Reel Mower Basics

In an effort to get in shape and have fun with old American Steel (I really do have a trouble not purchasing it when I see it) I picked up a reel mower from Deseret Industries. I didn't want to ride home, get the truck, head all the way back to DI and pick up the reel mower. Nor did I want Jenny to have to make a trip with the kids all the way down there just to turn around and head home. So I did what any half crazy person on a motorcycle does, strapped the reel mower to the back. I took it apart first of course, and bought a bag to protect my newly upholstered seats :-).


When I first got it home I couldn't wait to try it out. Pushing on the driveway was easy and got the reel spinning really fast. I thought it looked great and would be perfect to cut the grass with. Ugh. It was a pain in the butt. Blisters all over my hands and I was exhausted, huge pain to push around the yard, and I had only done the small front patch of grass. The next day Elizabeth mowed the rear lawn for me because I couldn't do it with the reel mower.

I had a lot to learn, as usual. The reason the mower was so easy to push on the driveway was that the reel wasn't making contact with the cutter bar.

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Skip this section if you don't want to be bored to tears about how I sharpened my mower
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The cutter bar is in the back and requires light pressure on the reel to get the shearing action like scissors that it's supposed to. Because of the gap between the reel and the cutter bar the grass would bunch up in there as the reel spun until there was so much it would rip the grass off. After watching and reading way too much stuff online I figured I'd better go make some adjustments and sharpen the reel and cutter bar while I was at it.


Don't bother with the silly reel mower sharpening kits from the store, they look like even more work than what I did. First pop the wheel covers off. On my old model there are holes on the inside, then had to spin the wheels for the magic spot on them to pop the covers off. Then remove the C clips. Then the wheels pop off. I swapped the gears from one side to the other and turned around the gear catches. Put the wheels back on and C clips back on. Then I got some valve lapping compound for $4 from Auto Zone. I would put a dab of it on my finger then pinch it onto each reel blade and run it down in order to leave a nice thick bead on the cutting portion of the reel blade. Repeat for each blade (mine has 7). Now, adjust the screws on the cutter bar to make light contact with the reel blades. Maybe a little more than light, I always overdo things. Now just go have a 10 minute push with the mower backwards, spinning the reel backwards against the cutter bar. If it gets too loose or the blade spins too freely just tighten up the cutter bar a little bit. If it won't budge you're too tight and loosen it up. Now that it is sharpened put it on its side and turn it real slow, make sure the reel contacts the cutter bar down the whole length (mine was still loose in the middle). Keep sharpening until it has full contact.

Now that the sharpening is complete you'll need to clean off the valve lapping compound. I used some WD40 on a rag to clean it off, but pick your poison. You could probably get away with hosing it off if you can dry it off afterward.

All cleaned up and ready to cut. Tighten up the cutter bar until it makes light contact with the reel again (you loosened it to get the lapping compound off right? I did....maybe you were smarter). Take the wheels off again and swap the gears back to the way it was. You should be able to cut newspaper between the reel and the cutter bar all the way down. If it doesn't don't get too upset, mine took a couple sharpenings before it would. Go make a mess of it all over again and see if that does the trick.

Now, spray the crap out of it with WD40 and you're all set for mowing. You'll notice the shearing sound and the blade won't keep spinning for too long on when not on the grass now. Whew, now we're ready to mow. Apparently you only have to do the sharpening once a year, not sure if I'll have to adjust the bar more often.

Also, if you bought a new one from the store, they usually back off the cutter bar in order to prevent damage during shipping. Tighten it up until you have light contact and you should be set. If your cutter bar isn't tight enough then you'll hate your mower, trust me.

Push push push. It shouldn't be too tough at this point. If the grass is too wet it won't stand back up quick enough after you run over it with the wheels and end up with lines of uncut areas, like a rotary mower but perhaps a little more pronounced.

