How To Balance A Lawn Mower Blade

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As we’re sure you might very well agree, lawn mowers are one of the most useful garden tools there is.

Not only do they have the ability to help keep lawns in perfect condition, but they help to make maintenance easier – especially when there’s a lot of area to cover.

However, if you’re already familiar with lawn mowers, you might be aware of the frustrating vibrating sound that can occur after prolonged use. When a lawn mower begins to vibrate more than normal, it can make trimming difficult to carry out.

Believe it or not, one of the most common culprits of a vibrating lawn mower is an unbalanced mower blade.

So, in this article, we are going to be talking you through the steps of rebalancing your lawn mower blade to ensure you are able to continue using your mower as normal.

Whenever you’re ready, just read on!

Why Is Rebalancing Lawn Mower Blades Important?

So, before we get any further into this guide, we first think that it would be a good idea to cover why it is so important to make sure that you are balancing your lawn mower’s blade if it becomes unbalanced. 

Believe it or not, an unbalanced blade is extremely capable of causing a great variety of issues to their mowers, and can even prevent a lawn mower from being able to trim grass correctly.

By making sure that lawnmower blades are balanced, it means that you will be able to effectively distribute the weight of the blade evenly from one side over to the other.

Thanks to that, it means that the mower blade will then be inclined in the center to ensure that both sides of the blade are propionate in weight, and this will in turn allow for the lawn mower to be able to effectively trim and cut. 

That being said, when mower blades become unbalanced, a whole variety of different problems can occur.

Besides being super dangerous, an unbalanced mower blade can lead to damage to the internal structural bolts of your mower, the inability to effectively trim overgrown grass and even damage to the engine! 

All that being said, not only is it very important to make sure that you are maintaining the optimal balance of your lawnmower in order to ensure a great performance each time that you use it, but it is also important to prevent any internal damage to your lawn mower, too.

Now, let’s move on to our next section to learn more about how to sharpen your blade.

How To Balance A Lawn Mower Blade

Now that we have covered the importance of balancing lawn mower blades, we are now going to be talking to you about how you  can effectively balance your own. 

The good news is that balancing a blade is pretty simple to do by yourself, and will typically consist of only a few steps. Let’s take a look at them below:

1. Fasten The Blade Over The Nail Head

First things first, you are going to need to fasten the blade over the nail head.

In order to do this, you are going to need to take a hammer and drive a large-sized nail down into a wall plank (if you do not have one – these can be easily found at a homeware store).

Once you have done this, you can then go ahead and balance the lawn mower blade by placing the hole of the blade over the nail head.

2. Rotate The Blade A Quarter Turn

How To Balance A Lawn Mower Blade

Once you have completed the first step, you will then be ready to proceed to blade rotation. In order to do this effectively, you are going to need to begin by trying to turn the blade to the right a quarter turn.

If you can see that the blade stays perfectly balanced when doing this, then you can assume that the blade is balanced and put it back into your lawn mower.

However, if you are noticing that the blade is rotating itself back to its original position, then this is a surefire sign that the blade is unbalanced.

To fix this issue, you are going to need to file down the blade as there is a part of it that is too heavy and knocking the rest of the blade off balance. This brings us to our next section.

3. File Down The Blade

Once you have determined which part of the blade is the heaviest and is, in turn, causing the rest of the blade to become unbalanced – you are then going to be ready to move onto the next step of filing it down.

In order to do this, remove the blade from the nail that you have attached it to and proceed to clamp it to a workbench or an alternative surface that offers plenty of stability. 

Then, taking a smooth file, proceed to file down the area of the blade that is the heaviest. All the while, you should make sure that you are regularly removing the blade from the clamp in order to check whether or not it is balanced.

In order to do this, all you are going to need to do is simply place the blade back onto the nail and rotate it a right turn once again. If it does not move, then it is balanced.

However, if it does move, then you will need to file it down some more as it is still unbalanced.

4. Repeat Until Balanced

If you find that the blade is balanced after your first try, then you can go ahead and place the blade back into the mower. However, if it is still unbalanced after your first try – you are going to need to continue filing down the blade until it is balanced.

Wrapping Up

There we have it. You’ve made it to the end!

Now that you have read through this guide, we hope that you now have a much better understanding of why it is so important to balance your lawn mower blades, as well as how to do it! Goodbye for now.

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