Episode 136: Jim Nedin

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Description:

On this special episode of the Reel Turf Techs Podcast, we welcome a true icon in the turf industry, Jim Nedin. With an incredible 62 years of experience, Jim’s journey began at the age of 9, working in a lawnmower shop, and has grown into an extraordinary career filled with innovation, education, and expertise.

From his first golf course job at 12 maintaining golf carts and keeping records on index cards to earning degrees in engineering and business, Jim’s story is one of perseverance and passion. His career has spanned roles as a superintendent, a service manager for a Toro distributor, and now, as a consultant and teacher shaping the next generation of turf professionals.

Join us for a fascinating look back at six decades of golf course equipment management, as Jim shares unparalleled insights on cutting unit maintenance, reel design, precision turf management, and the art of staying ahead in a constantly evolving field. This is an episode you won’t want to miss!

Let’s get reel with Jim Nedin!

Transcript:

Trent Manning: 0:52

Welcome to the reel turf techs podcast for the technician that wants to get reel follow along. As we talk to industry professionals and address hot topics that we all face along the way we’ll learn tips and tricks. I’m your host, Trent. Manning let’s have some Welcome to the Real Turf Text Podcast, episode 136. On this episode, we’re thrilled to welcome a true legend in the turf industry, Jim Nedin. With over six decades of experience, journey began at the age of nine working in a lawnmower shop. and has grown into an extraordinary career that spans from repairing mowers to educating turf professionals worldwide. A mechanical engineer with a passion for innovation, Jim has not only influenced the way turf equipment is maintained, but has also played a pivotal role in shaping training programs for technicians. His insight into cutting unit maintenance, reel design, and the art of precision turf management are unparalleled. ready to dive into a lifetime of knowledge stories and valuable tips from a genuine industry icon Let’s get real with Jim Nedin Welcome Jim to the real turf text podcast. Thanks for coming on. I really looking forward to this.

Jim Nedin: 2:10

you. Well, thank you, Trent. It’s I know we’ve kind of missed paths a few times and trying to connect. And you know, life kind of gets in the way sometimes, but I’m, I’m very, very glad to be here.

Trent Manning: 2:21

I don’t know. Thank you so much for being here. And I need to say something to GCSA because they have a scheduled speaking at the same time show every year. And I mean, it’s tough. I don’t know. You know, I want to come by and see you and then I don’t get to, you know, we’re busy going in different directions.

Jim Nedin: 2:42

Yeah.

Trent Manning: 2:43

Well, tell us how you got into the turf industry.

Jim Nedin: 2:46

Oh, my goodness. Well, this is I guess my 62nd year. In, in, in doing this to some degree.

Trent Manning: 2:57

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 2:59

I, got into the, the industry of repairing mowers. I mean, my father was a mechanical engineer. So he he had a lot of connections. But he had a friend who owned a lawnmower shop. And at the age of nine he asked his friend if, if he wouldn’t mind having me learn. So in the summer, and on weekends pay me ten dollars a week.

Trent Manning: 3:25

Oh, nice.

Jim Nedin: 3:26

I broke more things than I fixed, probably. But at the age of twelve My father, again, knew someone who belonged to a country club. And they were actually looking for someone to repair their, their golf carts. And they were Cushman three wheel golf carts with Onan engines in. I mean, they were Really back in today, right? So so they took a chance on me and you know, so I, I gave it my best and my father would actually work with me on a Saturday and taught me how to keep records, record keeping on like 3 by 5 index cards. You know, change the points in this unit and

Trent Manning: 4:06

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 4:06

on and on. So got everything kind of up and running. And the superintendent said to me this is in, I guess I was about 13 then. Hey we have, we have some equipment done in the, in the barn. And they were barns back then. The. You know, needed repairing and, you know, did I want to see, you know, if I could help out. So I went down and I did learn about real mowers working at the lawnmower shop. I ground some mowers and. And so on and so forth at the age of nine and ten and whatnot, but so I knew cutting units a little bit, but not, not to the level of a golf course, you know, But, so I, I punched and got things up and going and, and as. As time passed, I was now operating a Worthington tractor pulling gang mowers and, and learning irrigation. And back then it wasn’t automatic irrigation. It was all, you know, kind of quick, stick it in the ground and And the flippers on the, on the large sprinklers and whatnot. So that’s how I kind of got into the business way back when. And I had some really good, good mentors along the way.

Trent Manning: 5:18

Did you do you like to play golf or anything

Jim Nedin: 5:22

used to play, I used to play golf quite a bit. But as life gets in the way again with two hips replaced and bad knees, I need a shoulder replacement. I’ve had two artificial discs. It you know, put in my back, so I haven’t played golf in probably seven or eight years, but I, when I was a superintendent, and so it led me into becoming a superintendent I used to play golf probably two, three times a week in the evenings and so on. So I really enjoyed it. Never was really great at it, but, but I enjoyed it, you know, just enjoyed being out. So, so that’s how I kind of got into the business through affiliations, my father’s affiliations and so, so on and so forth. And, and you know, headed down that path and never really thought I would be doing that. And as, as time went on, I got a degree in engineering and a degree in business. Never really got a degree in turf. However, I, I did teach at some of the turf universities at Penn State and, and Del High and so on, for short periods of time. But I was always, always very, very interested in turf and, and always, you know, went, penn State’s you know, field days and different things like that. And, you know, became a superintendent School of Hard Knocks, if you will.