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You can resume reading here. Somewhere in the skipped section I figured out how to adjust the mower so it wasn't so hard to push and would cut properly.
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It *is* more work than a rotary mower. At least with mine it is, not tons more, but more. I have no idea how old my mower is, 15, 20 years maybe? Maybe more, the wheels and gears look like cast iron. Newer units are likely lighter and easier to push. It is much less frustrating than my rotary mower, at least in this wet rye grass. The grass would clump up and stick to the underside of my rotary mower until it was too heavy, then fall back onto the spinning blade and shake the whole mower, leaving a pile of wet grass where it happens. So after mowing with the rotary mower I had to go clean up the 7 or 8 spots it made a mess, what a joke.

With the reel mower I just let the grass fly. Nice light pieces of grass fly through the air as the mower slices through it, it's really kinda fun. Come on over and give it a try sometime ;-). I'll probably keep it up until it gets unbearably hot, but even then I've got the pool nearby so might use it all summer. It doesn't get quite as close to obstacles as the rotary mower so I have to use the weed eater a little more, but the rotary mower didn't get all the way up to them either.


Notice the shiny blades in this photo. If yours aren't shiny you probably need to adjust your cutter bar, maybe sharpen and adjust your cutter bar.

Garden Update March 27

The plants have been coming up for a while now. The corn is coming up in the rows and I transplanted a bean sprout into the corn rows to get two of the three sisters growing together. I will probably try doing the three sisters in that area next time I plant, but that will have to wait for now.

Lots of transplants make it look like I've really done good so far! The basil (lower left two) isn't doing that great, but might just make it. The four red cabbage transplants are looking great. The tomatoes and bell peppers weren't looking so hot at first but seem to have turned a corner for the better. The beans and peas are growing fast, but the beans by far the fastest. The peas leaves are a little yellow, but it seems to come and go, maybe I'm not watering a way they like?

The roma grape tomato plant is by far the best looking of the ones we got. Hopefully it will bring out a good bunch of us this year. This planter has the lettuce which are growing great, radishes that I've had a dozen of and taste delicious and some carrots in need of thinning.

And what garden would be complete without some stinky composters nearby? Actually, the one on the left is ready to use and never really smelled while it was composting, as I had a lot more leaves when I started it (well, them, I combined them into the left one when they broke down). The one on the right is a new start and it reeks. It has way too much nitrogen from grass clippings, even mixed with sawdust it's still too much nitrogen. The color of the green grass and the yellow sawdust makes it look as disgusting as it smells. As long as I don't turn it though it doesn't really escape the barrel. I recently added a bunch of shredded cardboard in an attempt to bring balance to it, but I doubt it was enough.

Much more interesting with them open:

Garden Update Mid February

So after a month or so of waiting the seeds finally arrived. I couldn't stand waiting around to get them started in the ground so got busy making grids in the square foot garden type of setup. This made mapping out where everything is nice and simple, Elizabeth did most of the work of making the map, filling it in and transferring it to excel.

The grids came out nicely. They are held together with brad nails and not permanently attached to the raised beds. At the places edges of the raised beds are little blocks of wood on either side of the grid pieces that hold them in place.

Notice on this side of the raised beds the ground is still flat. That didn't last long.

Partially turned up, with the sandy loam mixed in.

And here it is turned up and ready for planting. Some of the seeds hadn't arrived yet at this point for the mounds, but the corn is planted in the rows on the left. The mounds are a bit higher than I should have made them I think, but we'll see how stuff grows before I discount them entirely.

Garden Raised Bed Planters

My family has been wanting to get another garden for the last couple years, but either to do knowing that we *could* move or just having moved and not having a place for it have just gotten to it this year. My sister Angie and friend Narasimhan had also been talking up square foot gardening, so I figured I could try a variation of that. By far the most work of this project has been clearing the rocks. The previous (or previous previous) owners that put them in were through and they were several inches deep. I hauled off 3 tons of them in my truck (in one load, bed bottomed out) and still have as much or more left.

