Sharpening Garden Tools

Good quality tools can be expensive. It is well worth investing a little time and effort in prolonging the life of gardening tools by looking after them. Becoming practiced in the right techniques for sharpening tools makes the task much more rewarding, easier and quicker as well as keeping costs down.

Sharpening Lawn Mower Blades

Blades of rotary mowers are removable, often as simply as unscrewing a single screw, which makes the whole task quite a quick one. The power source will need to be turned off and with some types of lawn mower they may need emptying of oil if the mower has to be turned over.

Having removed the blade from the mower, any residue on the blade should be removed by wiping or if necessary, gently scraping it clean. Oil should then be applied to the blade at this point. If the blade does not need replacing, then the blade can be sharpened on an electric grinder with care. As the idea is to keep the blade balanced, care must be taken to apply pressure to both sides of the blade in equal measure, so that sharpening the bevelled edge of the blade manually with a fine file has much to recommend it, in even strokes working from the center to the edge of the blade, and trying to keep the angle of the bevel the same angle as it was originally. It is not difficult with a little practice.

Sharpening Garden Shears

Larger types of garden shears can be sharpened in a similar way to rotary lawn mower blades. The blade should be cleaned as much as possible prior to applying oil then the blade can by ground either using an electrical grinder or using a sharpening stone. The task can be made easier in some cases by holding the blade in a vice.

Smaller shears can be sharpened in a very similar way but more care will be needed as these shears are not usually as robust as larger shears in their construction. Steel wool may prove particularly useful for these, and care should be taken to avoid generating excessive heat as this will damage blades. Hence if an electric grinder is used, the grinding action should be kept much shorter than usual.

Sharpening Secateurs And Other Garden Tools

To sharpen secateurs effectively, it is often best to take them apart in order to be able to sharpen the whole blade. With the simpler and cheaper types of secateurs this will not be possible so one should simply do as much as possible by keeping them complete, rubbing done then oiling the blade and working from the centre of the blade outwards as before. One useful tip is to sand secateur blades down gently after each use to keep them clean.

The same techniques can be applied to other tools. Sharpening stones can be used on smaller garden hand tools such as knives as outlined above, while larger tools such as garden spades and garden hoes are best sharpened using files, with the grinding action directed away from the gardener. Keeping tools dry helps prevent rust. Wiping tools down after every use also saves both time and expense in the longer term.