Mower Blades for the Dummy Homeowner

Dull lawnmower blade

The freelancers who hacked their way through the early days of eHow learned quickly that the easiest way to amass vast piles of cash was to "claim" a bunch of "titles" that were all roughly the same question, and then rewrite the same answer for every one of them. At ten or fifteen bucks a pop, a dozen or so posts pounded out in a couple of hours could really add up, Of course, since it was eHow.com, most of them didn't care whether they gave the right answer, just that they got paid. And paid Elizabeth Knoll was, for "How to Loosen a Lawnmower Blade,"¹ now niched at GardenGuides.com.

Liz managed to crank out several similar posts for different brands of lawnmowers: Dixon, MTD, Yardman, etc. All of them say basically the same thing:

1. Remove the spark plug wire, maybe even the plug itself
2. Empty the gas tank
3. Wedge the blade with a 2-by-4
4. Use an adjustable wrench to loosen the bolt

Now, people here at ANHQ have removed a few mower blades over the years, and they had some snickers. First off, Elizabeth says to pull the spark plug wire and maybe even remove the plug. Then she says to run the mower until the gas tank is empty. We don't think that would work... But why, anyway? Because the gas might leak out... for what it's worth, the gas cap on modern mowers is sealed and won't leak; but Knoll got her information from some guy's blog written in 2006. So much for "evergreen."

Elizabeth consistently says to wedge the blade with a 2-by-4 (thank the Lord she doesn't say it's a "2-foot by 4-foot plank"), which probably isn't necessary: we just hang onto the blade by hand, wearing gloves if we're feeling dainty.
Speaking of gloves, Knoll includes a "tip" on every one of her lawnmower blade posts:

"Wear work gloves when handling the lawnmower blade. The edge of the blade can be extremely sharp."

Spoken like someone who's never actually handled a lawnmower blade. They're pretty dull, in fact, about as sharp as the average shovel. But that's apparently not something our Dumbass of the Day would know, having never actually touched a mower blade.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   www.gardenguides.com/90454-loosen-lawnmower-blade.html

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