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Just read a harrowing report , yahoo, (can we believe some of it?). Mower strikes tool left in yard, breaks blade which hits 10 year old daughter in head. She undergoes surgery , midwest. What a trooper!! You can find the details if interested on line.

Well there is a reason why there are 45 pages of safety rules at the beginning of every owners manual.
just because one mows every week does not mean it is not dangerous to bystanders.

God love that little one and grant her speedy recovery. May her spartan outlook last forever!

This right here is the very reason when I mow no one is near my mower or the blade is turned off from spinning and any body so close they want to talk to me the engine is turned off. As it looks to me the child was just standing in the yard which should of been a no in my world. I just don't understand why some people want the children to ride on the mower with them when mowing. At one point in time I put a dent in a car parked in my driveway so accidents can happen no matter how careful.

Pacific coast yahoo spread has dropped the article already. Like I said opening...if we can believe this report , speedy recovery to the little girl. If it is "fake news" shame on yahoo. Much of the yahoo "headlines" is trash. If bogus they have really reached a new low on this report.

Even if bogus , if it makes idiots stop & have a think, then it has done some good.
As for blades coming apart. another reason why I do not touch World Lawn products is I came across a blade that suffered a brittle fracture right through the mounting hole.
On the way out it took both of the other blades with it and one ended up better than 30' away in the side of a truck body.
All 3 had suffered a brittle fracture which looked suspect to me so I dropped it of to an old collegue to test.
It was as I suspected , plain high carbon steel, the stuff they make cheap taps & dies out of because it is hard & holds a good edge.
Unfortunately it is also brittle.
Mower blades are generally made from Boron steel and nitrided to make them tough so they bend rather than break.

Back probably 25 years ago my son was cutting grass with a rear engine rider in fairly tall grass. He ran over what looked like a pork chop bone that was in the yard and it flew out from under the mower and hit me in the head hard enough that it drew blood. It hit right above the bib of a ball cap where the foam is. it hit hard enough that it cut through the cap and the foam. I was a long ways across the yard from where he was cutting. I have no doubt that something like that could kill a person if it hit them in the head.

I have seen many ricks come from under the front of a Scag rising like a golf ball that wa hit with a driver.

bertsmobile1 said:

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Mower blades are generally made from Boron steel and nitrided to make them tough so they bend rather than break.

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Don't know the what mower blades are make of and never looked into it. I tried to bend one in my shop press and couldn't do it because it would just go back it its original shape like it was made of some kind of spring steel ??? As a fact I have never seen one break. I find the mower is most likely throw something out the shoot like a stone or my 15 dollar ear muffs in which I left laying under the mower when I got done fixing it. I think motoman has a very good point here as fake news.

reynoldston said:

Don't know the what mower blades are make of and never looked into it. I tried to bend one in my shop press and couldn't do it because it would just go back it its original shape like it was made of some kind of spring steel ??? As a fact I have never seen one break. I find the mower is most likely throw something out the shoot like a stone or my 15 dollar ear muffs in which I left laying under the mower when I got done fixing it. I think motoman has a very good point here as fake news.

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Oddly enough when I brought this to the attention of the relevant government department the reply was "no standards concerning the steel used on ride on mower blades "
Oddly enough, there are a heap of them covering push mower blades.

And yes Boron steel is both springy so it holds complex shapes and work hardening so it holds an edge.
So you can not bend it back into shape because it is hot forged so needs heat to return it to the proper shape.

As a kid, I can still remember my Dad telling me of his friend push mowing the friends yard & hit a screwdriver left in the deep grass, threw it out hitting the guy in his ankle & broke his ankle.

Safety First. NO kids or the wife in the yard when I mow.

7394 said:

Safety First. NO kids or the wife in the yard when I mow.

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Agree 100% :thumbsup: or nobody else. When I mow next to the road I stop the mower when a car is coming or someone is walking by.

Journalism being what it is today and not all the journalists' fault I hope drawback is to shield the family from the ravenous public. The picture of the person in bed with head almost totally covered in bandages looked real. Ironic I was touched enough to wonder about "go-fun-me" for a family facing ?$100K in hospital bills. But that too seems dicey.

Wandering thru WalMart and the big box stores I do see some thin and cheesy-looking blades. The two units I own have great .200" thick blades of alloy steel which seem resistant to work hardening, and grain weakening, but even they could come apart under the right circumstances such as stress riser "notching" while grinding ,and later hitting an object. And (sorry) the Chinese "tools" are so often just cloned it is frightening. Take a cutting edge in the store and scratch it-most times with just a pen knife-mild steel!

Over to hand held week whackers. Once on a gravel driveway I was cutting some thin grass shoots and the .090" string picked up a piece of gravel and threw it through my rear Audi window. These things can be lethal slingshots.

reynoldston said:

Agree 100% :thumbsup: or nobody else. When I mow next to the road I stop the mower when a car is coming or someone is walking by.

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X 2 Agree 100%

motoman said:

Journalism being what it is today and not all the journalists' fault I hope drawback is to shield the family from the ravenous public. The picture of the person in bed with head almost totally covered in bandages looked real. Ironic I was touched enough to wonder about "go-fun-me" for a family facing ?$100K in hospital bills. But that too seems dicey.

Wandering thru WalMart and the big box stores I do see some thin and cheesy-looking blades. The two units I own have great .200" thick blades of alloy steel which seem resistant to work hardening, and grain weakening, but even they could come apart under the right circumstances such as stress riser "notching" while grinding ,and later hitting an object. And (sorry) the Chinese "tools" are so often just cloned it is frightening. Take a cutting edge in the store and scratch it-most times with just a pen knife-mild steel!

Over to hand held week whackers. Once on a gravel driveway I was cutting some thin grass shoots and the .090" string picked up a piece of gravel and threw it through my rear Audi window. These things can be lethal slingshots.

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Yes they can be very dangerous as well.

I've had a few cases over the years where customers didn't understand that they need to wholly surrender their yard to me while I am mowing.

I've never had a blade entirety fail but I have had pieces of the air foil on hgh lift blades break off when they get worn. I've also had blades start to bend upwards over time.

I've send way more things flying with string trimmers than mowers, so don't under estimate the power of them to send projectiles.