Reel to Bedknife contact Cancel The title field is required!

1. Stu Leachman

   

   0 posts
   
   6/6/2013 10:06 AM

   Hi Folks,
   
   Wondering how people set up your reel to bedknife for your mowers - greens, fairways, tees, and rough. Do you maintain slight contact between reel and bedknife or do you leave a gap and how big? A small explaination as to why would also be appreciated. Thanks for your time.
   
   Stu Leachman

   
   
   
   
2. Tod Blankenship

   

   0 posts
   
   6/6/2013 11:06 AM

   Hi Stu,
   
   We strive for no contact on all reels (greens, tees, and fairways). Ultimately we shoot for cut one leave one with our (Bernhard) paper strips. I know there is a lot of science and engineering behind the many different philosophies but I prefer the KISS method.
   
   We have the Bernhard set up so this makes grinding more frequently more feasible than some. My philosophy stems from 10 years of doing it this way and I'm not saying it's entirely right or wrong but it has worked for me. I believe there is some truth to the scalpel versus the sharp scissors analogy the Bernhard folks use. I would prefer to have a surgeon use a scalpel versus a pair of scissors.
   
   My goal is to help the turf not grow. We don't fertilize very much and I really don't like to water either. I only use Embark for seedhead control and no other PGRs. True, turf inherently wants to grow vertical. It's physiologically programmed to get rid of the older cells, however if I can minimize this through surgically sharp cutting units and not chemicals I sleep better. If the plant is not forced to send energy to heal (excessive) wounding from tearing and pinching that results from contact it will inherently sit relatively idle.
   
   If the plant is trying to heal, it must be growing vertically? If there is less area to repair, less vertical growth, and subsequently less energy used. I have seen it first hand at 3 different facilities (all cool season). The Bernhard Company has a good CD that explains a lot of this in detail you may want to get in touch with them?
   
   I know I am opening up a bit of a Pandora's Box with this but just my two cents.
   
   I am curious to hear what the experts have to say?

   
   
   
   
3. Melvin Waldron

   

   43 posts
   
   6/6/2013 3:06 PM

   I'm no expert and I can't say that our reels are always set the way I prefer, (problem when your sharing mechanic with other courses and he pretty does what he wants) and for another topic or day backlapping.
   
   Any how before I already make a short post too long, I was taught at Lake City to cut one crimp one sheet of paper, basically that is 3 thousands clearance? Contact was not wanted due to possible heating of the cutting unit, (in-case the grass wasn't lubricating the unit enough) and also for less wear on blades and bedknife.
   
   Hopefully that helps.
   
   Mel

   
   Melvin H. Waldron III, CGCS, Horton Smith Golf Course, City of Springfield/Greene County MO
   
   
4. Robert Crockett

   

   4 posts
   
   6/8/2013 7:06 PM

   Tod Blankenship, CGCS said: Hi Stu,
   
   We strive for no contact on all reels (greens, tees, and fairways). Ultimately we shoot for cut one leave one with our (Bernhard) paper strips. I know there is a lot of science and engineering behind the many different philosophies but I prefer the KISS method.
   
   We have the Bernhard set up so this makes grinding more frequently more feasible than some. My philosophy stems from 10 years of doing it this way and I'm not saying it's entirely right or wrong but it has worked for me. I believe there is some truth to the scalpel versus the sharp scissors analogy the Bernhard folks use. I would prefer to have a surgeon use a scalpel versus a pair of scissors.
   
   My goal is to help the turf not grow. We don't fertilize very much and I really don't like to water either. I only use Embark for seedhead control and no other PGRs. True, turf inherently wants to grow vertical. It's physiologically programmed to get rid of the older cells, however if I can minimize this through surgically sharp cutting units and not chemicals I sleep better. If the plant is not forced to send energy to heal (excessive) wounding from tearing and pinching that results from contact it will inherently sit relatively idle.
   
   If the plant is trying to heal, it must be growing vertically? If there is less area to repair, less vertical growth, and subsequently less energy used. I have seen it first hand at 3 different facilities (all cool season). The Bernhard Company has a good CD that explains a lot of this in detail you may want to get in touch with them?
   
   I know I am opening up a bit of a Pandora's Box with this but just my two cents.
   
   I am curious to hear what the experts have to say?

   
   So your saying that a 30mph wind and 105 degree temp wont hurt your greens?

