that okay you got to make a slight adjustment for that and then do that this one and really pretty much the done deal the this is just as simple as that can be G hinge I think this is a five-inch T hinge you wouldn't have to have this square tubing welded on there but I did and I like it if you don't or some planes will kind of flip over and you just have to take a little more time to get that set in there straight down and lock it this is nothing more than a quarter inch threaded rod corner and threaded rod couplers same thing down here I'll weld it to a little piece of flat stock drill two holes put two screws in there and then I built this to a box and that and the reason for that is it brings it up to give me the hype I need so that when this blades is is on here it's just so easy it puts it in you don't have to be in the center of this right and we'll for this to work you could be here here here here it's just that it's kind of a happy medium area so that they give you an example if this box was higher and you're up here that blade would have to be really really children and you may run out some adjust that if it's too long of course she'll be down into this area I took the guard off I should say the tool rest got that right out of the way I kind of made this a dedicated reinder for my slaw mower blades and although all this wheel here I can use it as a regular grinder I've got another one on the bench if you this doesn't have to be this is like self contained so I can move it around I like to put it on this roll around table I have and kind of gets it out here in the open a lot of the filings will go on to the floor and I can vacuum them up later and so if you notice I got this kind of offset on this and the reason for that is if you put this over here you're gonna come up and hit this before this blade gets over far enough so this offset it here if you're gonna make one of these this is roughly I forget but I think it's roughly three inches but that's not critical doesn't have to be hollow it could be a solid block you just kind of want something that's uniform and has a nice flat plane to it the fact that you're going to fly but against plywood you don't find it to be any effort really it's not like it's got to be that smooth of an operation that is pretty much I've got this like it set bolted down it is only for the reason I like being able to put them on the rolling table you can put one over on to your bench and if you do the thing you might want to do is and you can see this kind of come out from this and what's going to happen if this is mount a real pulsed-air bench this is going to be out into the open there's ways around it either move this back or you can mill a box like this with a little petition on it you screw it down to your bench and just move it when you really don't need it for a period of time now I I do some lot more work but not tons of it and I got to I got to where I'm really really happy with this I'm really happy so happy and pleased that I'm not even gonna try to figure out a better way to do it now another thing I was gonna tell you see how this you got that little weird star shaped center hole I don't know about you but if your balance plays and you got one of those little pedestal balancers and you put it on there you get this kind of way that's really hard you got to almost guess where the center is and then hope for the best and sometimes you get weird reading a bolt of conflicting readings if you the flip it in the end you think when is having any find out this will you not I went out bought a blade sharpener over here hope you can see it but it's one of these more precision sharp not sharp it's one of these here magnetic balancers you put that on there and run away you see the heavy ends right here this cone shape mounting excuse me of portion of the balancer will self align the blade so that when you bring the magnets forward it just puts that way every time you put it on you're gonna see that that's the heavy side and then basically all you got to do is run off some more on that heavy side that was about $80 shipping it all maybe a little over and I got to wear now when I balanced the blades it's like I don't feel a beautiful don't mind doing it at all it's almost fun now the last video I did I did one on I did this Harbor Freight circular saw sharpener I have a video on that if you go to my channel you'll find out how I build it and how you can go about it and I'll tell you I really like it I'm thinking about maybe coming up with a video on how to build this little shed this shed is really tiny it's four by four seven and a half feet tall and it's about I would say total materials I figured out about two hundred and eighty dollars you would think you could build it cheaper than that but if you figure every little every little thing including paint screws hardware you know it all adds up the interesting thing about it is I built this without any shingles on a row and I'm not getting a very good picture because I didn't plan on necessarily putting this on this video but it's smart siding from Home Depot with a smart siding roof and with a cap and these little pieces to finish it off to give us some overhang and make it watertight so hopefully I'll get it build a four by eight yeah four by six I should say I used to do all the other size sheds I gave it up pretty much I should say pretty much all the big ones I quit building too much now too much for me to do and this one here I can build in the shop I got that one sold I got a four by eight scream a four by six old and I got a little flatbed nose tool right on easily maybe in the future I'll do a video on how I load that onto my little flatbed trailer thank you for watching and I'm slow about getting videos out but I do have some other ideas I'd like to put on eventually that I find helpful maybe you will too thank you

Channel: Wes McBride

Views: 168,832

Keywords: lawnmower blade sharpener, Lawnmower repair, small engine, blade sharpener, mower blade, mower repair, mower blade sharpener

Id: 1nYosJtiE2A

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 23 2020