Take Control of Your Quality of Cut

Written by: Patrick "Cal" Callaby

Do you, like most others, pay the absolute minimum attention to the quality of cut on your mowers and only look at them when there is a complaint or problems become more obvious? It may surprise you, but if you are responsible for the mowing fleet at your course you hold the key to the quality of cut.

A good quality of cut can mean a lot to you, your course and your maintenance
Let’s look at developing a routine that brings with it piece of mind, efficiency and reliability. It is so easy and you can start it now, today, don’t think about it, do it.

All of your mowers are coming in and you are there to greet the operators, hand mowers should be washed thoroughly and parked in a line saving space, avoiding the danger of being hit by other machinery, insist this is the way you want it every day from now on.

I have in a previous article gone over my “commissioning process” where each machine has its own fleet number, so take a sheet of paper and the necessary spanners with you and make a start. Make yourself a checklist of maintenance practices to be reviewed on each mower after it returns to the workshop:

• Check each mower for quality of cut using paper and make the required adjustments. Do not accept “what you can get away with”; accept only a good quality, sharp cut with no contact. Anything short of good quality mark down on your sheet of paper together with the fleet number to be investigated.
• Check front and rear rollers.
• Check the height of cut and ensure it is marked on the machine with tipex, wax crayon or any other marking material impervious to moisture. Work your way through the machines, parking the good ones up where they live and putting aside poor ones to give them some attention.

Refer to your list and address the problem for each machine. Let’s assume that on the machines you have pulled aside the quality of cut is poor. There are several ways to find out what might be the cause:

• Are the reel bearings in good condition?
• Are the blades dull on the cylinder? If the answer is yes, it needs grinding. If the answer is no, ask yourself the following:
• Is the bedknife dull? If yes, does it need grinding? Can it be rapid faced? Does it need replacing?

Address each problem and mark it off your list. As the mowers are set correctly, park them up and you will soon gain a sense of achievement and be confident that when they are used next there will be no problems. You will also see immediate results in quality of cut from adjusting and checking blade sharpness on a daily basis. You won’t be the only one to notice either – golfers will see an immediate impact on green consistency and ball roll from mowers that have been checked for sharpness and adjusted regularly.

When do I have time for all that I hear you ask? The short answer is that you have to make time to maintain the quality of your greens, tees and fairways. Once this has been done a few times there will be fewer cutting issues. It is much easier to put right a partly dull blade than one, which is completely blunt. Doing a little every day will save time in the long term and adopting this, as a routine will enable you to monitor the bedknife wear and plan ahead. This routine is also good for fairway mowers - the same rules apply; check each day they are used and make small adjustments.

By adjusting and checking the mower sharpness everyday you will find that the need for attention decreases as time goes by, achieve piece of mind and you will have taken control of your quality of cut.

[JohnTutchen]

Hi Ben. Welcome to this side of the site. I guess that you've been working with Stephen on the reshaping of the website today, and I thank you for all your hard work.
I notice in this article, as it is now posted, that some technical stuff has appeared. It says things like MARGIN,; TEXT-ALIGN; justify; mso-list etc. in the body of the text. I copy it below for you but it may appear as normal to you since i only have MS XP Home.


<LI class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">Check each mower for quality of cut using paper and make the required adjustments. Do not accept “what you can get away with”; accept only a good quality, sharp cut with no contact. Anything short of good quality mark down on your sheet of paper together with the fleet number to be investigated. <LI class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">Check front and rear rollers.
Check the height of cut and ensure it is marked on the machine with tipex, wax crayon or any other marking material

there is another paragraph with same issue:

<LI class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in">Are the reel bearings in good condition? <LI class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in">Are the blades dull on the cylinder? If the answer is yes, it needs grinding. If the answer is no, ask yourself the following;Is the bedknife dull? If yes, does it need grinding? Can it be rapid faced? Does it need replacing?

Curiously both times are in indented paragraphs. Hope this helps you.

If you can fix it - feel free to remove this post! Thanks.

Thanks John, those should be gone now.

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[RichardNottingham]

One more thing I do that I find relaxing as well as productive. I grab a cup of coffee and follow greensmowers out evey morning to to check cut. I do check cut and height every day. Nothing like watching the sunrise to start the morning
Richard