CCWKen
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2005
- Messages
- 1,194
- Location
- South Texas, USA
- Tractor
- Ford-3910, JD-420C, Kenbota-Custom, IH-2606
Perhaps John Deere steel needs a thicker edge to keep from nicking.
Perhaps John Deere steel needs a thicker edge to keep from nicking.
As long as the wheels are not touching the ground when you are parked you are OK. They should only touch ground when the mower rocks or dips while moving. Are the new blades perfectly flat along the cutting edge? I recently bought blades that had a small warp in them. I hammered it flat and they cut smooth again.I changed to new blades (Oregon) I think they're called. Didn't make a lot of difference from the old blades which were about a year old. I'm getting some uneven cutting even after I checked to see that the deck was level. My manual says to have the wheels that are under the deck "just off the ground" while in the cutting height and on level ground. I set the wheels down from where they were and now I can barely get my index finger under each of the wheels. My thinking is that maybe the wheels are too close to the ground and not allowing the deck enough movement to make up for uneven ground in spots. What are your thoughts please?
Thanks for the reply. Yes the blades seem flat. I took them off a "slightly" sharpened them as they were more than butter knife in thickness. I take it that the only part you sharpen as at the tips and sharpen only the bottom side of the blades. Tomorrow I'll try setting the wheels up one notch to give the deck a bit more play and see if that helps. It's very difficult to get under the deck and measure from the ground to the blades to see if they are the same distance on each side but they appear to be and in measuring the deck frame on each side to the ground are dead on if that makes sense.
The bottoms of my Oregon Gator blades have a grit welded onto them, so you would not want to sharpen the bottom side. I stopped using mine because the cutting edge is 3/8" lower than my stock blades. The Oregon blades dip down from the spindle and I mow my field on the highest setting, and did not want to go 3/8" lower. I switched to Max Power / Diamondback blades which are completely straight, with no dip.