Do new lawn mower blades need to be sharpened?

I picked up a new pair of blades for my sit down mower today and the blades don't seem sharp at all. They're powdercoated and have an edge to them but I can hold them in my hand without cutting myself or even afraid I might injure myself. There aren't instructions to have them sharpened; just installation instructions. Any ideas?

No you shouldnt have to. If you look at the edge it should be squared off with an edge above and below. When you sharpen them razor sharp the blade will tend to round and cut crappy. Plus if you remove more material on one side than the other that blade will be out of balance and you will have a shakey lawn mower.

For your consideration, weed wacker string isnt razor sharp but cuts through grass like a champ.

Reminds me, my mower needs new blades

Thanks a lot. I figured they were fine and that the store wouldn't sell new blades that had to be sharpened but the other side of my brain questioned how sharp new blades should be. Thanks for the help - time to go mow the lawn.

Who knew a 4 year old thread on HBT would answer my home and garden question! I love this site!

knotquiteawake said:

Who knew a 4 year old thread on HBT would answer my home and garden question! I love this site!

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Thank you for using the search function

Actually, what made it so weird is that I didn't use the search function. I just "googled" my question into the internet at large and one of the first couple results was this HBT thread. They must have some awesome page ranking going on with this website.

Google is a search function!

CodeRage said:

Plus if you remove more material on one side than the other that blade will be out of balance and you will have a shakey lawn mower.

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While true, this statement always make my eyes cross a bit.

It's not hard to improvise a pivot stand. And that is all the majority of sharpening services use anyway. If teh blade leans to one side you take some off that side until it balances on teh pivot.

Or, you just use a reapers file and take a alternate pass across each edge.

GilaMinumBeer said:

Or, you just use a reapers file and take a alternate pass across each edge.

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This is what I was planning on doing if the blade did, or does in the future, need sharpening.

CHefJohnboyardee said:

Thank you for using the search function

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Amazing that my google search landed me here. Who knew home brewers were good about answering lawn questions.