Lawn Mower Blades - Material?

Minuteman

Minuteman

Joined
Nov 13, 2002
Messages
234
Does anyone know what lawn mower blades are typically made of?

I have accumulated quite a stack of old Murray blades since I have sandy soil and go through about four of them a year. I thought they might be worth beating on if I ever get a forge, so I hung on to them. Has anyone made a knife out of one? If they are junk then I need to just pitch them.
 
Hmmm. 1085 sounds OK to me. Probably worth shuffling them around the garage a while longer.
 
That was answered on this or some other forum by someone who worked in that business .They use a 15xx steel . Can't remember the carbon content but the series contains just carbon and manganese as alloying elemants. Give it a test .
 
Mete, you prompted me to do some searching off this forum. I found references from several different smiths who all said about the same thing:

Older mower blades were made of pretty good higher carbon steels (and they were pretty hard when you bought them)

Newer mower blades are made with medium to low carbon content and are delivered quite soft due to liability risks over non ductile blades fracturing and being thrown by the mower. One fellow estimated about .45% carbon and Rc 50.

One even suggested that since they are so soft, and can't hold a fine edge without rounding, you could retain a better overall sharpness for mowing by grinding off the bevel and just having a 90 degree edge with sharp corners top and bottom.

If that's the case I think I need to pitch them.
 
Some people call it a sling blade, but I call it a Kaiser blade.
slingb02.jpg
 
Hmmm... Gator style blades for my lawn tractor made from O1... another pipe-dream project that I'll probably never get around to. I started running Gators about 3 years ago -- great cutting performance, but they won't hold an edge as well as the original Simplicity blades would.
 
It's all in the heat treat, Years ago I used to sharpen lawn mower blades, I had one customer with a commercial mowing service. I harden a couple of his blades with a torch and quenched in oil and they were staying sharp around 10 times longer.

Don Hanson lll
 
sunfishman said:
It's all in the heat treat, Years ago I used to sharpen lawn mower blades, I had one customer with a commercial mowing service. I harden a couple of his blades with a torch and quenched in oil and they were staying sharp around 10 times longer.

Don Hanson lll
Click to expand...

Well, there ya go. We'll all send our mower blades to Big Don, the Lawn Mower Blade Hardenin Man! :D

(umm, that's a joke, just in case anybody thought about bugging Don) :)
 
Danbo said:
Well, there ya go. We'll all send our mower blades to Big Don, the Lawn Mower Blade Hardenin Man! :D

(umm, that's a joke, just in case anybody thought about bugging Don) :)
Click to expand...
Better yet, I'll just make everybody a custom lawn mower blade :D

Lawnmowerman Hanson
 
You know...there really is something here with this custom mower blade idea...if you differentially hardened a mower blade so that it only had a hard forward edge, there wouldn't be much of a concern over throwing a large broken piece. You'd probably have to get ones that had something better in them than 1045, though.
 
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