No. The reel to bedknife clearance is not adjusted properly across the entire bed knife. Learn to adjust it yourself frequently. If you are comitted to operating a gas reel mower as your primary mower you will need to learn adjustment techniques yourself. You should rarely if ever need to have the reel ground by a shop. Frequent adjustment and occassional backlapping is all that is neccessary. Most mower shops that claim to "sharpen reel mowers" don't know what they are doing.

I disagree.

Due to the spiral of the reel, it will tend to throw grass to the left. I've owned a succession of Trimmers and Tru-Cuts when I lived in Southern California from the late 1960's thru 2000. They all tend to throw in the direction of the spiral.

I do agree that many mower shops no longer know how to properly sharpen a reel and bed knife. Even those with the skill often try to sell a "spin grind" rather than the more appropriate "relief grind". You will probably have to go to a shop that specialized in golf course equipment, or ask the master groundskeeper at a golf course for a recommendation.

A properly done sharpening should be good for 3 to 5 years of home use. On an annual basis you should backlap the reel to the bedknife. Although time consuming, it's not rocket science and can be done at home. Last step will be the final set of the reel to the bed knife. Again, time consuming, but the reward is a great cut all along the width of the reel and across each blade.

Get yourself a set of spanners to rotate the bearing holders, a bell crank to rotate the reel (don't know if Eastman/Fresno Trimmer still sell one), and some Clover grinding compound (coarse and med-fine).

The link below is a pretty good article about back lapping reel mowers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Back Lapping Reels

We agree to disagree. I too, have owned many reel mowers and currently use a Tru-Cut H-27 almost daily. I also happen to cut fairways at a Golf Club. If the baskets on our Greens Mowers were holding more clippings on one side or the other, the Equipment Tech would have something to say about it. I believe that the clippings should be dispersed evenly across the throw area. With Everything else you have stated, I agree strongly! Perhaps all of your throw shrouds have been lower on the right or something.

Thanks for the reply's,The link was very informative Ill try the paper gauge to see if the reel is lined up with the knife. And ill check the shroud today and see if they are even.

I know this is an old thread, but I just did the EXACT same thing huntsducks75 did. Purchased a 7 year old 20" Tru-cut with the 4.0 Honda motor. It had never been sharpened (backlapped or ground). Reel did not contact bedknife. Took it to a mower shop ("I've been doing this for 30 years") and they checked it out for me, greased it, adjust one chain and sharpened it. When asked they said they hooked it up to their backlap machine. They don't recommend grinding cause it "wears out the reel and bedknife" and is "only necessary when you've worn down the little lip on the bedknife".

Obviously i've read all kinds or stuff on the web to the contrary.

The blades and knife are now contacting one another and reasonably sharp, although when you look closely at the cutting edges it looks like a file was used, meaning not a super clean fine sharpening like on a knife blade, like what you would get with a larger file on a axe or something.

At any rate mine throws most of the grass out the left side and it quickly fills up and starts falling out of the catcher. Normal?