OOPS or Why you should always look for debris before mowing AKA Lawnmower carnage!

[fordmantpw]

OK Stihlrunner, your story takes the cake. Nobody can top that one!

 

[Rmart30]

Sometime in the late fall I lost a 20 ft x 3/8 chain off one of my equipment trailers. I thought it had fallen off going down the road or someone had borrowed it.
I was wrong ... first cutting in the spring with a yard full of leaves to mulch I found it. It takes all of about 2 seconds to wrap a entire 20 ft chain up in the deck and kill the motor.

 

[jerrybob]

OK Stihlrunner, your story takes the cake. Nobody can top that one!

If they can.....they're either a liar or dead! Wow.....that was one tough day Stihlrunner!

 

[daveshoot]

OMG I feel better about my day(s) now.

I did chop up some buried bricks that a trencher had unearthed in tall grass. They don't mow worth a darn, but the sparks must have been cool. Q: Why do people bury bricks in pastures?

I have mowed several irrigation fixtures. They take a nice even cut well. And yeah, I too nailed a forgotten Victor Black Box gopher trap with the little Deere mower, in the dark. They are very good traps, being constructed of ballistic glass-reinforced kryptonite. Made me nostalgic for the brick.

 

[linuxman51]

wow some of you guys have had a rough row... this Jan or Feb (I don't recall.. mighta even been december) I was cleaning up the fenced in area in back with my craftsman, and for the occasion I'd procured two brand new blades freshly mounted up and ready to go...

I did my usual edging technique, that is I rested the lip of the deck on the pressure treated wood 'frame' around the brick walkway, and set forth with weed and leaf destruction in mind... I made it about 5 feet before the edge of one of the blades found something, or maybe the wood frame was distorted/splintered, I'll never know... it made a horrible crunching noise and stalled the mower. I looked down, saw dirt and wood fragments all over the place and thought... "I didn't see anything in the yard, what was that". Cranked the mower back up, couldn't engage the blades anymore, so I just drove forward a few feet and looked back... It'd snagged the side of the frame somehow (I've done this very thing an entire season without any issue), bent the heck out of one side of the blade, and before stalling the mower, tore a hole in the yard and shredded the side of the frame. :sigh:

off to the store again for another set of blades (now I've got a spare)..

on one of my old push mowers, the bolt that holds the blade to the shaft somehow got loose (surely it wasn't me being in a hurry after sharpening the blade...) and started making a funny noise, so I stopped, killed it and looked... glad I did. toes still intact.

 

[Roger2561]

You do know what happens to a brush hog when you find your neighbors 25 foot garden hose buried in the deep grass the kids were playing with? Not a darned thing! But, the garden hose was in approx. 100 2 inch long pieces.

 

[RaydaKub]

I have no pictures. But on our old '68 JD 110, I ran the following through it: bones, baler twine, barbed wire, rocks, branches, dirt, log chain, tire chain, & a fence post, but no re-bar.

I had to learn to sharpen the blades and use that skill more than once.

 

[oldballs]

I made a quick friend when our Postman wrapped about 10 feet of barbed wire around the driveshaft of his truck on our gravel winding road. Sliding under there with my wire cutters I got him on his way. So how did that hunk of wire get there?....Who knows.

 

[groundcover]

Old timer told me to never sharpen blades until you mow a time or two in the spring , words to live by !
Years ago got to do do a little mowing with a L175 Kubota with a Woods 59" belly mower. Got into some pretty thick grass and being a crafty kid thought that if I took the plate off the left side if the mower the grass would blow out both sides of the deck. A short time later a secetary came running out of the office and wanted to know if I saw anyone throwing rocks ,sure enough not only did the grass fly out but so did the rock that I must have found , right through a window ! Didn't take long for me to get that guard back on !

 

[Soundguy]

For me it was a horseshoe that did in my mower spindle!

small world.

I remember seeing my horse throw a shoe out inthe pasture when running.

I walked right then and there to the area they ran thru to get the shoe.

walked for 30m and never found it.

went out to mow and first pass mower found it.

go figure....