I knew that it would happen sometime, I'd just been hoping I'd make it a month or more before the inevitable post about nothing. My plan was to spend the latter part of this evening repairing my lawn mower.
I use a Scott's Classic 20" reel lawnmower. It is my second reel mower. The first I had two decades ago when I lived in a rental house and a reel lawnmower was the cheapest option. For about $70 I was able to cut the grass well enough to keep it within legal thresholds.
My current mower still works fine, but the handle has snapped in a position I couldn't fix with duct tape and bailing wire. Initially I tried to find some off-the-shelf tubular metal to hack together a replacement part. The pipes I found were either too bulky or too weak to have lasted given the stresses the handle has to operate under.
The new plan is to take the handle off one of my rechargeable electric mowers and modify it to work as a stand-in. The attachments are different enough that modifying one to accept the other is prohibitively complicated. I found that I could take the upper half of the reel mower's handle apart and remove it. When I did the same to one of the electrics, the proportions were within range. The major difference being the electric mower relies on one bolt and supporting steel in a clamping formation to hold the upper handle tightly. The reel mower uses two bolts on each side.
The problem is fairly simple to fix. I just need to drill holes in the electric's handle to match the holes in the reel's handle and bolt the two together. I've been carrying a bolt in my pocket for two weeks waiting for an opportunity to get to a hardware store and find good replacements. When I did finally got tired of waiting for such and opportunity, I forced myself to take two kids to The Home Depot. Of course the bolt was missing and I ended up winging it.
Since the electric's top half is longer than the analogous part on the reel mower, the overall length of the handle is going to be longer. This is good in some ways. The old handle was a bit too short for me, and I should be able to stand more upright as I'm pushing the repaired mower. The downside may be that the additional leverage causes more stress at the bolted joints and the bolts or the joints break from the strain. I'll be considering methods of reinforcement once I get the handle bolted on.
The plan for tonight was to take a few pictures and write a post about the process and level of success. The plan didn't stick, though. Instead I opened my new juicer and got involved in cleaning up after an incident involving movie popcorn. I guess the repair post will have to wait until tomorrow.
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