Easily Sharpen Your Lawn Mower Blades With The Help Of A Versatile Walmart Find

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Lawn mower blades take a lot of abuse, so they need to be sharpened regularly. But sharpening your own lawn mower blades at home, while not out of reach, can be a bit challenging. Making it much easier is the SporGain Lawn Mower Blade Sharpener — although its name is a bit of misnomer. This tool does not do the actual sharpening of the lawn mower blade, but it does make it easier. So much so that the average DIYer can feel confident taking on this sharpening task. You may be wondering, if it does not sharpen the blade, what exactly does it do? It holds the lawn mower blade securely and at the exact correct angle to make the sharpening act a piece of cake.

Once mounted in the SporGain Lawn Mower Blade Sharpener, you can sharpen the blade with something like an angle grinder or a traditional file. The tool is what craftspeople call a jig, which is an apparatus that makes a task easier and adds significant accuracy to a process. This tool is mounted securely to a workbench, at which point you mount the lawn mower blade in the jig and adjust it so the beveled cutting edge of the blade is in the perfect orientation to use the angle grinder, or whichever method you chose.

Looking at a dull blade, you'll see that edge is deformed, rounded, and nicked. To sharpen the blade, you'll regrind that bevel back to its original form. Do that by grinding evenly across the width of the bevel at the existing angle. The reason the SporGain Lawn Mower Blade Sharpener is so useful is it holds the blade, so you access the bevel and grind it without encumbrance. It sounds simple, but if you've tried to sharpen edges that are hard to reach, insecurely held, or are difficult to see, you'll understand why this tool is so useful.

To use this jig and sharpen a blade, take the blade off the mower. If it a gas-powered lawn mower, disconnect the spark plug wire before you do. Remove any gunky buildup from the blade and mount it in the jig. Grab your angle grinder (use safety gear!) and carefully grind off a tiny bit of metal in one smooth pass along the bevel, retaining the angle of the bevel. The goal is to remove the least amount of metal to get a fresh, sharp cutting edge. Complete the task by repeating the process on the other bevel. Check the mower blade for balance by hanging it by its arbor (mounting hole). If it rotates to one side, grind a tiny bit of metal off that side's bevel and check again until its balance.