Stripes in Lawn - JD110 - How to Fix

15 years ago

Just sharpened my blades yesterday and leveled all of the deck out and all. Did a mowing. It's been raining a lot so the grass was pretty tall, and I took off maybe 2.5" or so.

I noticed this morning that in the middle of the cut (where the blades meet) there is a bit of a "stripe" of high grass. It seems as if there is too much space between the blades.

Is this a problem with the deck or mower, or just mulching with the grass too high? I don't grind the ends of the blades, just the cutting part, so the blade length should be the same as they came with.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

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Comments (20)

lkbum_gw
15 years ago
see the link below to a previous post. It may help.

Here is a link that might be useful: deck alignment
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tomplum
15 years ago
Blade wear could be an issue anyways as the ends seem to round at the tip on there own. The end of the blade's edge need to be sharpened as well. I would say if you are confident of the blade sharpening, and your deck is clean- see what the next cut brings. Asking a deck to do too much can cause a variety of issues. If a problem persists, I would compare your blades to a new set- or replace them. A change in deck pitch may also be required.
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It is worth noting that this technique is used successfully by professionals in Phoenix, so...just sayin.' The other factors make a difference. If you normally water 1 inch per week and you get 1/2 inch of rain, then adjust and water only 1/2 inch that week. 2. Mowing Every week mulch mow at the highest setting on your mower. Most grasses are the most dense when mowed tall. However, bermuda, centipede, and bent grasses will become the most dense when they are mowed at the lowest setting on your mower. In fact there are special mowers that can mow these grasses down to 1/16 inch. Dense grass shades out weeds, keeps the soil cooler, and uses less water than thin grass. Tall grass can feed the deep roots you developed in #1 above. Tall grass does not grow faster than short grass nor does it look shaggy sooner. Once all your grass is at the same height, tall grass just looks plush. 3. Fertilizing Fertilize regularly. I fertilize 5 times per year using organic fertilizer. 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kachinee
15 years ago
The link above is great regarding the angle that the two blades must be offset to avoid an uncut strip. In my case, however, the mower hanging hardware did not have any adjustment for that parameter. Also, the mower deck was configured/stamped with the two blades offset so I did not see that as the answer to the problem. I tried leveling the deck and then lowering the front about 1/4" (after checking tire inflation) but I was still was getting a stripe. Then I lowered the front of the deck a bit more, about 1/2 inch or so lower than the back and somehow, the thing cut more evenly. I have tried to visualize why lowering the front of the deck 1/2 inch got rid of the stripe, but all I know is that it did.
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davidandkasie
15 years ago
my l130 with teh 48" deck does the same thing, try to cut more than maybe 3/4" off the grass and it stripes big time.
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metal
15 years ago
Just tell people you are trying to make your lawn look like it was mowed with a Simplicity, those guys love stripes in their lawns : )
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lkbum_gw
15 years ago
Thanks metal, I was looking for a reason to repost this pic, some guys love the stripes so much they don't watch where they are going and run right into the light post!! :) Unfortunately drought is regaining steam and I won't have stripes like this again for a while.
Do the stripes look like this???
{{gwi:327072}}
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twild
15 years ago
I am having this problem with my brand new JD 145. I just got it at Lowe's. My grass is pretty high - well the Bahia that plagues my yard is. No matter how high I put the deck, there are two stripes of grass coming from where the outside blades meet the inside blades. Would a set of those predator blades help this any? I'll try adjusting the deck where the front will be lower this evening to see if that helps me.
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davidandkasie
15 years ago
twild, on a 3 blade deck this will ALWAYS be an issue when cutting high grass. you just have to learn to cut more often or cut 2x. i hate it, because i have to do the same thing. teh higher grass pushes together at the edges and create these rows.

heck, even my new X500 does it if the grass is high enough. my L130 did no matter what the height of the grass, i have never solved it on there. i have had the deck front higher, lower, level, and everything between. i actually spent 2 hours cuttign one acre because i would mae 2 passes, stop and adjust the front to back ratio, then make a few more passes and repeat.

