After finding the perfect reel mower on internet, I began my search on Craigslist. There was no way I was going to pay retail to test out my ideas. Cheap and quick were my drivers.
Of course cheap and quick are often mutually exclusive. After a few no responses and a few rejections from high priced sellers, I finally found someone after a few weeks of searching. They were located in the small town of Dickysville, Baltimore. Ever been to Dickeysville? I hadn't, but discovered it is was a nice quaint town tucked under the right rib of Baltimore.
I meet a pleasant couple moving out west. They used the Fiskars for two year on their small plot of grass. It was well used, but for 70 bucks, I snagged it and ran.
With mower in hand, I was eager to test the performance. Would it be the grass chopping dream I had hoped? Setting the Fiskars loose on my lawn, it was a thing of . . . beauty. Easy to push and pleasant to hear, I sliced through the blades of grass with ease. The fly wheel design kept the smooth flowing scissor blades rotating a few seconds after stopping, which was helpful in situations of maneuvering without much motion. The question still remained in my mind-could this still be actively towed and still cut?
Wanting to answer this question before we built an elaborate towing rig, my partner in crime, John, and I simply tried to pull the mower over grass. So
we attached a strap to the mower and tried pulling it. It worked!
Well-sort of. As we got into the taller grasses, the wheels started
dragging when the blade become too clogged. We tested again with a weight on the back and it started cutting again. Proof of concept acheived. And so began the work to build a proper harness/frame for the mower.
How to build a bike trailer.
You figure building something like a bike trailer styled arm was pretty obvious. While John and myself have used many bike trailers, we both had fuzzy concepts on how a trailer arm should be shaped. Depending on how large or compact you made the arm figured into the bike's turning ability, wheel size support, and mounting options. To eliminate any ambiguity, we borrowed a friends Burley bike trailer.
I don't want to bore you with the mechanical points,
You figure you attach the mower to the mount points and then build out an arm that attaches to the bike. For reference we borrowed a friends bike trailer. My bike trailer was on loan to my cousin, and John's.
It seems that for a hub mounted bike trailer, the arm should radiate from the center of the trailer and then back in towards the hub like the short two arms on the letter k.
The bend of the arm dictated how far right you could turn on the bike with out the wheel cutting into the arm. The more acute the angle, the wider range of movement your rear tire could swing during a turn. Of course the more acute the angle, the longer the arm needed to be and stronger the arm needed to be to handle the stress.
The trailer arm was ultimately built and John ingeniously recycled an old universal joint to act the trailer pivot point. The mower was ready to go. It just needed to be tested . . .
