Accessories

Have Reel Will Mow!
After researching reel mowers and reading reviews I concur this is the greatest tool to mow a little grass! It arrived assembled; with only the handle needing attaching. No tools needed except a wrench to tighten up the bolts.
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Easy to push. Cuts well. Try it...you'll like it!

Great item
this is a great item. I have used it many times and am quite happy with the results. I was a little upset that the factory height setting was higher than the advertised 1". However, it is fairly simple to lower the height adjustment mechanism. The handle also is a little less rigid than I like but overall this is a mower I would recommend to anyone interested in getting away from gas or electric mowers.

Might just change your mind about manual mowers
Mowing with this mower is so much easier than those ancient beasts from 30+ years ago. I bought this mower with some trepidation. My Father had one when I was a kid and it was modern instrument of torture. It was hard to push and would stall when just cutting grass, let alone sticks. Fast forward 35 years and I have just purchased this push mower to cut 16,000 ft2 of grass. Was I mad! Well the jury is still out on the mad part, but I am pretty sure that I wasn't being stupid. The Scotts cuts extremely well (after a tiny adjustment) and the 20 inch width means that I don't have to make endless passes across my yard.

But let's be realistic, this is more effort than a self-propelled gas mower. Surprisingly, however, it isn't that much more than a manual push gas mower. But we could all stand a little bit more exercise. I was getting up at 5:30 every morning to go sweat it out for an hour and a half in the gym in an effort to stave off the demons of advancing age. I thought why am I doing this and then Saturday morning firing up a noisy, polluting resource hog of a self-propelled gas mower? Why not kill two birds with one stone? So I took the plunge and bought one of these mowers. Now I work out at the gym 3 mornings and workout on my lawn twice a week. And just ignore the whiners who cry about how hard it is. I am 48 years old and currently cutting and cross-cutting 16,000 ft2 of grass twice a week (damn explosive spring growth anyway), and I'm not dead yet

Here is what I have learned:

First, don't expect that you will get a perfectly uniform cut the very first time. You will need to start out near the max cut height if you are transitioning from a rotary mower. When cut this high, the wheels push the tall grass blades over and they don't rebound quickly enough to get cut on the return pass. Cross-cutting will get most of the "Mohawks" out of the lawn, even then not all. So you will have some tufts here and there that stick up. But relax, breath, it will be alright. The lawn police generally don't arrest you on the first offense. And a reel mower really does give a more attractive cut since the scissor action doesn't cause the grass blade tips to brown up like a rotary mower does. The result is the little tufts that are left are much less noticeable.

Second, cut shorter. Start moving the adjustment height down with each mowing. Reel mowers, unlike rotaries, don't suction the grass that is growing horizontal upwards to be cut, so the parts of the grass that aren't already sticking up already don't get cut. This means that even cut short, there is enough blade surface area to keep the grass healthy and the ground shaded to crowd out the weeds and hold soil moisture. I started at the max of 3 inches and am now at about 1.75 to 2 inches. At this height the shorter blades spring back up faster resulting in fewer uncut tufts. My hope is that when I get the grass down to 1.5 inches or so, it will bounce back up immediately and I won't need to cross-cut.

Third, before you do anything else take a sharpie marker and draw a vertical line down the blade adjustment screws and onto the adjustment block they screw into. This will mark the factor setting for the blade gap between the reel and the knife bed. I recommend this because, if yours is like mine, the factory setting is too tight. The result is a lot of scrapping of the reel on the knife bed. I didn't do this and moved the adjustment screws too much, and then it was hell getting the adjustment back. Once you have marked the factory location test your mower to see if it is too tight. On this mower, the reel needs to make contact with the knife bed, but when you push it on a driveway and then stop, the reel should continue spinning for a turn or two. Initially mine would stop almost immediately. It cut well this way, but the effort level was too much (almost as bad as my Dad's old mower). If this describes your mower, I would open the gap (counter clockwise on the back screws, clockwise on the front to push the knife bed down and away from the reel) until there is still contact (you can hear it), but the reel continues to spin a little after you stop pushing. And don't move the screws very much for each adjustment. The threads on these screws are pretty coarse and so move the screws in 5 degree increments at most. I moved them a full half turn to start with and it opened the gap so much that the mower wouldn't even cut.

I highly recommend this mower and reel mowers in general. Do something good for you and the environment at the same time.

Best Purchase
Not only is it easy to put together, but it's fun to use. I love my reel mower and I'm sure everyone around me is sick of hearing about it. I love that I don't have to buy gas. I love that I don't end up smelling like gas after I'm done with the yard. I love that it's virtually noiseless.
The mower is not heavy and very easy to push. After using this, I can't imagine using anything else.

Love this mower
I love this mower. It's so nice to be able to sit outside while my husband mows and not worry about flying rocks hitting me or the kids. It's nice to be able to mow and not worry about my son running up next to me and getting his foot chopped off.

This mower works well and pushes easily. Any little stick will stop it, but it's easy enough to unclog. We just try to make sure the major sticks are picked up before we start mowing.