the deck MUST be level sided to side as well. if it is not, it will worsen the situation. also check to make sure the deck is not torqued. if the right side kicks forward more than teh left, or vice versa, then you get grass passign between teh offset of the blades and get uncut strips.
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twild
15 years ago
I was afraid of that. My old craftsman that died had 2 blades and it cut through it fine. I'd probably be better off getting a smaller deck with 2 blades then.
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marineguy
15 years ago
lkbum,
What kind of idiot would ram into something on a lawn mower? You're going three miles per hour! Come on!
Well, that's what I wondered as I stared at my new GT225 with a brush guard that would rival anything sold by Westin.
Then I rammed head-on into my deck while trimming along the side of the house.
So I guess I'm one of those idiots too. Good thing I had a heavy duty brush guard!
What is that, a swingset? Did you make that? Looks pretty neat.

Youth4him, you just need to cut your grass more often if you want to keep mulching. Otherwise you need to go back to side-discharge and raking. Think of the mass of clippings recirculating under your deck when you plug it up for mulching. If the grass is twice as long, there will be twice as much grass filling up the space, disrupting proper airflow. You can't mulch grass that only gets mowed when you have the chance. I mulch, mowing every 5 days (sometimes at 8-9pm with the headlights on).
Twild,
I HATE Bahia grass! I've been at war with Bahia for about five years, but now I pretty much have it licked. About every third time I mow, just beforehand, I walk around with a small hatchet-sized rake and chop it out wherever I find it. It leaves a big ugly bare spot, but that's better than Bahia. And the Bermuda usually covers it up within a week.
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fatjack
15 years ago
I hesitate to bring this up because every time I do, I get yelled at! But here goes... every time you sharpen your blade YOU MAKE IT SHORTER!!! The measurement of a blades' cutting width is not the length of the blade, it's the DIAGONAL FROM SHARP POINT TO SHARP POINT.
As you sharpen the blade, this measurement gets shorter. As someone above mentioned, you only add to the problem by rounding off the ends as you sharpen.
Remember, you're probably doing the same thing to both blades, so taking an eighth-inch off the ends of them gives you a quarter-inch gap in between where they used to overlap. That would account for the strips of uncut grass you're seeing.

FJ
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marineguy
15 years ago
No yelling here, but...
Fatjack,
That implies that the cutting edge of both sides of the blade form a line directly through the center of the cutting circle, which they do not (and that the outboard edges of the blade are flat vice circular, which they are anyway). The cutting edges are parallel to the radius, so you could grind the blades down from 3" of thickness down to .0001" of thickness and the total length of cutting edge would not change. Although at .0001" of thickness the blades would pretty much flap in the wind!

I've just downed a 1/2 of a 1/5 of Crown with my neighbor tonight (hey, it's Saturday), so I mighte be waay off. But I think I'm thinking straightly. But I don't think straightly is an actual word. So I just invented "straightly."
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mfd480
15 years ago
I have an X320 which mows perfectly and A GX345 that leaves streaks. I have swapped the blades between the 2 and the GX345 still leaves the streaks and the X320 still mows perfectly. I have not leveled the GX345 deck yet but It is NOT the blades in my case at least! I have tried the Original JD blades and Gator Blades with the same effect.
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johntommybob
15 years ago
fatjack & marineguy

This is an interesting subect, Marine guy is right, sharpening a blade does not make it shorter, but on the other hand, sharping does, in effect, change the width of the blade at the cutting edge, which does mean sharpening moves the two cutting edges of the blades farther away from each other. The way I thought about this the two cutting edges on a blade are on a diagonal from each other, and If you imagine that the blades are offset just enough so that, when set in the same direction, the two cutting edges of the two blades are exactly in a straight line, then if you ground 1/2" off each blade the cutting edges would move 1" away from each other when they lined up. That would not decrease the cutting circle of either blade, but it would it not have the effect of actually moving the two cutting circles farther away from each other? Not apart width wise of the deck but move one farther ahead, or behind. I'm not smart enough to see what effect that would have, but it has to change something.
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fatjack
15 years ago
OK, no yelling for which I'm grateful, but I still don't seem to be getting my point across. As someone mentioned above, the diagonal is not the measurement of the blade's cutting width... all I can say is, I'm sorry but... yes it is! Go ask a dealer, talk to a professional lawncare guy, or dig out a old geometry book. The longest straight line you can draw on a blade (think of it as a rectangle) is the diagonal from opposite corners, through the center of the blade.

