Today, I fixed my lawnmower. It is also the day that I broke my lawnmower.
We arrive at this story by way of a new house and subsequently a new lawn for the first time in about a decade. With no real desire to mow, and not much of a garden to warrant any real investment in it, we instead bough an old push mower from a nearby neighbour for £5.
Shunting it around, it became clear both that our grass hadn't been cut in months and that this mower could do with some TLC. I may not be a fan of lawnmowers, but I do enjoy a technical puzzle, so I set out to find a way to sharpen our blades.
A moderate amount of research later and it looked easy enough. Pop off the wheels, switch around the cogs and run the rotor backward to allow the blades to sharpen themselves instead of cut. Someone on YouTube made it look pretty straight forward, so I went about it.
Immediately hampered by my inability to take off the wheels, I eventually pieced everything together the wrong way around and my lawnmower worked backwards exactly as prescribed. Wipe on a bit of lawnmower toothpaste (a gritty grease substance for metal) we were away.
Its really cool how a couple of bits of metal stuck together just, that could be as trivially taken apart by someone with no idea what they were doing can still work. But here we are. I have a much greater appreciation for how my lawnmower works, and because I put it back together myself I now look forward to getting to use it.
We arrive at this story by way of a new house and subsequently a new lawn for the first time in about a decade. With no real desire to mow, and not much of a garden to warrant any real investment in it, we instead bough an old push mower from a nearby neighbour for £5.
Shunting it around, it became clear both that our grass hadn't been cut in months and that this mower could do with some TLC. I may not be a fan of lawnmowers, but I do enjoy a technical puzzle, so I set out to find a way to sharpen our blades.
A moderate amount of research later and it looked easy enough. Pop off the wheels, switch around the cogs and run the rotor backward to allow the blades to sharpen themselves instead of cut. Someone on YouTube made it look pretty straight forward, so I went about it.
Immediately hampered by my inability to take off the wheels, I eventually pieced everything together the wrong way around and my lawnmower worked backwards exactly as prescribed. Wipe on a bit of lawnmower toothpaste (a gritty grease substance for metal) we were away.
Its really cool how a couple of bits of metal stuck together just, that could be as trivially taken apart by someone with no idea what they were doing can still work. But here we are. I have a much greater appreciation for how my lawnmower works, and because I put it back together myself I now look forward to getting to use it.
