To Quote the Dummy, "Do as I Say, Not as I Do"

Quick and dirty blade balancing

A new day, a new platform rife with freelancer stupidity! A little poking around at the website SnapGuide.com quickly located a contributor more interested in making money off his expertise than getting off his lazy butt. The freelancer is Jim Burke, and his topic is "How to Sharpen Mower Blades." 

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with the instructions Burke gave, other than the fact that his mower is considerably different from that of most people, so the ten steps spent on getting the blade(s) off are pretty much a waste. It's also not that he assumed people have a grinding wheel (we actually do, but that's beside the point). No the dumbassery came in at steps 20 and 21, in which Burke told us,

"20 after the blades are done, they should be balanced, they spin at high speed, so a little off balance can mess up a lot of things, of course when I made this guide, I couldn't find my balance

21 the balance looks like a conical terraced sorta pyramid metal thing, they're cheap and largely available at hardware stores"

		OK, so the blade should be balanced but he couldn't find his so he didn't bother? Even though it's critical to do this? That's the definition of a Dumbass right there! For future reference, Jim "Dumbass of the Day" Burke, if you can't find your balancer you can use gravity. Hang the blade on a nail by the central hole. Make certain it's not touching anything. The blade should naturally come to a horizontal - if it doesn't, you need to take a little more off the low end. Sheesh, what a friggin' idiot!

By the way: if you don't have a bench grinder but you do have one of those snazzy Dremel tools (and what toolhead doesn't have one these days?)  Get yourself a pretty useful attachment for your Dremel: a Dremel 675 Lawn Mower and Garden Tool Sharpener Attachment, which costs a lot less than a bench grinder and does a fairly good job on consumer-grade blades. Our house toolhead has one, and he went into more detail here.

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