If you’ve been sharpening and replacing your mower blades for a while now, then you’ve probably got quite a collection of old blades. So, what can you do with blades once they are no longer suitable for mowing? Well, instead of just tossing them into the trash can, there are a few other alternatives that you might like better.
Old Lawn Mower Blades – What Can You Do With Them? (The Short Answer)
Old lawn mower blades can be put to much better use than simply throwing them out in the trash to make their way to the landfill. Here are a few ideas to either repurpose or recycle old blades.
- Make Some Garden Art
- Use the Metal for Other Useful Tools
- Take them to the Scrap Yard
- Give Them to the Scrap Person
What to Do with Old Lawn Mower Blades (4 Suggestions)
Anything that gets put into general trash cans ends up being tipped into a landfill, adding to the ever-increasing pollution issues. So, instead of adding to the pile, here are a few different ways to repurpose or recycle old lawn mower blades.
Make Some Garden Art
I searched the internet for creative ideas to figure out what to do with the stack of old lawn mower blades piling up in my shed. It didn’t take long for lots of different projects to start popping up. It turns out you can create some pretty interesting metal sculptures with old blades to decorate the backyard.
Sites like Pinterest and Google Images are full of creative ideas and projects for old lawn mower blades. A couple of ideas that seem to be popular are making flowers or windmills. So, by stacking old blades on top of each other, evenly scaping them, and painting them with a coat of yellow paint, you have yourself a sunflower. Kind of a neat idea.
Use the Metal for Other Useful Tools
If flowers and windmills aren’t your kind of thing, then you can try turning your old lawn mower blades into different tools. A pretty straightforward tool is to turn your old blade into a machete. Now I use a machete on a regular basis to cut old dead fronds off of my palm trees, so this idea is pretty appealing to me.
Basically, you thin down one end of the blade to use as a handle, then sharpen the other into a knife. Lastly, wrap tape around the handle, so it’s easier to grip. The whole process took me about ½ hour with an angle grinder. Now, you will have to sharpen a homemade machete more often because lawn mower blades are usually made of mild steel. But hey, it’s a free machete.
Take Them to the Scrap Yard
I’m guessing that most people just don’t have metalworking tools or the need for garden ornaments. So you’ll be wondering what else you can do with old lawn mower blades. Well, recycling is probably the best solution to dispose of old lawn mower blades.
If you take a trip down to your local recycling center, you’ll find a specific dumpster for metal waste. This is definitely my preferred method to recycle metal rather than just dropping them in the regular trash can at home for the city to collect.
Give Them to the Scrap Person
Now depending on where you live, you might have local scrap collectors. These people drive around collecting scrap metal before the trash guys arrive in their dumpster trucks on trash day. From time to time, I put my old blades on the street so these people can add them to their haul. Instead of just dumping them on the floor, I place them in a cardboard box and write ‘metal’ on the front of the box.
Unfortunately, there have been times when I left them on the ground, and the scrap guys didn’t see my old blades. If this happens, then you’ll need to come up with a new idea of what to do with old lawn mower blades. Maybe make another sunflower or an extra machete knife.
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