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Some reel sharp talk
A turf equipment manager makes the case for scheduled sharpening programs.
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Photo by Brian Whitehair |
One of the most important decisions facing turf equipment managers and superintendents today is when to sharpen their mowers.
We use several different methods to determine when sharpening is necessary. Many superintendents and technicians believe it’s time to sharpen reel mowers at the point when they can no longer cut paper strips during the daily reel-to-bedknife setup. This is a somewhat proven method, but the standards can get a little confusing. Some individuals check the cut using two layered pieces of paper, whereas others insist on setting their cut using only one sheet or ply of paper. A reel mower with no contact between the reel and bedknife will cut two plies of paper long after it quits cutting one ply.
It gets even more confusing during debates over the thicknesses of paper used. One option is using a business card to check the cut, although even a dull reel mower will cut a business card for quite a long time.
Prevent defense
Many turf equipment managers (TEMs) take a proactive maintenance approach to their sharpening programs and sharpen their mowers at pre-scheduled intervals (biweekly, monthly, etc.). We often use the term “preventive maintenance” to mean changing the oil in the equipment before the oil goes bad; that’s the general idea behind setting a predetermined date to sharpen the mowers — before they go dull.
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Schedule reel sharpening the same way a mechanic would schedule the maintenance of a vehicle’s tires. A grinding log (top) helps the turf equipment manager maintain an effective program. |
A TEM might also explain the benefits of scheduled sharpening in much the same way an auto mechanic explains tire maintenance: When tires are run at less-than-required pressure, they wear much faster, run at hotter temperatures (which could cause them to blow out), and reduce your gas mileage. However, your car still drives, the tires still turn and you get where you are going — not safely or efficiently, but you get there.
As I see it, it’s the same with dull blades on a reel mower or mowers in general: They may still turn around; the grass may still look good and is still getting cut; but how cleanly and efficiently? How much damage could your mowers be causing to your turfgrass? We know the mowing process creates mechanical stress to the grass plant no matter the sharpness of the cutting blades. We can’t eliminate mechanical stress to turfgrass but we can reduce or limit the amount caused by the mower. If we continue to drive the car while the air pressure is leaking from the tire we are causing more and more damage to it as it deflates. As the cutting blades on a mower become dull from mowing, they are, in turn, creating more and more damage and mechanical stress to the grass.
Mowing with dull reels and blades splinters the tips of the grass blades, leaving them ragged and straw-colored. Not only is this aesthetically unpleasing, but these jagged-edged leaf tips are entry points for small insects and disease pathogens, which can further damage the turf. By minimizing mechanical stress and mower damage to the grass blades through a scheduled sharpening program for the mowers, the rewards on the golf course could be reduced pesticide costs and water requirements, healthier root systems, stronger leaf blades and faster greens speeds.
Unfamiliar territory
When an equipment manager, even a veteran one, changes jobs and steps onto unfamiliar turf, the biggest concern is not necessarily when to sharpen, but how accustomed is the turf on the new golf course to being mowed with sharp mowers?
I know of more than one TEM who has arrived at a new position, sharpened all the mowers as he was accustomed to doing, set the height-of-cut to the current setting, only to be left with scalped turf all over his new golf course. This generally is a result of turf that has been mowed too long with mowers that weren’t actually cutting at the bench height for which they were set. If your predecessor had been guilty of neglecting his mower sharpening duties, he was producing cutting heights higher than the bench setting. When this happens, all of a superintendent’s height-of-cut records from previous years or tournaments can be tossed into the recycling bin.
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Before the superintendent orders a TEM to adjust bench settings for a lower height of cut, it’s important to determine how efficiently the mowers are cutting. Photo by Roger Billings |
You can confirm what I mean for yourself by sharpening just one cutting unit on a dull triplex or fairway mower, putting the cutting unit back on the mower at the same bench setting as the dull units and mowing for a short pass. The end result is two possibly very different cutting heights, even though the dull units and the freshly sharpened cutting unit all have the same height-of-cut bench setting. How dull the other units are will determine the amount of actual height variance.
If we can understand that one bench setting can produce more than one height-of-cut, shouldn’t we then consider how important it is today to know just how sharp or efficiently the mowers are cutting before the decision is made to lower cutting heights on the golf course? Even after many years in my trade I don’t know much about growing grass (other than it requires lots of sand), but I would like to pose this question: Isn’t a mower that is cutting above its bench height (a dull mower or, to put it another way, cutting higher than the bedknife and continually mowing the same area) contributing to an undesired thatch layer or sponginess under the canopy by continually forcing the higher uncut grass under the bedknife? It certainly can’t be helping to improve or reduce heavy thatch conditions.
Trust and testing
From the look of our golf courses today, I think most superintendents and turf equipment managers are working closely together and have built a relationship of trust. The superintendent is doing his part agronomically and the equipment manager is doing his part mechanically to achieve the best conditions on the golf course. However, a new equipment manager coming onto a golf course should not presume his predecessor was up to par on his sharpening; always make some test runs along with the new superintendent before turning out the entire fleet of sharp mowers.
The idea is to keep your mower blades — whether rotary or reel — sharp and not allow them to dull before sharpening. Waiting for a mower blade to dull before sharpening is like waiting for a car tire to go flat before you put air in it. The damage is already done. In today’s golf course environment I recommend that sharpening become a scheduled maintenance practice. Finding the sharpening interval that will work best in your situation is now up to you and your superintendent. Not unlike the air pressure in your car tires, we sometimes just don’t stop to consider the extra cost and damage we could be causing by prolonging the inevitable.