Customer Reviews

American Lawn Mower 1414-16 16-Inch Standard Push Full Feature Reel Lawn Mower With T-Style Handle

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Now I researched reel mowers for a while before my purchase. Here is what I found- American Reel Mower Company makes both the Scott's AND Great Lawns mowers. All are made in China now EXCEPT for model 1414-16! This one mower is still made in the US. It is heavier duty than the rest- cast iron construction. Yes, it is heavier, but mows better because of the weight. I called the American Mower Co. to verify all of this information. If you know what these mowers are all about (don't try cutting 6" high grass in one pass) then THIS is the mower to buy. I love mine and it will surely last for years!

The pros:

This mower is made in the USA! It pushes easy and is lightweight. It is easy to assemble.


The cons:

The clips that hold the rollers in place are plastic. The entire mower is metal except for these 2 little clips and the rubber wheels. The problem is that when adjusted to the highest setting the bar that fits into these clips holding the rollers falls out and your roller assembly comes off. Come on American mower, you maybe saved 2 bucks making this plastic. Made in the USA means we make things great! Let's fix that.


I bought this mower based on one of the recommendation that it works well with St. Augustine grass we have in Florida. I have to take issue with that recommendation. St. Augustine should be cut at a height of 3 inches or more. At it's highest this mower goes to 2.5 inches. Your mower, in actuality, has to adjust even higher to compensate for the thickness of the lawn. You can easily sink into a thick carpet of St. Augustine. At 2.5 inches, this mower was scalping my grass.

Aside from the flawed roller assembly, I think this mower would be fine with a northern type grass.

My dad has called me two weeks in a row to see how things are going and I totally shocked him when I told him I was mowing the lawn. I have always despised mowing the lawn and for three decades he has heard nothing but complaints from me about it. This mower is a little heavier than I expected, but it seems very sturdy and makes a quick, easy job of taking care of our small lawn. It is quiet and efficient. Our yard is in no way, shape, or form perfect -- there are lumps and divits all over, and even the occasional hard root knob sticking up, and over the years it has developed a variety of "crops" including several kinds of grasses and a lot of weeds. I was nervous about using a push-reel mower since we don't have a smooth, uniform lawn and I have read that that is important for using manual mowers. So far, it has done a superior job and the lawn looks better than it did when we used a power mower in the past (faster, too). We still have to use an electric trimmer around the edges, but overall, this mower has really changed my attitude about yard work.

We have been using this for almost 2 months now. The lawn looks more and more like a golf green every week. You don't realize that much of the brown in the grass is from the mower tearing the blades. You still need an edger as the blades don't cut the outer 1-2 inches of the wheelbase. But for us with concrete trim, we would need to do that anyways with a deck mower. Love it. Also, the heavy wheels (come on, it is only 30 some lbs and we can easily carry it) help to keep traction even in moist grass.

Cost-effective too! Our friends and family are amazed at what we paid for a lawn mower. Takes about 10 minutes to mow our small patch of grass. Well built. I suspect that we will have a well mowed lawn over the next 10 years for less than the price of gas alone.

NB: Make sure that you get the 1414-16 model as it is the only one still made in the USA (probably due to the heavy wheels). Many of the other mowers that I tried in the stores with the plastic wheels had trouble with alignment and traction even on flat concrete. The 1414-16 digs in and spins away, even on recently rained on grass. I can actually mow after a rain shower!

If this is your first reel mower and you are used to a gas or electric model, this mower will take some getting used to. Your lawn will also need some time to adjust, but the time and effort are worth it! The mower provides an excellent, clean cut leaving your lawn looking properly shorn rather than "whipped" short. The results are amazing! I bought the catcher attachment, but have stopped using it as the clippings provide water-conserving mulch and a natural source of nitrogen for the lawn. I can honestly say my lawn has never looked better. I would have given five stars, but there are a couple of caveats. First, the overlap is rather excessive. Once your lawn has adjusted to the mower - and it takes around four weeks of mowing - you will be able to see the wheel tracks from your previous pass. Unlike traditional mowers where you have a near zero clearance margin, you will need to overlap the previous pass by at least 1/3 the mower's width. This results in more passes. Secondly, I mow my lawn twice in perpendicular/intersecting patterns. This gets some of the blades missed in the first mowing and it minces the clippings making a more effective mulch. I don't mind it so much as the results are awesome, but this mower does require a bit more work.

On the plus side, it is made in the USA! The quality is evident in the heft and smoothness of operation. Several of my family members laughed at my retrograding to a reel mower, but I love this mower. It is near silent and does not create a hay-fever-inducing dust cloud. I can mow early in the morning, when the grass blades are standing nice an tall, without disturbing the neighbors. The dew hardly affects the mower. Maintenance involves an occasional application of WD-40 to the cutting surfaces. All that and I can hang the thing in my shed freeing up a ton of floor space.

In conclusion, this is an excellent purchase! If you are dedicated to eliminating pollutants, or just have a small lawn that doesn't justify a larger gas or electric mower, this is the model for you. It requires a change in paradigm, but it is well worth the investment. I can't stress enough how much nicer my lawn looks since I've started using this mower and I have not fertilized it (and speaking to that, I have Blue Fescue which I cut on the second to highest setting, once a week, during the Central CA summer. I will lower the cutting height about 3/4" for winter. Lowering the blades does involve tools, but only takes about five minutes.)