   
   
   
   
5. Tod Blankenship

   

   0 posts
   
   6/9/2013 6:06 PM

   Mr. Crockett,
   
   I have read and reread my post and can't seem to find anywhere "a 30mph wind and 105 degree temp won't hurt my greens"?
   
   However, I would agree the less surface area (open wounding) exposed to wind dessication and heat stress the less undue stress the plants need to recover from subsequently minimizing damage and shortening the threshold for said damage to occur.

   
   
   
   
6. Robert Crockett

   

   4 posts
   
   6/9/2013 7:06 PM

   Tod Blankenship, CGCS said: Mr. Crockett,
   
   I have read and reread my post and can't seem to find anywhere "a 30mph wind and 105 degree temp won't hurt my greens"?
   
   However, I would agree the less surface area (open wounding) exposed to wind dessication and heat stress the less undue stress the plants need to recover from subsequently minimizing damage and shortening the threshold for said damage to occur.

   
   It sounds very interesting....The less the turf grows the less there is to cut, that I know. I'm in a very arid part of TX. I like the concept very much. With low fertility, how is color? Curious as to what part of the world your course is at, what variety of bent grass your cultivating. So many pros and cons to contemplate.

   
   
   
   
7. Ashton Alan W

   
   6/10/2013 12:06 PM

   I'll throw this out there...
   
   We run no contact during the winter season, when we are cool season (overseed) and light contact during the summer when it's all bermuda (otherwise, I'd have to have the mechanic adjust reel to bedknife halfway through nine holes).
   
   The difference between warm and cool season is huge for us...

   
   
   
   
8. Hector Velazquez

   

   0 posts
   
   6/11/2013 4:06 PM

   Yeap, a VERY HUGE can of worms.
   
   Here is how I look at it. I am a technician. I did not design the reel. My job as a Technician is the keep equipment as close to OEM as I can get it.
   
   I keep reels to O.E.M. period. They designed it, they know how they work more effectively. Is that to say that doing it any other way is wrong? absolutly not. You have to do what works for your course.
   
   One should ALWAYS default to O E M setting first then find "your" happy medium from there.
   
   I have tried Spin only, no contact. Spin, Relief, with light contact. I have always found with a whisper contact reels maintain an ideal cut quality longer.
   
   Check O E M settings and experiement from there. See what works for you.
   
   I am very pasionate about this subject, and I have very strong opinions concerning this subject so I am really bitting my tongue here. Reels is my favorite part of my job. absolutly LOVE grinding reels, setting them up, and just watching them manicure turf. THAT IS WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT!
   Super could careless how many gal per mile the greens mower is getting. Or how shiny it is. Its all about the REELS PERIOD! they need to be perfect. I will NOT sacrifice quality manicured turf, for speed grinding! You get what you put in to it.

   
   
   
   
9. Keith Pegg

   

   0 posts
   
   6/11/2013 4:06 PM

   Hector L Velazquez said: Yeap, a VERY HUGE can of worms.
   
   Here is how I look at it. I am a technician. I did not design the reel. My job as a Technician is the keep equipment as close to OEM as I can get it.
   
   I keep reels to O.E.M. period. They designed it, they know how they work more effectively. Is that to say that doing it any other way is wrong? absolutly not. You have to do what works for your course.
   
   One should ALWAYS default to O E M setting first then find "your" happy medium from there.
   
   I have tried Spin only, no contact. Spin, Relief, with light contact. I have always found with a whisper contact reels maintain an ideal cut quality longer.
   
   Check O E M settings and experiement from there. See what works for you.
   
   I am very pasionate about this subject, and I have very strong opinions concerning this subject so I am really bitting my tongue here. Reels is my favorite part of my job. absolutly LOVE grinding reels, setting them up, and just watching them manicure turf. THAT IS WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT!
   Super could careless how many gal per mile the greens mower is getting. Or how shiny it is. Its all about the REELS PERIOD! they need to be perfect. I will NOT sacrifice quality manicured turf, for speed grinding! You get what you put in to it.

