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Serious about the shop
The money may be made out on the course, but it all starts with some vital equipment back in the shop.
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Superintendents who’ve been in the business longer than 15 to 20 years will tell you — the golf course maintenance shop has evolved tremendously in that time, with automatic spin grinders that sharpen blades while technicians tend to other tasks, height adjustment tools that accommodate the precision of an ever-shortening height of cut and hydraulic lifts to get equipment off the ground for inspection and repairs.
In a recent GCSAA poll, more than 1,100 superintendents voted on their most important shop tools. Almost 18 percent said grinders; 17 percent voted for height adjustment tool; and 12 percent went with a hydraulic lift.
Advancements in these tools have made the job of superintendents and technicians easier and increased the consistency of golf course conditions such as height of cut and the health and vitality of the grass.
Many technicians in shops across the country have become accustomed to what some view as luxuries, and others go to great lengths to reap the benefits of these advanced shop tools.
Get a lift
Last February, Ben Babbage left his position as assistant superintendent at Engineers Country Club in Long Island, N.Y., to become superintendent of Storm King GC in Cornwall, N.Y., but the promotion meant forfeiting certain shop amenities.
“I went from a golf course that had a lot of what we would ever want or need, and I moved to a golf course that has nothing,” Babbage says. “One big thing I miss is a hydraulic lift. I have a whole lot less mowers here than at the other place, so it doesn’t make that big of a difference. I can get down on the ground every now and then to adjust mowers.”
At Stonebridge G&CC in Boca Raton, Fla., Class A superintendent Bob Jacks values his hydraulic lift, a Golf Lift unit he’s had since 1994, the most of all his shop tools.
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In his shop, the lift is used every day, especially for preventive equipment maintenance.
“Being able to lift the unit or machine up in the air and inspect it is a lot better than trying to get up underneath it at a lower level, which is not safe,” the 23-year GCSAA member says. “(The lift) is very valuable to me because I know the equipment out there doing the work is more dependable, and it’s easier for the mechanics to do their job.”
According to Derek Weaver, president of the golf lift division of the Derek Weaver Co., the benefit of a hydraulic lift to superintendents is time savings when performing routine reel checks and other inspections versus doing those tasks without a lift.
“There’s an overall increase in productivity, and it really helps maintain a quality technician by providing him with such a tool,” Weaver adds. “Technicians want to work comfortably and safely.”
From a safety standpoint, a lift allows technicians to work in an ergonomically correct position, Weaver says.
In the safety department, Heftee Industries just implemented a dual-locking system for its Heftee 4000, says president Scott Fore. With two locking points that engage every three inches, the device ensures that, in the case of a hydraulic failure, the farthest the lift would come down is three inches.
Because the Heftee 4000 is free-standing and doesn’t need to be bolted to the ground, Fore says it’s well suited for small shops where the ability to redesign the shop and move equipment around is important.
“With a fork truck you can easily pick it up and move it to another location, but with the Heftee 8000, if you’re going to move them, you have to unbolt them and then reinstall the mounting bolts.”
Reels on wheels
When Babbage arrived at Storm King, the reels were in pretty bad shape, he says, but with so few mowers and reels, it didn’t pay for the course to have a grinder. But the eight-year GCSAA member quickly found an innovative way to remedy the deficit.
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“I ended up packing (the reels) all up, driving back to Long Island, and doing them at my old course,” he says. “I lasted all season with my reels the way I ground them, but it needs to be done again.”
Having left Engineers CC on friendly terms, Babbage is welcome to use the shop tools at his previous place of employment. In fact, he says sharing equipment and tools is a method used by many clubs in similar situations.
“If you don’t use it that often, every day or once a week, a lot of people are trying to share pieces of equipment,” he says.
He hopes to make the 80-mile trip to Long Island for another grinding before the year’s end.
Among the more fortunate with room in the budget for grinders is John Baasch, superintendent at La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., a 36-hole resort. The club’s shop includes 10 hand mowers, four fairway units, four rough units and eight triplexes, Baasch says. Grinding takes place every week to sharpen bedknives, reels and single blades.
While single blades are sharpened by hand with a grinder, the reels go on the automatic grinder.
