I’m on the lookout for a good non-powered reel mower. The ones made by Fiskar look pretty good.
Husqvarna makes a couple of models that are quite well-built and reasonably priced. We’ve got two or three years on ours (touch-ups and corners the riding mower won’t reach, plus some quick general mowing here and there) and all I’ve had to do is adjust the cutter tension a few times.
Night and day from the heavy, clunky, ill-cutting monsters of yesteryore, a few of which I learned to toss Olympic distances…
I have a cheap Sears one, now 16 years old. It gets sharpened every year or two, and I replaced a bolt, but that’s about it for the maintenance. It isn’t that light and it cuts okay but not great, so I only vouch for its reliability. Maybe I should look at some others next time I’m in the hardware store.
That’s all I have - I sneer at puny northern California lawns. At the moment we are on one watering a week rationing, so only a few weeds are growing.
Oh brother, does this bring back a flood of bad childhood memories which I had almost completely forgotten due to years of therapy until I stumbled upon this thread. (Thanks a lot Czarcasm.) We had a yard the size of a football field. I’m shutting down now. I’m going away, yeup, I’m going away…
I think that’s what mine is. Haven’t looked recently. The problem I have with it is that the dandelions grow faster than the grass. The reel mower just knocks the stalks over without cutting them. Does OK on the grass, though.
I tried a non powered rotary mower, but it never would cut daisy stems, which we had lots of. Grass, no problem, daisies just bent with the blade.
That’s what my reel mower is too - and it does the same thing with dandelions. Stalks sticking up all over everywhere but short grass. So I use my battery mower in dandelion season and save the reel mower for later in the summer.
That is a negative. I can keep ahead of the dandelions by digging them out, but I have lots of other weeds. I was impressed by how well my neighbor’s power mower did when I borrowed when my grass got very long. I do have an electric weed whacker which does a good job.
You won’t like the manual mower unless you have a perfect manicured lawn with no twigs or leaves or big weeds to get in the way.
Have the lawn or yard done professionally and then touch it up with the push mower … that’s what I had to do: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA10Z0CA1100
I owned this American reel mower for a few years, and was happy with it. When I first got it I was living in a townhouse, and for the last year I was living in a small single-family home (that actually had less mow-able grass than the townhouse, because there was no back yard). I never sharpened or oiled it. I left it at the last house when I moved out a month ago, because I moved to a house with a pretty big yard and have hired a lawn service.
On preview: while it’s true that moving twigs, etc., out of the way can get a bit old, I still preferred that to the idea of paying for someone else to cut such small amounts of grass.