This was made clear to a friend of mine recently when he was making an interior wall for his home; he carefully measured the floor to ceiling height it needed to be, built all the studs for the wall, tried to stand it up in place ... and scraped the h*** out of the ceiling!!! Wha?? The diagonal is the longest measurement of his wall AND of a blade.

The cutting width of a blade is always longer than the simple end-to-end length of the blade. I don't have a blade in front of me to measure, but I'm sure a blade that makes a 20" cut is actually shorter than 20"... but the diagonal is 20"!

To further cloud the issue, if you sharpened a blade so much that it was one-half its original width, that would be as short as it would get and any additional sharpening would start to make it LONGER, until you reached the remaining .0001" as Marineguy mentions above, at which point the blade would be back to its original cutting width! Remember all of this is based on the diagonal being the measurement of cutting width.

Clear as mud, I'm now going to find some of marineguy's magic Crown elixer.

FJ
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marineguy
15 years ago
Fatjack,
You're right.
I see much more clearly now... and hadn't thought of it that way.
I was thinking static, not dynamic.
But that Canadian whiskey sure is good!
0
wally2q
15 years ago
"...Remember, you're probably doing the same thing to both blades, so taking an eighth-inch off the ends of them gives you a quarter-inch gap in between where they used to overlap...."

Your gemoetry is correct in principle, but who takes off an 1/8" when sharpening their blade?... maybe 0.010-0.015 at most.

What is a big contributor to this problem in 3-blade designs is blade tip speed. The spindles etc are all designed for a certain max RPM, but that RPM in a 2-blade configuration results in higher blade tip speed than in a 3-blade configuration, because of the length of the blade.

What I did to solve this same problem on my L120 was 3 things:

1. Increase the governor Engine speed form the standard 2900 to 3300-3400. I figured my spindles won't last and that I'll have to replace thm every 100 hours... but they did last.... I sold the mower with 400 hours on it - no problems... And the striping problem was gone.

2. To help with juicy spring-grass, I also stopped mulching, and started side discharging. With the cutting height set to 3.5" to 4", if I saw dried out grass clippings that didn't fall in between the growing grass a day or two after the cut, that meant that I needed to cut more often, so I'd shorten the time between cuts by a day.
Spring & fall time (cool & wet) = every 5 days. Peak of summer (hot and dry) = every 7 days.

3. Used my high-lift blades (that came with the bagger kit) all season. I only used the bagger in the fall - for the leaves, but using the high lift blades all-year pumped so much air out the discharge chute, that the clippings would fly out 12-15 feet to the side, scattering nicely, and not leaving any thick clumps.

Good luck
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fatjack
15 years ago
All points are well taken... nobody should take off an eighth inch in ONE sharpening. It's a cumulative thing, and especially important since many of us homeowners (me included until I saw the light) like to round off the sharp corner point to get some cutting edge on the outside too! Now you're talking some serious blade shortening... I guess I should state this more correctly as shortening the blade's cutting width.

I had never heard of this concept until I was talking to a commercial mower dealer who said it was a real problem with the professional guys, some of whom sharpen the blades EVERY DAY; it doesn't take long before this does start to show the uncut strip between where the blades used to overlap.

There was even one manufacturer, I think it was Ferris, who had a "radius end" blade that was rounded to match the cutting diameter. As you removed metal through sharpening, the blade still gave the same width cut because the diagonal stayed the same. I don't know if they still offer this blade design, but it did show one manufacturer's answer to what is a real problem.

It may rarely affect us as homeowners with the limited use of our mowers, but it can be a real problem in the commercial mowing world and was only suggested as a possible answer to the original poster's problem.

FJ
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wankel
15 years ago
Also, make sure your tires are evenly inflated.
0
wally2q
15 years ago
"...it was a real problem with the professional guys, some of whom sharpen the blades EVERY DAY..."

true,.... true,....
0

Stripes in Lawn - JD110 - How to Fix

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