Blade overlap on finish mower?

[Gunny]

I just bought a used finish mower and while cleaning it up and getting it ready to go, I noticed that there is no blade overlap, in fact, none of the blades even come within an inch of each other during the cycle.

I've still got to cut the PTO shaft and I'm waiting on some spacers, so I haven't actually tried the mower out, but it seems to me that if there's no overlap in the cutting pattern, I'll have little ridges of uncut grass.

Is this normal, or am I thinking I've got a problem where none exists? I've got a Gravely commercial with a 42" or 44" deck and the blades cutting pattern on them has about 1/2" overlap.

 

[hosspuller]

The overlap is in the fore and aft position of the spindles on the deck. If the blades actually overlapped a collision will eventually happen. A disk mower for hayfields overlap, But the blades are gear driven so the timing is fixed.

One possibility ... someone put the wrong sized blades on.

 

[Gunny]

Hosspuller - you nailed that one down pretty quick. I just came in from hoisting the mower up so that I could check things out and they just didn't look right. After a lot of head scratching, I got the tape measure out and the middle blade is almost two inches shorter than the two outer blades.

Laying on my back and looking up, I guess I just couldn't see the difference

Thanks, appreciate it.

 

[Xfaxman]

Hosspuller - you nailed that one down pretty quick. I just came in from hoisting the mower up so that I could check things out and they just didn't look right. After a lot of head scratching, I got the tape measure out and the middle blade is almost two inches shorter than the two outer blades.

Laying on my back and looking up, I guess I just couldn't see the difference

Thanks, appreciate it.

That may be right. I have had mower decks with a shorter center blade.

Here are some pictures from Google Image Search to show how it works.

The center blade just needs to be longer than the distance between the outer blades, but not long enough to hit them

 

[Gunny]

Thanks for all your help guys.

Just to be on the safe side, I bought a new set of blades (using the mfg part number) and all three blades were the same size. With that purchase, the mower was ready to go and it did a great job.

Guess the original owner must have bent a blade and just happened to have one around that was close enough for his purposes!