   
   
   Hector,
   You as always are correct, some 40+ years ago I was a assistant in a resort course in the mountains of Oregon and 4-5 months out of the year I was a mechanics helper. I had to grind all the mower for the resort we had two sets for every mower so we had a lot of units. The first hydraulic units were coming with the Toro greens mower and back then we did relief on all friction drive mowers as they slip the wheels in the turf if you flat grind. (by mid-summer they were flat and it was dry they worked great.) all hydraulic mower were spin grind as that worked far better for holding an edge longer. We used .001 stainless steel shim stock to adjust all mowers and you had to be able to pull with your hand. Test was a little oil on the fingers if you could still pull the shim stock you were okay. We had the very first center point adjusted fairway drag units and they were set the same plus one click (.001"). We had a great cut then and I still follow a program on my hydraulic mowers today. We have no more belt or friction drive units but with the new electric drives they may be a new learning curve.
   Today's mowers' I find bigger fairway and rough blades will touch just a little when set right and greens mower spin free until you spin them up to full RPM then you can hear them a little and so never run them dry without cutting grass.
   When we back lap all adjustments are made before and then just to touch blades to bed knife. Then with 120 grit back-lap and wash and 80% of the time they need no adjustment if done right. We do a 1-2 min back lap every 4 hours on walker green mower and every 8 hours on others. Mechanic will check Fairway mowers each day at ½ way mark. When I see a bad cut I will stop mower and send to the shop, does not matter how busy we are a bad cut looks bad to all. (even if the customer can't see it, I think it hurts the golf experience.)
   Mechanics are the most important employees on staff to me, irrigation tec next (he is my lead foreman). Then the chemical applicators. I am lucky to have a 20 man staff on an 18 hole course and the staff is well paid with less than one person turnover per year for 7 years now. They get 4 weeks' vacation and or leave and all holidays. Treat the staff well and they treat you well. We all get two days off every week and that is a first for me and it's great.
   Keith Pegg
   Japan

   
   
   
   
10. Henry Heinz

    

    0 posts
    
    6/11/2013 6:06 PM

    All I have to say is, setup, setup, setup..... A sharp reel and bedknife does not always mean quality. Measuring bedknife thickness, bedknife attitude, frames being parallel, rollers being true and no more out of round than .001 to .003. Extend knife, regular knife. Measuring the the center line of cut / screw line. I have found bed bars out as far as .060 of an inch. Grinding a bed bar. Mainly making sure your grinder and bedknife grinders are accurately calibrated. And sorry to say, but your traction units need to be maintained as well, one without the out does you, NO GOOD. Lift arms, bushings, frames, hydraulics, consistent speeds, are all things that need to be considered when looking at quality of cut. How many grind bedknives and measure them to make sure they are all the same or as close to the same as possible? Know how much clearance between the turf canopy and the bottom of the knife are important concerns when going to ultra low heights of cuts. Front face consistency from unit to unit. Many things to consider, but whatever works for you is the right way, however these are some of the things I cover with my technicians as I prepare them to take on head equipment managers positions. I also use JRM knives, not an OEM product but very good quality, and I think Hector uses them too.
    
    Regards,

    
    
    
    
11. Stephen Tucker

    

    0 posts
    
    6/12/2013 7:06 AM

    My thoughts are this: I am always reading which grinder is better, relief or no relief, backlapping or not to backlap. A sharp reel and bedknife are essential to quality of cut but they are not the only thing. Whether a reel has relief or doesn't or if you backlap or not has very little to do with the end product. The reel will cut grass using any of those methods. Where everyone should be spending time as Skip mentioned above is on the details of set-up. So much time has been spent talking about which grinder is the best in prior conversations about this when what really matters is how well the cutting unit is set-up. Don't get me wrong the reel and bedknife need to be sharp but how you arrive at "sharp" doesn't matter.
    
    Understanding how to parrallel, the effects of weight distribution, understanding the different types of rollers and how they should be changed depending on turf conditions or season, grinding the proper angles, understanding the effects of bedknife attitude, down pressure settings, traction speed, the effects of running different reel diameters, bedknife drag and understanding how it effects after cut appearance these are all things that make an equal difference to how the turf looks after its cut. Lets face it making a reel and bedknife sharp enough to cut is the easy part but setting one up properly after its been sharpened is where the secret lies.
    Yes I am going to say this: It doesn't matter what reel grinder or bedknife grinder you use they will all provide decent results. Are some better then others - YES. Are some more accurate then others - YES. Are some faster than others - YES. Do some cost more than others - YES. Once they are all done grinding do they all put a sharp edge on a reel and a bedknife - YES. What they don't do is set-up the reel for you and that's where many of us miss the boat.
    
    In regards to the question about reel and bedknife contact "my preference" is to run the reel and bedknife as far away from each other as I can and still cut one sheet of paper "cleanly". I learned the crimp one cut one method in college and my method gets me pretty close to that and is a little faster to set-up. I expect when we begin making contact with the reel and bedknife through our filing, checks and adjustments that we begin scheduling them to be ground.

