how often do you sharpen your blades?

[Indydirtfarmer]

Ive got a pair of identical 265 Deere mowers. One stays at the house, the other is at the farm. I bring the one at he farm home 2 or 3 times a season for service.

Last summer, I had someone recommend Gator blades as a replacement for the O.E.M. blades. I bought one set. I installed them on the mower that says at home. It cut better than I've ever seen EITHER Deere mower cut. When I brought #2 home for service, I cut part of the yard with it, and another part with #1 (with Gator Blades) The part cut by the gators looked MUCH cleaner than the part cut with the O.E.M. blades.

All the proof I needed. Now they BOTH have Gator Blades....

Last year, we also started using Gator blades on all the equipment at the golf course where they were aplicable.

 

[Nasty135]

Fellas, I used to sharpen my RFM blades before I use it the first time in spring and that was it ,But now that I'm using a ZTR and it makes my yard look like a LAWN with its manuverability and striper I noticed a very slight amount of clumping the last couple mows and it hadn't had any of that when it was new this spring. So I finally did a deck cleaning and blade sharping yesterday. Used a nicholson single cut file for precise control of the angle and edge, it didn't take very long, (took longer getting the blades off,WOW were they tight ) Now the test will be when I mow next /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

[Nasty135]

Well , If anybody is interested, the following cuts have not been much better, But I believe its due to HI-DEW levels in my mowing timing too late in the day trying to avoid some of the heat /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif plus it has been growing faster than I can get it cut ,been working too much to keep up with things ,so it was too tall for a good job to be possible....plus that late summer grass is coming in thick and causing most of this problem /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif(kind of kelley green and always damp)YUK!!

One thing I have noticed is the sweet spot for a good job is about 3.25" or lower any attempt at getting a good cut with tall grass above that doesn't cut all the grass,That's probably due to the speed of the cut (why I bought a Z in the first place)of course speed and dampness has alot to do with the quality of the cut in the first place.