Hot or Not? Gas-Powered Reel Mowers
By Kevin Pace
About two years ago, we asked what you thought about manual reel mowers, and the response was a pretty solid Hot. But back then we were only asking about non-powered reel mowers, and in the meantime we’ve been seeing a lot more gas-powered reel mowers on the market. Naturally we wonder if these burly-engined counterparts are as hot as their manual cousins.
Toolmongers who weighed in on the original post liked reel mowers because they tend to cut the grass like scissors, instead of hacking at it the way rotary mowers do, giving a cleaner cut and promoting a healthier lawn. In this area, the powered reel mowers behave exactly like the manual ones.
However, the other major Hot factor mentioned in the comments was the fact that with no engine, manual reel mowers are 100% environmentally friendly and considerably lighter — that can’t be said of the gas-powered rigs.
So, which point wins out? Does the clean scissor cut, enhanced by the power of the engine, put gas-powered reel mowers in the Hot category? Or do the added weight and emissions shuffle this mower over into the Not section? Let us know in comments.
Powered Reel Mowers [McLane]
Street Pricing [Google]
Powered Reel Mowers Via Amazon [What’s This?]
May 18th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Long before the environmentalists started having their way with small engines, the reel mower was essentially made obsolete by the far simpler rotary mower, which could be made less expensively and marketed to a wider cross-section of American society. Today, in the West at least, the powered reel mower is extremely hard to find, and very pricey if you do find one. The entire gas mower market in Kalifornia is being attacked by engine rgulations and slowly undermined by electrics, marketed as “green” by the enviros. The light manual mowers are experiencing a comeback, to allow greenies to feel good as they mow.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Hot: If you need precision lawn mowing (think golf greens) A much finer cut than a rotary mower. Not if your grass gets to tall,
Locke mowers rule
http://www.lockemower.com/
May 18th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Hot, ever seen the Stephen King classis “Lawnmower Man”? Besides the wicked arch-villan look of them, they take some of the work out of the reel mowers to do larger areas. Instead of the typical postage stamp, cookie cutter lawn that most reel mowers were destined to be used for.
May 18th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
I’ve got a Brill battery powered electric reel mower, and it could be a great mower, but the switch mechanism makes it kind of annoying. I keep meaning to figure out how I can mount a good alternative switch on it.
The reel mower bit means the parts move slowly, so it’s quiet. No hearing protection needed, no neighbors complain if I get an early weekend start and mow the lawn at 7AM on a Saturday, no nasty smelling 2 cycle fumes.
Yep, I’ve got a postage stamp lawn, small enough that I could use a corded electric rotary mower, but except for the switch mechanism, I really like my Brill.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Hot. I had a Bermuda grass lawn when I lived in Alabama. These lawns are supposed to be cut to half inch length, and a reel mower is the only way to go. I had about a one-third acre lawn that I cut with a manual 16″ reel mower, and it was no fun. Lawns grow there from February through November, and the hotter it gets the better that type of turf grows.
Also, a reel mower leaves a fine cut, where a rotary hacks the grass. The browned tips of a rotary cut grass takes away from the appearance of the lawn as a whole.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I’d have to say Not. Putting a motor on a reel mower doesn’t really give you that much advantage. The reel still needs relatively short grass and will balk at soft grass.
When using a manual reel mower, I thought it could benefit from two improvements. One, a flywheel to even out the spin and let you more easily trim where you must go in and pull back. The other, is a second reel mounted forward and half height of the main reel to trim tall grass down to size for the main reel to cut. The last might be accomplished by using a larger diameter wheel. Both ideas would benefit from larger diameter wheels, say 16″ bike wheels, with a bit of offset gearing to drive the flywheel and reels.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:35 am
JKB that sounds like an ‘Instructable’ that would be fun to see- or at least Flickr- go for it!
May 19th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I grew up with both gas and manual reel mowers. I hate them. If you let the grass get too long or wet, they clog up way too easily.
May 19th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
I grew up with a gas-powered Craftsman reel mower, and…at risk of being gross…I hated what happened when I inadvertently came across field mouse nests with it.
As a grownup, I’ve got a small yard and a Black & Decker electric rotary mower which does the job just fine. That replaced the Scotts reel mower which never did cut the grass…but I always did have better things to do than mow the lawn anyway, so undoubtedly I didn’t mow often enough to accommodate the reel mower’s weaknesses.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:00 am
If you cant ride on it, is ti really a mower? Ha
I’d have no hope in my yard without a rotary mower for the steep hills and a riding mower for the expanse.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Bob: I assume it looked something like the reel mower equivalent of the wood-chipper scene in “Fargo”. Would that be about right? :-p
…asks the guy who ran over a rabbit’s nest with the mower this week, although it didn’t kill any of the (fairly well-developed) babies. (Second time in three years that’s happened, BTW, and we live in a neighbourhood with very little “wild” around.)
cl
May 20th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
I’m Bob; who is he?
May 21st, 2009 at 4:45 am
[...] Toolmonger » Blog Archive » Hot or Not? Gas-Powered Reel Mowers [...]