Then the raking, getting the scraps up and. Then getting the liner up. Since then it's been pretty smooth sailing. Put up a temporary divider (temporary as in year or two). Got the remaining scraps of river rocks thrown over (though we are constantly pulling more rocks out) and you have the picture below! :-)


I did a lot of overthinking on the raised beds, but eventually settled on 4' x 6' beds 1' deep. This seems to be a nice size and will allow some room for planing some shade for the west wall (currently thinking oleanders). Add some nails two some 2x6's and you see the results below. I also capped the corners with some 4x6's that I cut short and removed most of the material leaving an L shape. This should help hold it together as it is all now held in place by mechanical interference of the nails rather than just the friction force of the nails. We'll see how long it will do the trick.


While I considered Mel's Mix that is popular among square foot gardeners I'm too cheap for that. I picked up 2.5 cubic yards of Sandy Loam from Pioneer Sand. Per the description:

33% screened fill dirt, 33% mulch, 33% manure. Sandy Loam is A great medium for vegetable gardens and other applications that utilize the warmth and micro nutrients of manure.

This is a great feeling soil that drains well. It was steaming when I picked it up (well, the tractor dumped it into my truck), apparently still composting despite being thinned. Blake was very thankful to the tractor operator for giving us all this fun dirt!



After filling the raised beds I threw the rest on the side where I plan on putting the squash and watermelon mounds as well as the rows for the corn. The kids had a great time helping out :-D.



Here they are looking good and ready for plants!


Back to the Mel's Mix. It is

• 1/3 vermiculite
• 1/3 peat moss
• 1/3 compost (from as many sources as possible)

Vermiculite seems to cost $10ish / cubic foot, so for that alone I would have paid around $210. Add compost and peat moss and it's more than I could justify spending at this point. This soil cost around $60 IIRC. I've got the composters running and will add it as mulch through the season or mix in as I rotate out plants. I've considered adding in vermiculite as I go along, but probably won't as I had a pretty nice garden in a mostly clay mix (from the layering* they do with new developments), and this can only get better.


*Most newer developments (well, newer as in last 15 years+ depending on where in the country you are) get their plans drawn out with desired ground elevations. Then ground is then scraped down to make a lot of underground work easier, then depending on settlement in the area piles are made to accelerate the settlement so it doesn't happen after the house it build, thus preventing cracks in the foundation. While this speeds development and is better for the house foundations in areas with high settlement, it typically means the topsoil is either buried or down the street or somewhere besides being the top layer of soil. Goodbye organic materials and drainage, hello clay!

Homework Desk

Elizabeth had been asking me to make her a desk and I was wanting to do one in preparation for other projects. I thought I was going to do this one with pine, but the cost difference for the veneers wasn't enough to get it so I figured oak would be nice.

I tried to find a nice simple set of plans (no drawers) but didn't find anything that looked right so I just made them up. I drew them out in my notebook so Elizabeth would know what I was going for. I can't seem to find them but if anyone wants them let me know and I'll go digging.

I picked up a Kreg pocket (I actually tried a cheap one from the home depot, but it was a piece of crap that required far too much measuring for each hole) hole jig to do the joint work as I didn't (and don't) have enough clamps for most other solutions. I started by getting a piece cut down to size, I tried on my table saw but it just isn't big enough working surface to do a full 4x8 sheet, so I clamped a strait edge to it and used a nice blade on my skilsaw to do the trick (after trying a cheap blade anyway...).


Before I got too far I routed over the edge and stained a sample piece with some different options we had around. We went with the Red Mahogany 225, seen on the right with just one coat.


The joints looked pretty good with the pocket holes, but not perfect. Getting the screws closer together on the back side would have helped, but they didn't look too bad and a little filler would hide the imperfections.







Skipped a few steps and get to getting the legs on. These are also done with the pocket hole setup. I freehanded a pattern out onto some scraps to make the pattern at the bottom of the legs. They looked pretty good after sanding.


Those are the shelves sitting between the legs.


And here's a shot with the shelves in place. I took some strips I cut from the edge banding on the top to make the veneer for the front of the uprights and shelves. They were held on with glue and brad nails.


