Balancing blades made of metal, that will be rotating at high speeds, is Not only No nonsense, but IS necessary, and this was an informative and NO Nonsense Video! 👍
Great video. i Always balance new blades. if you do Not balance the blades either used or new they will wear out the mower parts and sometimes vibrate the mowing deck/whole machine. :)
Take your blades off after just one week and you will see that this super sensitive balancer will show that they are unbalanced again. That’s all it takes. I’m not even talking about grass clippings or pieces of dirt sticking to the blades and changing the balancing as you mow. So the question is, unless blades are way out of balance (that a simple nail test would show anyway), are there any real benefits of micro-balancing them? I believe a good practice is a practice that is both sound technically and easy for most people to follow. And a practice that people would ignore because it is too much hustle, is not a good practice no matter how sound it is.
We can definitely agree that when it comes to balancing there is good and good enough. However, a nail will not work because it can’t hold the blade in the center. A regular (horizontal style) balancer is more than enough to get a blade balanced within acceptable tolerance. The balancer that I have is more for a mower shop that sees dozens of blades a day, but it is also quite useful for seeing if a blade is bent.
First off once again congratulations on hitting 1K Subscribers.... There are only a few channels that I get excited about a new upload and Hester781 is one of them... This was a great test, it is obvious that the surface friction of the screwdriver is not giving you an accurate test result. I wonder if you lubricated the screwdriver shaft with a very slippery oil if you might obtain better results. I don't think anything will duplicate your precision bearing balancer but it would be interesting for the do-it-yourselfer to see how we can get the best results. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks Scout! So you have the same idea as I did when I started out. I had an aluminum rod that I polished to a mirror finish and slid on an oiled bronze bushing that I would balance the blade on to “eliminate” friction messing with my results. But an old timer (who taught me much of what I know today) pointed out that the flaw in my design was the blades center of gravity. You need to make the pivot point the exact center of the blade in order to get an accurate reading.
I've been balancing on a nail for years and thought I was the greatest blade sharpener of all time to have perfectly balanced blades every time. After receiving a magnetic balancer my sharpened blades did what your red blades did, OMG I had to re shave one side about 6 times to get a good balance. The kicker is after each re shave I also tested on the nail and it kept showing a good balance, so the nail method is a big time liar. Great presentation
Well done, I'm a little tired of seeing this nail trick. It's very inaccurate. I don't understand why anyone think balancing wouldn't matter. What piece of machinery spinning at high-speed can continue to do that indefinitely without blowing apart at some point if it's not balanced.
Agreed! It’s such a simple concept to understand. I don’t know why it gets so much pushback from people in the small engine repair community. Maybe it’s just me, but I like going the extra distance.
