Removing Your Mower Blade & Cleaning Your Mower Deck
Sharpening your lawn mower blade is important -- you want to make clean cuts and not leave patches of uncut or unevenly cut grass. We'll show you how to safely remove blades from your lawn mower using an impact wrench. We'll also show you the easiest way to clean clumped grass and dirt from the underside of your deck.
Here's a quick recap of the video:
Removing Your Lawn Mower Blade
Use an impact wrench if at all possible -- this will make it much more safe (and easier!) to remove the blade.
For this Honda lawn mower, there are two bolts holding the blades to the machine. You'll need to locate the correct socket size for the blades first. Attach that to your impact tool. You'll want to hold the blade in some way before unfastening the bolts -- you can do this while either wearing gloves or by holding a thick rag. Be careful that you do not cut yourself while removing the blade. We want to you keep all of your fingers for this job.
Remember how your blade was mounted so that you can re-mount the blade properly, otherwise your quality of cut could be drastically reduced. If you're replacing the blade, use your old one as a guide. Usually you can tell how the blade was mounted by looking at the blade adapter or the bolt holes. You can also mark your blade with "top" and "bottom" if it's not already marked. One other thing that you'll notice about the blade is that the cutting surface will normally face the top of the mower and the flat surface will face the bottom of the mower.
Keep your blade bolts and nuts in a safe location. We recommend to either lay out a rag on bench or other work surface and keep necessary hardware on the rag. You can also use a tin, jar or other re-usable organization method to make sure you don't lose anything. Keeping your hardware close will make your job easier!
Cleaning Your Lawn Mower Deck
There's more than one use for a putty knife -- here's another one -- take a putty knife (or something similar) and scrape off any clumps of grass, dirt or other debris off of the underside of the mower. This will help move the grass through your side discharge or into your bag much more easily by reducing blockage and friction.
