Mowing the lawn can be very soothing. After a day filled with uncertainty, imperfect information, unanswered emails and phone calls, a lawn, at least, is something over which you can exert a measure of control. You can impose your will on grass in a way your will cannot be imposed on recalcitrant computers and satellite dishes. Take a messy, uneven overgrown mess of grass and transform it into a thing of beauty. You'll feel pretty good, afterwards.

A friend of mine who is perhaps a bit too committed to having a perfect lawn, cuts his lawn in two different diagonal directions. Besides being pleasing to the eye, he claims that the grass grows better when it doesn't retain the "memory" of the previous cutting. He owns a Honda self-propelled lawnmower that breaks down once a year without fail, for his postage-stamp sized suburban lawn.

We, on the other hand, have quite a bit more grass to cut. In the country, it's good to keep a good stretch of lawn mowed around your house. It discourages rodents from crossing the open lawn to get to your house, and it also might act as a firebreak if the arid surrounding fields suddenly burst into flame (we've had 6 combine fires in the area this year). So we probably cut about 1.5 acres of grass.

We do this with our tiny Black and Decker 18" 6.5 electric mower, with the mulching attachment. We bought this mower in the fall of 2000, when our previous mower (inherited with the house) finally gave up the ghost (my method of clearing grass jams was to pick up the mower and slam it on the ground over and over again. Effective, but, as it turned out, pretty destructive to the handle, which developed stress fractures).

With one exception, our experiences with this mower have been happy ones.

A short description of this product

18" cut swath.

This is not that wide. Some riding mowers offer 42" decks, and brush cutters towed by tractors and powered by the Power Take Off go as wide as 72". For us, with our many flower beds, bird feeders, decorative rocks, etc., a small deck means flexibility of mowing, and an ability to fit between small openings, thereby reducing the number of times I have to pull out the dreaded weed eater (DWE). I have successfully avoided pulling out the DWE for quite a while. I've lost sight of the beginnings of our rock wall, now overgrown by weeds, but this is a small price to pay. For the most part, the mower can get into just about every area of the lawn I want to cut.

One way handle (does not lean in both directions)

If Microsoft made this lawn mower, they'd call this a feature. They don't, so I'll just call it a pain. Our previous, pre-stress-fractured mower had a handle you could whip back and forth, so that if you planned well, you almost never had to move the cord, and therefore your mowing experience was free of that underlying fear of electrocution. With this Black and Decker mower, the handle is semi-fixed. It has a certain amount of up and down play, but only enough to accommodate various people's height.

Therefore, after creating a long strip of carefully mown grass, the cord cleverly out of the way of the blades, you have to unelegantly turn the mower, thereby putting the cord on the wrong side. Let me be clearer. If you mow east to west, initially, the cord can be on the north side of the mower. When you make your awkward turn to mow another strip west to east, the cord is now on the south side, and getting in your way.

Much of your mowing time will be spent with one hand on the mower, and the other hand on the cord, keeping it out of the way of the blades. The posture required to do this is roughly akin to that of Quasimodo lurching along the rooftop of Notre Dame on his way to ring the bells.

Wrench-adjustable wheel height, requires wheels to be removed to adjust height of cut.

A rule of thumb in mowing grass is never to remove more than 1/3rd of the length of the grass in one cutting. To religiously follow this rule of thumb requires height adjustable wheels.

The wheels of the Black and Decker 6.5A mower are adjustable, after a fashion, but a wrench is required. Each wheel is bolted onto the frame of the mower in one of four holes, each hole corresponding to a particular grassy height.

If you are unconcerned about rules of thumb, you'll do as I did, put the wheels in the lowest position, and tighten up those bolts just as tight as they can be. I don't believe in babying my grass or my mower.

Cord holder

On older mowers, (like our older mower), a vestigial cord hung from the body, ready to be mated with a longer cord that was inserted into your outdoor socket. The style these days is to have a male-type plug mounted firmly on the underside of the handle (to prevent it from getting wet, perhaps) and have an extension cord link up directly with it. The B&D goes one step further (as have most electric mower models) and provides a plastic flange to hook your cord over, before plugging it in. This flange takes the strain off the extension cord, and prevents unwanted mower interruptus.