    
    
    
    
12. Dinger Greg

    
    6/12/2013 8:06 AM

    Bedknife condition, in particular the face, and reel set up is where I spend most my time. I set everything with a .001" feeler, that I buy in bulk as I tend to cut them over time, and then just sneak the knife up to a WHISPER of contact. I let the grass pushing up from underneath handle the rest of the contact.
    
    As some of my favorite people above have stated, you have nothing if you dont have that reel and his 2-6 brothers looking like twins, doing the exact same thing.
    
    And in my humble opinion, if you expect perfection, yet have your tech laying on his face trying to accomplish this, its an unrealistic expectation. A proper lift, and suitable reel set up work station are an absolute necessity.

    
    
    
    
13. Steve Nelson

    

    0 posts
    
    6/12/2013 10:06 AM

    I've been without a mechanic here for a few months now and have been forced to do things the old fashioned way (old fashioned = me doing the work). It had been many, many years since I did this work myself so I was forced to read the manual/ watch the video (it is 2013 afterall), and in every case the instructions were to adjust to even contact across the reel then back off to avoid the reels heating up or something along those lines. Maybe this is a case of "when all else fails, follow the directions."
    
    Some people I guess need some sort of sensory stimulation to think something is working- they associate the sound of the reel to bedknife contact as evidence of a freshly adjusted mower. Habits can be hard to break.

    
    
    
    
14. Welborn Robert C

    
    8/8/2013 9:08 PM

    I use phone book pages cut into 1 inch wide strips. Very thin paper. If your reels and bedknives are in decent to great shape, they should cut it clean with a very very light whisper after a good lapping. Anymore than that and you will create too much heat and ruin your reels and bedknives. If your reels cant cut that paper, fold it over to double the thickness and try that. A good even pinch all the way across the reel will still give you a good quality cut on fairways and tees but the cut wont last as long. Not recomended for greens. Greens mowers should atleast cut the paper folded over. Jacobsen and John deere are asking everyone to leave .002 clearance on your contact with the new hybrid mowers. That means almost no contact. We do it and it we have no problems with our cut. Lite whisper on older mowers and almost no contact on hybrid mowers.
    
    
    Robbie Welborn
    Assistant Mechanic
    Baton Rouge Country Club
    Louisiana

    
    
    
    
15. Jason Pierce

    

    0 posts
    
    8/9/2013 5:08 AM

    We use a quick and simple gap test. The reel should cut paper when its pushed verticaly into the bedknife / reel but should only grab the paper when slid horozontly into the bedknife/reel.

    
    
    
    
16. James Moore_2

    

    1 posts
    
    8/13/2013 10:08 AM

    Tod Blankenship, CGCS said: Hi Stu,
    
    We strive for no contact on all reels (greens, tees, and fairways). Ultimately we shoot for cut one leave one with our (Bernhard) paper strips. I know there is a lot of science and engineering behind the many different philosophies but I prefer the KISS method.
    
    We have the Bernhard set up so this makes grinding more frequently more feasible than some. My philosophy stems from 10 years of doing it this way and I'm not saying it's entirely right or wrong but it has worked for me. I believe there is some truth to the scalpel versus the sharp scissors analogy the Bernhard folks use. I would prefer to have a surgeon use a scalpel versus a pair of scissors.
    
    My goal is to help the turf not grow. We don't fertilize very much and I really don't like to water either. I only use Embark for seedhead control and no other PGRs. True, turf inherently wants to grow vertical. It's physiologically programmed to get rid of the older cells, however if I can minimize this through surgically sharp cutting units and not chemicals I sleep better. If the plant is not forced to send energy to heal (excessive) wounding from tearing and pinching that results from contact it will inherently sit relatively idle.
    
    If the plant is trying to heal, it must be growing vertically? If there is less area to repair, less vertical growth, and subsequently less energy used. I have seen it first hand at 3 different facilities (all cool season). The Bernhard Company has a good CD that explains a lot of this in detail you may want to get in touch with them?
    
    I know I am opening up a bit of a Pandora's Box with this but just my two cents.
    
    I am curious to hear what the experts have to say?

    
    It makes a lot of cents , no pun intendended

    
    
    
    
17. Ashton Alan W

    
    8/14/2013 10:08 AM

    Does this ultimately come down to the fact that the Bernhard folks don't have common bermuda or kikuyu across the pond? If I were all cool season, I'd run 'em that way... but I'm not and I can't.