using other brand mower blades

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thebuildist United States of America
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using other brand mower blades

Post by thebuildist »

So around here, it's leaf season. And the leaves seem like they are thicker than ever before.

One of the things I try to do every third day or so is to blow off down my driveway and from the street across a little strip of grass and down into a creek bottom area. Once the leaves get down into the bottom area they are as good as gone. So you have to blow them up and over the street curb and then three to five feet horizontally across a grass strip, whereupon they flutter down into the creek bottom.

And I was watching a recent YouTube video on one of my favorite channels Diesel Creek and he had this huge turbine leaf blower mounted on a Ventrac tractor. And that thing was pretty amazing. And it made me wish that I had a more effective blowing machine.

I have a backpack blower. And of course with the mower deck on the Ingersoll, you can to some degree suck up the leaves in your path and eject them out the side.

But I recently had experience with a mower deck using high lift blades, and that is way more effective at clearing leaves from the mower deck path.

So I said all that to say this: I want some high lift blades on my Ingersoll 4020. After a bit of searching, it appears that high lift blades are unavailable.

So I ordered a three pack of high lift blades for a Deere "7 iron" deck from a Z810A zero turn. They're 17" long with a round 7/8 center hole.

My plan was to machine the proper oblong rounded slot into them, to match a later series Ingersoll blade.

But I realized that I can save myself time in the long run by fabricating three adapters that will minimize the machining I have to do on new blades, and can even allow me to mount Case-pattern blades if the need arises. Though I don't know if there's any such thing as a right hand blade with the old style mount pattern.

And as it turns out, these new blades are HIGH carbon steel. Very, very difficult to machine. To enlarge the center hole out to 1.25", I had to use a boring head with a ceramic cutting insert, and it dulled three of them. To drill the 3/8" holes 2 5/8" apart, I had to use sharpened carbide masonry bits, and I ruined one of those too. So you definitely don't want to do any unnecessary machining on these blades.
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The adapter is a 3/16 plate that's 3.5x 2.5. I bored the 1.25 center hole and the two 3/8 bolt holes. Then I machined round bar stock to 1.25, and ran a parting tool about halfway in, creating 3 disks that are 1/4 thick. Then I fed that bar end-long into the bandsaw, which served to cut off a woodruff key-shaped slug.

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I then plug welded a pair of those slugs onto my adapter plate, so now when you slide the adapter plate in place, the slugs engage with the spindle adapter.

Finally I welded in bolts in the 3/8 bolt holes. The bolts stuck upwards into the 3/8 holes in the blade, locking the new adapter's rotation to the blade's rotation.

So the factory spindle adapter turns the new custom adapter, and the custom adapter turns the blade.

I'll report back later how it works and sounds and performs.

Bob
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thebuildist United States of America
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Re: using other brand mower blades

Post by thebuildist »

A couple final pictures to close the loop...

First, the completed adapter:
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All attached, nice and shiny:
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Lastly I modified the discharge chute to try to focus the output air a bit. I put it in the press and bent the longest crease about 15 degrees deeper:
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And I added a crease at the trailing edge to try to block off the rear edge, creating a bit of a narrowing "nozzle".
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Chute final product:
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Bob
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Re: using other brand mower blades

Post by MattA »

Good work Bob. You could also build yourself a set of mulching blades. If you want some more blade tip speed, you can swap in the RM44 (faster) or RM38 (fastest) center drive spindles.

Another option is to use your hydravac to blow the leaves.
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Re: using other brand mower blades

Post by thebuildist »

Ok, having mowed some leaves today, I'm really loving the high lift blades. There is clearly a LOT more air volume coming out of the deck.

So that's a real positive.

My only issue is the modification I made to the discharge chute. After the bends I did to it, it's now pointing somewhat downward. Which makes it too easily clogged by leaves. So I'm going to pull it off and undo the main big bend.

And it revealed (again) that my blades are too easily slowed down. I'm modifying the deck belt routing to address that issue, which I've just covered in a different post.

So a definite improvement, but we're not quite over the finish line yet.

Bob
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Re: using other brand mower blades

Post by DavidBarkey »

High lift blades are great if you can run them . We can't run high lift blades here . They don't last long . Where we are is a glacial drift made of mostly sand . High lift blades suck the sand up . The sand is granite sand and just eats the blades in no time . That being said drainage is NOT a problem here .
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Re: using other brand mower blades

Post by thebuildist »

Drainage itself isn't too bad around here. But percolation is very bad. My neighbor's house sits on a half acre. And he had to install a $23,000 septic system with an injector pump to somehow force the effluent into a wider range into the soil.

In my case the front edge of my property is an almost sheer face
against a valley with a creek at the bottom. It's about 75 or 90 linear feet from my leaching field to that face. And I think I get some horizontal seepage to keep my leaching field itself from getting saturated.

I say all that to say that I would love to have some super sandy soil!

Bob
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Re: using other brand mower blades

Post by thebuildist »

I recently completed my first mow of the season, and boy, was I surprised when I hit the PTO switch: A big FAT roaring/sucking sound, and clippings BLASTING out the chute at a much higher than normal speed.

"Oh yeah," I thought to myself, "I put those high lift blades on here last fall!"

This thing is such a pleasure to mow with now. Not that it was bad before, but I'm really loving the improvement.

Bob
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Re: using other brand mower blades

Post by Eugen »

thebuildist wrote: Tue Apr 11, 2023 1:49 pm I recently completed my first mow of the season, and boy, was I surprised when I hit the PTO switch: A big FAT roaring/sucking sound, and clippings BLASTING out the chute at a much higher than normal speed.

"Oh yeah," I thought to myself, "I put those high lift blades on here last fall!"

This thing is such a pleasure to mow with now. Not that it was bad before, but I'm really loving the improvement.

Bob
Hard smart work paid off! If I cared about the lawn here I'd definitely want to copy your mod! :thumbsup:
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Re: using other brand mower blades

Post by MattA »

Glad the new blades are working well. I'm sure fixing the slipping belt also helped a lot too.
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Re: using other brand mower blades

Post by MattA »

Looks like you may be using Stens 330-150 blades.
https://www.stens.com/330-150-hi-lift-blade
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