I have a fairly large lawn, and the ease with which this pushes is remarkable. It goes over gopher holes and squirrel holes with no problem, and is light enough to lift when it gets stuck. The only problem comes from all the pinecones (huge ones)on the lawn, and their little pointy things that come off when the squirrels eat them. They do get stuck in the blades, but they come out pretty easy. Besides, now I make a point to keep them off the lawn so people can walk barefoot on it. Another drawback is that it doesn't mow those tall spikey weeds, just bends them over, so I have had to cut them down with cutters. I am a 63 year old woman, and I love the joy of doing it myself, with no need to get a mower started etc.

My wife and I love this mower. We purchased from Amazon a couple of months ago and have been using it on our 1/4 acre lot since that time. This mower is a sturdy well made piece that was easy to assemble. Pushing this mower proves to be a little bit of a workout, as it is steel and person-propelled, but for my wife and I who wanted to go green, this was the perfect solution.

Initially, we were looking to buy a battery operated electical mower, but due to price and our desire to save on energy costs, we chose this one. It does an amazing job cutting our lawn. The best part of all is that we now save $10/week by no longer having our neighbor mow our lawn.

Just in the short time we have had this mower, it has paid for itself. We love it and would strongly recommend that people buy it.

Pros:
-Easy to assemble
-Sturdy construction
-Sharp blades cut the lawn with ease
-Reasonably priced
-A truely GREEN (pollution free) mower

Con:
-Heavy weight and person-propelled design enhances fatigue VS self-propelled mowers.

I purchased this reel mower unseen on amazon after two months of online research. I hope that the following description will help those who are also thinking about making this purchase without having seen or tried out the product. I will follow my initial seven observations with observations I have begun to make two weeks later.

1. Cut quality: better than my Weed Eater-Briggs and Stratton gas mower. Cleaner cut on Wisconsin grass. Dandelions sometimes don't get cut, but this isn't a huge problem if, like me, you like to know where they are so that you can pull them out by the roots. I am very happy with the mower's performance in this regard.

2. Build quality: good, though not as robust as it could be. Two plastic parts and the T handle could be improved upon. I am not concerned about the mower's durability at this point, however.

3. Jamming: not nearly as bad as some reviews led me to believe. During my first cut, the mower jammed twice, but the wood chips and stick that jammed the mower were quickly removed. Indeed, the mower did fine on patches of very long (5-6 inches) grass.

4. Noise: not nearly as quiet as some reviews led me to believe. Neighbors will know from the noise that I am mowing, so I can't mow at, say, 10:00 p.m. However, significantly quieter than a gas mower.

5. Workout: much more exercise, which is fine, but much harder on my arthritic back. I'm not sure why this is--probably a combination of the angle and the length of the handle?

6. Cleanup: much more sweeping and raking than with my gas mower.

7. Place of manufacture: no lie, and sad but true, the single reel mower model made in the U.S.


Update:
1. Blades have dulled quickly. I now have to pass the mower FOUR times over each row, twice in one direction and then twice in the other direction. Otherwise, there's just too much grass still standing. Now, if I were living in the country, this wouldn't be a problem. But on Midwestern street of lawn obsessives, still-standing grass would rank up there with untrimmed evergreens as major focal points of gossip, scandal and shame. I am not looking forward to sharpening this mower back to its condition fresh out of the box.

2. The manufacturer needs to make two models of this mower: one that has a longer handle for taller people, and one with a shorter handle for shorter people.

3. Yes, having to mow my lawn four times in a row to get all of the grass cut is good exercise, but sometimes frustrating, and when it's not helping to strengthen my back, the short handle is not helping to alleviate my arthritis. In spite of these problems, however, I will not go back to gas. I feel guilty for ever having contributed to that noise and hydrocarbon pollution.

I will update with any new observations, and hope that this review will prove helpful.

This is a great mower. I have purchased reel mowers in the past like sun lawn products and they weren't as good as this one. American lawn mower company builds thier mowers with great heavy materials which help the mower cut the grass better. Lighter is not better when your talking about a Reel Mower. If you want a mower that can cut the grass without the use of gasoline then this is the mower for you.

I chose a push mower over an electric or gas mostly because of convenience and wanting to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Keeping gas in my garage, having to take a lawn mower in for maintenance, or running a cord from the inside of my house to the outside just don't appeal to me. I'd like my lawn and garden to be as sustainable as possible.

Because of the above, I really wanted to be able to give this mower a 5 star rating. But truth be told, after going over my lawn about 4 times with this (and in some areas even more), there are patches of grass in the middle of my yard resembling a bad mullet..I found myself using a rake to try to comb them up so I could shave them off with the mower, kind of like a clean up job after a bad shave... I don't think it's dull blades as the leaves on my lawn were chopped up pretty well. Maybe it's because I let the grass get too long before using this, so I will revisit this review after trying the mower on shorter grass. I was satisfied with how easy it was to push the mower, and putting it together was quite quick too...the handle is held together with just 3 bolts and hooking the handle onto the mower itself was a snap. And I didn't mind having to pick up twigs first but some people might.