It never fails....

[TLS]

Has been pretty hot and dry here for months. Went out mowing today for the first time in a while. Most are still very dry and crispy. Get to this one lawn that has a garden. Its "Au-Natural". No fence, no pesticides, just WATER. Well about 4' around this garden, the grass (crabgrass/weeds) is over a foot tall. Have double blades on. Excaliburs on bottom and regular Gators on top. Help get ALL the buckhorn, etc. Anyway, I'm mowing around the "garden" and all of a sudden....Bam, whack, Bam, wack, schwing (a whole lota noise) !!!! Here the homeowner decided to pull weeds, AND rocks!!! Ran over a nice pile of 4" rocks. Hit them with my trim side of the deck. They went through and hit every blade!!! OF Course, they were fairly new and perfect blades. Got 6 blades with some sort of large nicks in them. The bad one in the picture is going in the trash tonite. Its just too far gone. The other one was useable, so I just touched it up. Tip to tip was only 20-1/4", so at 1/4" too short, cutting quality would never be optimal.

Thank GOD nobody was around. Somebody WOULD have DEFINATELY been seriously injured or WORSE if they were in the Danger Zone.

P.S. That caused the trim side blade set to come together. A quick re-adjustment and I was back in shape.

[TLS]

:angry:

[lawnkid]

Whcih mower was it? I'm surprised you didn't blow a spindle. Today I hit a sawed down fence post that i couldn't see til i hit it. No damage but that cement and the rest of that pole is dangerous so i asked the homeowner if they could cut it down some more.

[Scraper]

I hear ya Tommy! I have customers that pull some weeds and throw them in the lawn as if I'll mulch them up. Who knows what is in the clump of roots? If it's small I'll run over it, but piles I mow around. Sorry to hear about your blade. I'd bill them for it or at least explain to them to throw out or otherwise properly dispose of their gardening refuse.

[turfman33]

I get the weeds thrown on the grass too. Plus Palm leaves. I turned up at a yard yesterday and they had thrown dirt from large piles all over the grass. Plus a bunch of large branches.

Steve

[awm]

tls ,i would suggest saving it for leaf wk if u mulch. i got a whlole set for that purpose. id also let the homeowner know in a friendly way what it cost u. show them the blades.

[TLS]

Originally posted by lawnkid
Whcih mower was it? I'm surprised you didn't blow a spindle.

It was with the Lazer. I would like to think that a spindle can take a small pile of rocks :rolleyes: I've hit much worse and never damaged a spindle. But then I backed off my trailer with my old DC and bent a spindle shaft :eek: