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Scotts Manual Lawn Mower – Hi-Pro Ace Supercentre - |
The Best Reel Mower for Your (Small) Lawn | Reviews by Wirecutter
SCOTTS S OWNER'S MANUAL Pdf Download | ManualsLib.Scott's Manual Walk-Behind Lawn Mower Lawn Mowers for sale | eBay
I've always had a keen interest in lawn care as long as I can remember. Friends used to call me the "lawn mower guru" hence the site name , but I'm anything but. I just enjoy cutting my lawn and spending time outdoors. I also love the well-deserved doughnuts and coffee afterward! Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Skip to primary navigation Skip to main content. Key Features Assembly — Assembly of this mower is pretty straightforward.
I just fastened up the six wing nut screws and I was ready to roll. Size and Build — The cutting width of this one is actually a little bit bigger than most of the other hand reel mowers.
I liked this because it allowed me to cut my grass in fewer passes, so I finished the job in a shorter amount of time.
And anything that makes a job quicker is always welcomed — right?! Whilst not as quick as the system found on the Fiskars , the quick-snap adjusters are simple to use and it gets the thumbs up from me.
Rather than tearing your grass like rotary mowers , which is actually really unhealthy for your grass, this mower snips the grass blades using a scissor type action. Large Wheels — The wheels are a vital component of any hand powered mower. This is because you have no self propel system — you are responsible for pushing this thing yourself. The Scotts has a dual wheel tracking system that makes use of two larger 10 inch wheels and two smaller 6 inch wheels.
The smaller tires just provide you with added stability when you are pushing the mower, making it push easier along your lawn. Low Maintenance — The amount of time you have to invest into the care and maintenance of this classic push reel mower is minimal. How Does It Perform? Cutting Ability — If you are going to continually let your grass grow high and then expect this mower to power through it like an expensive gas mower would, you are in for a rough time.
I tried the Scotts out on both long and short grass. On the short grass it was an absolute dream. The cylinder of blades just cut effortlessly through the grass, leaving an outstanding finish that I was extremely happy with. It was a totally different story on longer grass though. Big weeds are also a no-no. So I came to the conclusion that after getting your lawn in decent shape, you need to keep it like that. The Scotts-branded mower had the best cut quality of any of the mowers we tested, and its unusually tall maximum cutting height of 3 inches makes it a versatile choice for different types of lawns and grasses.
We've revisited this category several times since , and the Scotts mower still remains our top pick. The company has a similar version that includes a grass-catching bag and blade-sharpening kit, but the mower itself is otherwise the same. It's also heavier and bulkier, making it more of a chore to turn around, it also costs more than the Scotts. We spoke with Jason Kruse , assistant professor of environmental horticulture and turfgrass specialist at the University of Florida.
For testing, we enlisted the aid of the grounds crew of the Diamond Hawk Golf Course in Cheektowaga, New York, a bunch of people who are serious about mowing. While using the mowers, they picked up cut blades to carefully examine how cleanly the mowers cut; they also bent down to compare the color of the turf after each one made a pass, and pushed all the mowers around on various lengths of grass. Before getting a reel mower, you should be aware of their pros and cons.
In the hands of the wrong person, a reel mower will be nothing but a hair-pulling frustration, and you may find yourself pining for the days of a more traditional mower. Simply put, a reel mower is not a direct replacement for a regular mower. While reel mowers are good for the overall health of the lawn as well as the person pushing them and need little maintenance, they require much greater diligence in keeping to a mowing schedule, and they work best for small, flat lawns.
Any deviation from that can start to cause problems. It makes mowing feel more like a pleasant way to spend time outside and less like something I need to grit my teeth and power through. They snip the grass blades like scissors, while rotary mowers tend to shred grass blades. Keep in mind that the turning wheels are what rotate the blades, which adds to the resistance.
According to a Livestrong. This is 51 calories more than someone weighing pounds pushing a mower with a powered blade for the same amount of time. Reel mowers also require minimal maintenance and are much, much quieter than regular mowers. As for the noise, many users of reel mowers cite the gentle snipping sound the tool makes as a key benefit.
Gas mowers, on the other hand, require gas, regular tune-ups, oil changes, and winterizing. So reel mowers are quiet, peaceful, healthy, and good for your lawn.
But they have downsides too, of course. First, for a reel mower to be practical, you need a fairly small lawn. Anyone with more than a quarter acre roughly 10, square feet will find weekly mowing with a reel mower exhausting. Frankly, even a quarter acre seems a bit ambitious, especially in the spring when the grass grows quickly and may demand twice-a-week mowing. One of our long-term testers has approximately 1, square feet of lawn, and mowing takes her about 20 minutes.
Second, a reel mower demands diligence and a strict adherence to a regular cutting schedule. If grass gets overgrown, a reel mower will merely push it down and roll right over it, so if you tend to go a while between mowings, you should stick with a regular push mower.
One long term tester had to wait so long for the reel mower to arrive that once it got there, the grass had grown so high they needed to hire someone to cut their grass. Third, reel mowers are troublesome on sloped or bumpy lawns. The torque that turns the blades comes from the wheels as you roll them along the ground. On an uneven surface, the wheels lose contact with the ground as they bounce or as the weight shifts on a slope.
In fact, the results in general may not be what you expect. He explained that reel mowers can cut much closer to the ground than rotary mowers. At the golf course, the crew uses reel mowers to cut greens and approaches but uses gas-powered rotary mowers for the rough. The maximum cutting height, however, is very important, and we used this spec as our primary factor in eliminating mowers from contention. We then looked at other factors: How easy is the mower to adjust?
How hard is it to push? How wide is it? How much does it weigh? We looked for models with a history of robust user reviews. At that point we took our final four mowers to the golf course.
There the grounds crew helped us adjust the blades to the exact same standard they used on their mowers so that the blades could cleanly slice a piece of paper. Over the next three hours, we pushed all four mowers back and forth on different-height grasses. On hand were course superintendent Scott Dunbar, a member of the grounds crew, a mechanic who maintains the course equipment, and an equipment salesman who happened to be at the course that day. These guys are all turfgrass experts who deal with grass and mowing equipment every day.
They really took to the task of comparing these mowers, examining every aspect closely and answering all our questions about turf and cut quality.
We mowed tall, weedy grass, and recently cut grass that was already low, and mowed everything in between. Choosing between the Scotts model made by the American Lawnmower Company and usually marketed under the Scotts name and the Fiskars mower made by the Finnish company known for its orange-handled bladed tools was initially quite difficult, as both did an excellent job cutting grass.
But after a great deal of back and forth and discussing our options with Dunbar and the grounds crew, we came to an unanimous agreement on a pick. It also has a wide, inch cutting swath—the widest we found—as well as height adjustments between 1 and 3 inches, which is a more versatile range than we saw on almost all of the other available reel mowers.
The quality of the cut is where the Scotts excelled against the competition. When our lawn experts were going back and forth with the mowers on a variety of grasses and lengths, they noticed that the Scotts model would leave a swath of totally trimmed grass with each blade snipped evenly across, no ragged edges to be seen. In contrast, the other mowers would leave a bunch of blades sticking up like chimneys after a house fire, requiring the testers to back up and go over the area again.
The Scotts mower also never jammed up during testing, whereas all of the other mowers did. And not only was the cut quality good, but with each pass the Scotts also snipped a wider path than most of the others.
The Scotts is a inch-wide mower, the widest size available the measurement refers to the blade width, not the overall width.
Our testers also gave the Scotts high marks for overall usability. At 34 pounds, it lands in the middle of our test group in weight but manages to hit the sweet spot between maneuverability and stability.
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