But reel grinding takes place only when they’ve gotten out of adjustment, the 18-year member of GCSAA says. He backlaps more often than grinding in order to sharpen the blade.
But some say that the advent of automated spin grinders — a time-saving technological advancement — has eliminated the need to backlap if superintendents choose.
Years ago, sharpening blades was performed with a single-blade grinder in a process that many viewed as a dirty job that no one wanted to do, says Stephen Bernhard, managing director of England-based Bernhard and Co., manufacturer of the Express Dual and Anglemaster grinders.
The reel also had to be backlapped to achieve a true cylindrical shape, a messy and tedious procedure, and grindings only occurred once or twice a year when the mowers weren’t cutting properly, he adds.
Today’s sharpening systems include spin grinders and provide a grinding process that’s faster than backlapping, says Mike Morris, CGCS at Crystal Downs CC in Frankfort, Mich., who uses Bernhard’s Express Dual, an Anglemaster 3000 and a Rapid Facer 1000.
The system of sharpening tools also takes the guess work out of mower adjustment, Morris says.
“If the mowers aren’t right on, how could you expect the putting surface to exhibit any sort of consistency?” asks the 21-year GCSAA member. “When we started using the spin grinding technique with zero contact adjustment (the Bernhard method), we saw more consistent green speed measurements from green to green.”
What’s new in grinding
Since spin grinders automated the grinding process and freed up technicians’ time to tend to other tasks, other advances have improved the tool.
For example, a couple of years ago, Foley United unveiled touch screen automation for its grinder that lets users program settings, increasing the time saved, says Greg Turner, sales manager for Foley.
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“On the touch screen, you can note the position of the reel and brackets, and there’s a measuring decal, so once you determine where a particular reel type goes, you make a note of that position in the machine and name the program for each particular reel type,” Turner says. “Then it’s archived, and I can pull up the name of my reel, and boom, there’s all my information and it immediately tells me where to put my brackets, align it, put it in, set switches and start the program.”
Another grinding product new to the market is a rotary blade grinder from Turf Pride that can sharpen multiple blades at once. President Don Cotton says the grinder saves time because it’s automatic, but it also can sharpen up to five blades simultaneously to the exact same width to remain balanced. With a target price of less than $1,000, Cotton says it’s an economical option for golf courses.
Other companies such as Miltona Turf Products offer a grinding kit with bedknife facing and relief edge attachments. Equipped with a Metabo grinder and two attachments, the Miltona kit is designed to extend the time between the full-fledged process of taking the mower apart, replacing the bedknives and grinding the reels completely, says owner Dan Halvorson.
What’s different about Miltona’s attachment is it has an angle adjustment for the relief edge, Halvorson says. Since that product is new, Miltona is working to develop an instructional video to accompany the attachment, he adds.
The right height
One tool many superintendents couldn’t live without is a height adjustment tool. Babbage uses it so frequently he sprang for one, to the tune of $100, within the first month of working at Storm King.
“I use it every time I adjust the reels, so ideally, after every mowing,” he says.
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The height adjustment tool allows for better precision in height of cut, plus it works for every different reel in the shop.
At Stonebridge G&CC, Jacks uses an Accu-Gage from Accuproducts International every time a machine comes back in the shop.
The job can be done without that tool, but he’d prefer to avoid the hassle.
Invented and developed by CGCS John Kosmalski in 1982, the Accu-Gage has completely changed the way mowers get set up, he says.
“It eliminates any guess work,” adds Kosmalski, a 33-year GCSAA member. “It gives guys a lot more confidence that their mowers are set up properly in the shop.”
With the precision offered by height adjustment tools, heights of cut can be lowered to one-thousandth of an inch.
In addition to the Accu-Gage, the company offers a hands-free attachment for the tool that lets technicians put the gauge on the mower as it’s hoisted in the air, apply the magnet to hold it in place and make the adjustments with two hands.
Superintendents can and do survive without one or all of these tools, but variety can be the most useful thing in a shop, says Baasch of La Costa Resort.
“In a mechanic’s world, just having a wide range of tools like wrenches, pliers, and the proper tools to work day to day is very important,” he says. “There are little things here and there that make their job easier.”
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