It works well.

Safety bar to prevent accidental mowing of feet, fingers.

Trains used to operate with a "dead-man" switch, so that if the conductor dropped dead, or took too long a sanitation break, the train would eventually come to a halt, rather than running away into the next county.

This design feature has made its way onto lawn mowers. On/off switches have been replaced by plastic levers that must be fully engaged before the mower will start cutting. Keeping the lever pulled is a minor inconvenience. You are supposed to be able to release this lever, (say, when you hear an unearthly clatter, the unearthly clatter of a large stone caught in the mower blades) and have the mower blades come to a halt moments later, allowing you to remove the obstruction.

This works well, also. Please note that before lifting a mower up and looking at the blades, you should ensure that the blades have stopped moving. Unplugging the mower would be a good idea, as well.

The cutting experience

For all the petty annoyances of this small mower, it cuts grass like nobody's business. I regularly let the grass grow for a month between cuttings, out of laziness, or important loafing committments, and it can get up to 8 inches long, longer over the septic tank leaching bed area.

I have not once had to give up on cutting grass with the mower and reach for the DWE. I have had to make a few passes at extra long grass, however.

The mower is also good at removing small brush-like weeds. I remove clumping grass by levering the back end of the mower, raising the front end and then smothering the clump of grass with the mower. The engine struggles a bit, but soon comes back up to speed.

To cut goldenrods or similar long weeds, I find that smashing them down with the front of the mower, and then backing up slowly bends the "rod" part of the goldenrod so that the blade catches it, quickly churning it into so much goldenrod powder. Queen Anne's Lace and some other weird stalky type weeds up to 3 or 4 feet high can be cut the same way, without the weed shrapnel kicked up by the DWE.

For normal grass, alfalfa, rye grass, etc, a simple run-over with the mower will keep it in check. I highly recommend the mulcher attachment, by the way. The clippings disappear into the lawn, and there is usually no raking necessary. With extra long grass, I admit that I have raked away excess clippings to try to grow a thicker lawn, and to keep snakes from nesting in it. I cart it away to a berm-in-the-making at the end of the field.

Blade maintenance

You should inspect your lawn mower blades occasionally, and sharpen as necessary. From personal experience, I've improved the cutting action of a lawnmower blade by running over the edge with a grinder-type Dremel handheld tool, a process that raises a pleasing amount of sparks. It's like sharpening hockey skates. Please keep flammable, and inflammable fuels away. In arid climates, you may want to do this on a rock or asphalt surface to prevent grass fires.

Rocks are not good for lawnmower blades, and can raise large bumps in the blade. Inspect your blades occasionally for chipped metal in danger of parting, and replace as necessary (a lawnmower blade can run from a cheapie $4 or so for a basic blade to up to $20 for a specialty blade). Try to avoid challenging rocks in the wild. They respond well to being thrown out of the way.

Why did we buy this product

We were in desperate need of a new lawnmower (because of the stress-fractures on the handle of the old one; I couldn't see myself pushing the lawnmower around by alternately kicking each of the four wheels). I like electric lawnmowers because they don't require gas, oil, spark plugs or even basic care. They respond well to the occasional cleaning, but even this is optional. As long as you don't cut your lawn after a heavy rain, and try to keep it dry, your electric lawnmower should give you years of trouble free service.

I never really considered a gas powered lawn mower. I find them really loud and fume-y. Home Depot seems to sell nothing but gas mowers, however, but if you look off to the cheap end of their display, there are probably a few electric models there, ranging in price from $150 to $400. The more expensive models draw more power, cut a wider swath, and some of them can even propel themselves, and give you a variety of bagging options. None of that appealed to me. I wanted a mower that would cut the lawn and transport me to the spiritual calm that is mine when I look behind me and see a perfectly straight line of mowed grass.

This, the Black and Decker does exceedingly well.

Recommended.

Recommended: Yes