Flap Wheels for Mower Blade Sharpening

[Merkava_4]

Honda push mower with the stacked twin blade setup. I've been using a machinist file to sharpen the blades. The file is very effective, but time consuming. I would like to move over to the flap wheel method, but I'm afraid of selecting the wrong grit rating and removing too much material too fast. I'm not in that much of a hurry. I assume 80G would be the coarsest anybody would want to go with, but would like to get your opinion first.

 

[Sloughfoot]

For reference, I sharpen ours with a standard metal grinding wheel on an angle grinder and it doesn't take too much too fast. When at home I sharpen blades with the coarse wheel on the bench grinder. Sharpening mower blades with a flap wheel would try my patience. Maybe finish with one.

 

[SawAddictedFarmer]

Honda push mower with the stacked twin blade setup. I've been using a machinist file to sharpen the blades. The file is very effective, but time consuming. I would like to move over to the flap wheel method, but I'm afraid of selecting the wrong grit rating and removing too much material too fast. I'm not in that much of a hurry. I assume 80G would be the coarsest anybody would want to go with, but would like to get your opinion first.

I've used 80 and 60 grit and I prefer the 60.

 

[SawAddictedFarmer]

On standard blades though

 

[bogieboy]

I use either 36 grit flapwheel, or a 3M cubitron blue grinding wheel. As with any abrasive, less pressure does less work. If you go too fine a grit you end up using too much pressure and loose the temper of the blade due to increased friction, as evidenced by blueing on the ground surface.

 

[Stem]

most of the time I use a 60 grit flap-wheel just to touch up blades, if they're pretty rough I'll use 36 grit.

 

[EFSM]

I’ve never found a flap disc that works well for long. Once the grit wears off the ends of the paper, they’re done. Just get a regular grinding wheel and use a spray bottle to keep it cool.