Tractor Supply Has An Affordable All-In-One Tool To Sharpen Lawn Mower Blades And Tools

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Every craftsman, tool maven, and over-the-neighbor's-fence tool talker reaches a point in life when they have to answer a critical question: Are you going to be the type who buys delicate angle guides and holds forth on whetstone grit, or the type who needs to sharpen the blade at hand and actually get some work done? If you're the latter, you might do well with this Tractor Supply find: a $17.99 AccuSharp All-In-1 sharpener that can spiff up just about any garden tool blade in seconds. And the former? Hey, everyone has garden shears to quickly touch up now and then, including people who are picky about the exclusive angles on their Wüsthof and Shun chef's knives.

I've been using AccuSharp knife sharpeners for over a decade to sharpen kitchen knives and just about everything else, from tiny pocketknives to dagger-like insulation knives that are serrated on one side. I've never regretted it, and I've never cut myself using one. The All-In-1 is similar to the classic AccuSharp, but with diamond-honed tungsten carbide sharpeners at both ends, and an additional slot for scissors. Double-bevel tools like knives, axes, and hatchets use the two-sharpener side; single-bevel tools like pruners, loppers, shears, and mower blades use the one-sharpener side.

AccuSharp sharpeners are sold in thousands of stores, but Tractor Supply seems to be the best bet for finding it in stock locally. The All-In-1 comes in three standard variants: the blue 100C, green 101C, and orange 102C, which appears to have a redesigned rest, while the 100C and 101C include two hanging loops instead. The redesigned thumb rest may eventually roll out to all three versions.

If there's any reason to avoid the AccuSharp All-In-1, it might be the instructions that come with it, which have garnered a fair number of complaints from buyers on Amazon. Anyone familiar with a pull-through knife sharpener will probably figure things out quickly, but there are a couple of key concepts to get a handle on. First is understanding the importance of sharpening single-bevel blades on the correct side. You're going to always want to use the single-cutter slot, and always use the cutter on the beveled edge of your tool. Otherwise, you'll destroy your shears or loppers because the flat sides won't meet anymore. Note that mower blades are also one-sided, so never sharpen both sides of lawn mower blades.

Sharpening with the All-In-1 is simply a matter of positioning the correct cutting side as near to the blade's hinge, knife guard, or mower blade arbor hole as possible and firmly but lightly drawing the tungsten carbide cutters along the length of the blade edge. You should feel the cutter(s) biting into the metal. For curved blades, the All-In-1 features a curved cutout that will allow you to easily move the sharpener along the arc of the blade. In the case of a mower blade, you can even safely use this model without removing the mower blade and without any concerns about unbalancing the blade, since you're removing relatively little material. Sharpen mower blades every 20-25 hours of use, and sharpen other garden tools when they need it. Remember, you don't need a mower blade sharp enough to shave with, and in fact, the sharpest possible mower blade will dull very quickly due to the speed and force it cuts with.

For double-bevel blades, the nominal 21-degree sharpening angle of the AccuSharp All-In-1 is actually a "degrees per side" measurement — the standard way blade bevel angles are described. Japanese cutlery famously has a 15-degree sharpening angle, but this actually works out to a total 30-degree inclusive angle. That is, the angle between each side of the bevel should be 30 degrees. That means the 21-degree angle of the All-In-1 creates a 42-degree inclusive angle — a very sturdy pitch.

Even before the launch of their 21- and/or 15-degree "gourmet series" of sharpeners, AccuSharp was the brand of choice for big names in culinary media like Christopher Kimball, Cook's Illustrated, and America's Test Kitchen. And while the 42-degree angle might be below the recommendation for some garden tools, it should produce a very sharp but also very long-lasting edge. 

This style of sharpener is best used for restoring the edge of a garden tool blade that's in reasonably good shape. That arguably makes it the ideal tool for frequent touch-ups, in conjunction with more aggressive occasional sharpening with a tool like a bench or angle grinder. To get a handle on how deeply the All-In-1 is beveling your tools, you can use this clever kitchen-knife Sharpie trick to see exactly where material is being removed.