Sharpening lawn mower blades is something you will find yourself doing on a regular basis when you own a lawn care business.  If you don’t keep the blades nice and sharp you won’t get the best results when you are mowing your clients’ lawns.

The process of sharpening the blades is quite a simple one, but you need to ensure you follow it through perfectly each and every time.  This will ensure your safety while handling the mower and the blades, and also a good result when you next come to trim a lawn.

For starters you need to drain all the gas out of your lawn mower.  This is because you’ll need to turn it over to undo the blade.  You also don’t want the mower starting up accidentally, so disconnect the spark plug to prevent this from happening.  Once those two tasks are done, you’re ready to take the blade off.

Make sure you wedge the blade in place before you unscrew the bolt holding it onto the mower.  You can do this with a specific blade locking tool or simply a good sized piece of wood.

Take off the bolt, remove the blade – being sure to handle it carefully as you do so – and then put it in a vise.  This is the easiest way to sharpen it as you don’t need to hold the blade while you are doing it.

You should have a good quality file to perform the job, but don’t just sharpen lawn mower blades by doing it any old way.  You need to keep count of the number of times you sharpen it on each side.  Think about how the blade cuts through the grass and you’ll see why this is the case.  If you sharpen one section more than the other you’ll notice the blade cuts unevenly the next time you take it onto a lawn.  So do a couple of swipes one side and then repeat the same number on the other side.  Keeping count by doing just a few at a time will ensure you get an evenly sharpened blade every time.

Once you’ve got a nice sharp blade back again, you’ll need to reattach it to the mower by reversing the instructions above.  Start inserting the bolt and manually tighten it, then finish it off with the wrench.  Put the spark plug back in place and replace the gas, then you’re all set to go.

Remember that whenever you take the blade off to sharpen it, you should check it thoroughly first on both sides to see what condition it is in.  Not all blades can be sharpened effectively every time, and the longer you’ve had it the less likely it will be that sharpening will do the job.  If it is very badly damaged you should think about buying a replacement one instead.

As a professional lawn care expert you will need to sharpen and replace the blade for your mower a lot more often than a regular home user would.  To this end it might pay to keep a spare handy at all times.

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