The Life of a Mower

Winter.  It’s the best time of the year. Tongue in cheek.

There’s just nothing like waking up while it’s still dark out and heading to a shop that can’t get above 50 degrees because the windchill is -40 outside.  Jealous?

Unfortunately, it’s simply a job that needs to be done.  Winter is time for us to pull some heavy maintenance on machines and equipment.  Reels are removed from all of our mowers and their blades are sharpened and new bed knives are installed.

These aren’t officially cutting reels on this mower, but I thought it might work to explain.  The reels are the cutting mechanism.  As the reel spins around, it cuts the grass once it passes through the bed knife.  The whole thing gets rolled over by the rollers to give a nice smooth finish.

The guys have been busy.  Every day a new piece of machinery comes into the shop.

This fairway mower wasn’t used much last year because it had a serious steering problem.  As in, the person on the mower couldn’t mow a straight line because it weaved all over the place!  Our crew never found the time to get it fixed in the summer months, so it was number one on the list of repairs.  The seat was removed, so they could get a good look at what was going on underneath the machine.

Once it was removed, they could give everything the once over.  I won’t pretend to be a mechanic, so I definitely won’t be providing any details on the fix.

I just know that the job often calls for some seriously dirty hands.

I won’t take offense to this sign, but I’m pretty sure it was probably put up just for someone like my non-mechanic self.  A little reminder never hurts!

Our zero turn mowers have regular lawn mower blades.  They all get either replaced or sharpened over the winter.

They’re all removed and then sent through the grinder.

Luckily our staff have a lot of fun together, so it makes the daily grind (pun intended) easy to bare!

In the case of this picture, it looks like they also have fun supervising one another.  “Yep.  You’re performing some good work there, Doug.  I’ll just stand here and hold up this mower.”