Here is a the stain on the finished piece For some reason it came out splotchy :-(. I was pretty upset by this as the only solution I could find was to sand out the old stain, apply some sealer and restain. That wasn't an option for me as I didn't have much veneer left after finishing the edging on the top. It also wasn't getting much darker and Elizabeth wanted a darker desk.


We found a alternative to sanding it all down and got it darker in the process! Minwax Polyshades in Bombay Mahogany gave it the color we wanted and hid the splotchyness of the initial stain! We only did one coat of of the polyshades and finished up with 3 coats of clear polyurethane on top. It looks great and fits perfectly in Elizabeth's room. It even helps with homework! Having a quiet place to concentrate does wonders.


Doing it again I would go with drawers. The large shelves (deep shelves) were a pain to sand, stain and finish. Getting the poly in them was difficult, as the brush strokes have to be done in the direction of the grain and not leave any drips or thick areas. Next time I'll make drawers, mostly because I enjoy the putting together of the wood more than the finishing so I'll spend my time there.

I definitely like the kreg jig setup, it is quick and you don't have to wait for glue to dry to move on. I hit a couple of the screws when routing over the top that didn't get in at the perfect angle so I'll either need to do thicker edge next time or not drill the pocket holes so deep.

Control My Smoker!

After seeing some of the nicer smokers that are out there and having just a thrift store electric one I knew it needed some upgrades. I use the smoker in weather that varies from 120 in the summer in Mesa to single digits in Flagstaff in the fall and winter when I go see my family. The built in thermostat just wasn't cutting it for me, and the original temperature gauge only told me "ideal", "hot" and "cool" temperatures, no idea actual degrees.

I initially added a temperature gauge to let me know the temperature in the smoker, as I'd like to keep it around 215 or so for most of what I do. This helped, but the smoker never seemed to get to a decent temperature with it, always struggling to stay over 200. At one point I added an additional heat unit (butchered hot plate) in order to try to get the heat up.



It still wasn't working to my satisfaction, so there was only one thing to do: make it more complicated with another project! I needed to make an electronic temperature controller. I had been kicking around the idea to turn on a fan in the summer when it got hot in the house so figured I could make this do both.

I picked up an Arduino (no, I don't care that I could have done this on smaller, cheaper hardware or that I could have made minor changes and done it on the Atmega in C instead of the arduino language, been there, done that, don't care) to do my development on and got my prototype working in short order then when to the pain task of soldering it up. I always get bored with a project after the prototyping phase so it was a struggle to keep going at it. I ordered some kits on ebay with the bootloader for arduino burned on the atmega328 chip that came with a crystal, voltage regulator and plug for the chip, around $7 each I think. I used the microchip onewire temperature sensors, and initially programmed it to use two of them, one for meat temperature and one for smoker temperature, but backed down to one and use a separate meat sensor that has a pager.

It is currently using a Radio Shack 275-0005 relay, it will control 120v at 12 amps with 9 volt control. I took the additional heating element out of the smoker to bring total draw down to 15 rated amps and figured I'd take my chances with the relay. I used a 2n2222 transistor to control the relay as the arduino operates at 5v and I wouldn't want to put the current through it that the relay requires.

I drew up some schematics as I disassembled the circuit from prototyping phase so I could figure out how to get it back together. They may or may not be helpful.

I try to modularize the parts so I can swap them out when I improve them or blow them up, so I kept the relay on a separate board.

I even draw up how to do silly things like buttons so I don't have to draw them all or think about them next time I want to do a project.

And here is how I tied all that into the arduino (or rather, the atmega chip running the arduino bootloader).


I didn't get any pictures of the device in prototyping phase, but here it is wired up waiting for an enclosure. I hooked up the MicroChip onewire temp sensor with CAT-V plenum, kind of a pain using the solid core wire but I'm cheap and got some for free. I initially had it hooked up using dedicated power but couldn't get a reading from them at all. As I had done the brilliant move of changing my source code and the hardware at the same time troubleshooting was lots of fun. I eventually tried them in parasite power mode and they sprung to life giving readings just like they should.


Here I'm beginning the enclosure. I didn't have much laying around the house that I thought would look nice and be the right size but thought that some left over pool piping would do the trick.



I ended up splitting the pipe length wise to fit everything in so capped it with some pieces of wood that had cut off strait joints hot glued on. I also hot glued the pipe back together to keep moisture out. The hot glue probably won't hold up to well in the summer if I leave it in the sun, but the LCD probably won't like it much either.


Here it is on a maiden run of turning the heating element for the smoker on. The relay seemed to be staying cool enough and by setting the threshold temperature low I could trigger the device by heating the sensor with my fingers.


First time using it to actually control the smoker! Making some ribs while helping friends make some Adirondack chairs and wood ammo box. The ribs came out a little bitter, sure if it was the rub (which has tasted excellent before), the crab apple wood, but most likely because I didn't soak all of the wood before putting it in and I think some of it caught fire and got soot on the ribs :-(.


Ahh, nice when I actually *finish* a project, well, kinda...I've still got a lot I'd like to do with this one...



Most of the time it is just displaying current and target temperature. This pic is right after I started it up so it isn't quite at the target temperature yet.


For what it currently does. There is a switch that determines control mode and set temperature mode. When in set temperature mode the buttons closes to the LCD move it up and down. Pressing them both at the same time will reset the temperature back to 220. When in control mode pressing the buttons individually does nothing, but pressing them both at the same time will switch it from keeping things warm to keeping things cool: trigger in the opposite direction. The third button saves the settings to EEPROM, but asks first. The up button confirms, the down button denies.

Link to sketch here (fixed 2012-01-21...feel free to email me if I break it again).

The temperature seems to have about a 6 degree swing, drops to about 3 below when kicking on the heat element and about 3 over by the time it turns if off. I thought about trying to stabilize this in the software but don't think it's enough to worry about.

Future changes include a solid state relay (SSR). I ordered some of these from ebay for pretty cheap and they will simplify the circuit quite a bit. I will no longer need a 9v power supply, the relay, the transistor for the relay, etc. The SSR can also handle up to 25Amps, so no worries about overloading it either. If I get some time (yeah, right) I'd like to change it so it didn't have a switch but used the third button to change modes. One of the modes would be a program mode where you could program it to hold at different temperatures for differing periods of time. Say you want it to hold at 100 degrees for an hour, then go up to 150 for an hour, then 200 for another hour, then back to 160 for two hours. Something along those lines would be fun. I also would like to change out the Onewire temperature sensor for a Type K thermocouple due to the different packaging these come in. They have them bolt on, insertion probes, etc and some can handle up to 1400C or something crazy, and have nice wires that are better at handling heat too. This will require a little adapter, probably using MAX6675 (I had a nice place to get those and a etched board from bookmarked but can't find it right now). Then I need to make one of those for Roy as I probably eat more of the stuff he smokes than I do. Will I ever get it all done? Maybe if I don't do the time/temperature settings reprogram and get busy with the soldering iron.

A Great Mouse has died

It is a sad day. My mouse since around 2001 has died after many years of hard service. I first came upon this Optical Mouseman M-BD53 Rev. B as a warranty replacement on an original Ergonomic Mouseman, which I bought after moving out and away from my original Mouseman. Unfortunately, I haven't found one that quite fills its place in terms of ergonomics and movement. A couple years ago I even purchased another Logitech mouse just to steal its cord, as the original on this one had grown stiff as the rubber broke down. For those curious, this was P/N 201404-000.

Will I find a suitable replacement? Something that I don't have to charge batteries but still feels good and moves right? The search is on.

Do I keep it and troubleshoot the problem? Reflow all the solder? Replace the cord again and hope it is a break in it? With ever increasing frequency in its final weeks it would stop working, power from the USB port would cease and the light would go out. I initially thought my motherboard was on its way out, but another mouse has worked fine with no interuptions. I'll hold onto it for a little while and see if I get ambitious with the soldering iron. Perhaps it will return as frankenmouse!