Trent Manning: 6:46

Yeah. I understand that. That’s how I became a mechanic at a golf course was Hard Knocks. And I mean, I did have a good mentor along the way, but yeah, I learned a lot by trial and error.

Jim Nedin: 6:59

Sure. We all

Trent Manning: 7:00

I think, yeah, I think a lot of us learn that way. What kind of grinder were you using when you were nine, ten years old?

Jim Nedin: 7:09

Oh, my gosh. We’re using a a hook grinder. And I don’t even know if you’re familiar with that. It was it was called it was an SIP hook grinder. And so SIP, you know, that, that name goes way back. And that was Simplex, Ideal, and Peerless. And Simplex made the laughing machine Ideal, made the bed knife grinder, and Peerless made the real grinder. So that’s where that name, you know, kind of all formed, came together with those three, three companies. But so I was using a hook grinder. So the way a hook grinder operated was that you ground the bed knife, And then you reinstalled it on the cutting unit. And you left a little gap between the reel and the bed knife itself. About maybe an eighth of an inch. And so, a hook would go underneath the bed knife. And then you also had a a guide that went against the reel blade. And so, it was spring loaded, so it, the hook was spring loaded against the bedknife. So the cutting unit would go in upside down. Let’s put it that way. Okay, so the, the, the head with the hook on was pulling up on the bedknife and the guide was holding the blade in position so however the bedknife was ground The real blade followed its exact same likeness. So, it, you, you hooked it in, you pulled it across, it popped out, you went back, you hooked it in, you came across. And so I had, I had some mistrials, I guess you could say, whenever I was younger. The very first mower I ground first of all, this gentleman, his name was Felix Palmieri, and he was an immigrant from Italy, and he he owned a lawnmower shop. And he would chase me around with a broom because I broke more things than I fixed, you know. But, so this customer brings in this little lawn mower, little push reel type mower. An American or whatever the brand name was. But he said it needed sharpened. So Felix says, dear, you know, I’ve showed you, go ahead and sharpen the mower. And I’ll show you how to hook up the The real grinder. He showed me how to grind bed knives. So, he came over and showed me how to hook up the mower in the real grinder. So I ground it, and he says, whatever you do, make sure the blades don’t turn blue. Whatever you do, you know. So I’m grinding, I’m seeing blue, I’m like, oh, this is not good, you know. So, at any rate, I ground the mower, and I put it back together. And the doggone thing, I’m pushing it, and it’s going cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, across the floor. And I, I don’t know what’s wrong with this thing. So Felix says to me, Did you put soap on the blades? I look at him and say, Soap? He goes, Yeah, go in the bathroom and get a bar of soap and put soap on the blades. You need to lubricate the blades. I’m like, Okay. So I put soap on the blades and push it. It seemed a little bit better. So anyways, he calls a guy. Guy comes and picks up the mower. And the guy comes back in probably about an hour, says, I can’t even push this thing. And I asked him, did you put soap on the blades? And the guy looks at me cross eyed and says, what? I’ve owned this mower for years. What are you talking about soap? And I got to put soap on the blades, lubricate it. So he says, no, I’m not going to do that. I’m, I’m, I’m not going to do that. You know, so anyways, he drops it back off. Felix says, sharpen it again. I go and sharpen it again. I’m watching to make sure the blades aren’t turning blue and all that good stuff. Put it back together. Seemed like it was a little bit better. Put soap on the blades. Called the guy. And he comes and picks it up. He’s pushing it and says, eh, it’s a little better. And about an hour later Or maybe the next day, I don’t recall. He brings it back and Felix says, I’m going to help you with this. Take it apart. Take it apart. Here the reel bearings were shot. I mean, that reel was moving up and down probably a good eighth of an inch up and down. So we put new reel bearings in, re sharpened it, and everything was good. So, I mean, that’s really learned by trial and error, right? You

Trent Manning: 11:25

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s crazy.

Jim Nedin: 11:28

stuff.

Trent Manning: 11:30

Yeah. You can’t make that up. I don’t

Jim Nedin: 11:31

No, no.

Trent Manning: 11:33

That’s

Jim Nedin: 11:33

Lots of lots of stories in, in all my life doing this, you know? Yeah.

Trent Manning: 11:39

Oh, I’m sure. Yes. And we got an hour. Hour and a half. So, we can get in as many stories as you want cuz I love em. I mean, I do. I like hearing the stories. I mean, you know, it’s fun

Jim Nedin: 11:50

I’ve always enjoyed you know presenting to your association. That’s, that’s always been a treat,

Trent Manning: 11:58

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 11:59

Yeah.

Trent Manning: 12:00

Yeah. Yeah. How many years have you presented at the National Association?

Jim Nedin: 12:07

Oh my goodness. I think I started in probably 82.

Trent Manning: 12:13

Wow. Okay.

Jim Nedin: 12:15

I mean, back then it was more sprayers, to be quite honest with you. Back in 1982 I was contacted by the GCSAA. There was a gentleman by the name of Alan Hayes that worked for the GCSAA. And he was putting together a Certification program for spray technicians, and I was known in the Western Pennsylvania area for conducting seminars and working with Department of Agriculture and so on and so forth to, to, to train spray applicators. And so I was contacted by Alan Hayes and he said, Hey, would you like to partner with me? To to train, you know, spray applicators. And so he sent me what he was working on and we worked on together then to finalize the program. But I took basically the eastern half of the country and he took the western half of the country. And we did chapter meetings back then, and we would, you know, fly in and spend a day, and you know, go over all the calculations and calibrations and different things like that, and then actually do it, you know, do it hands on on the sprayer and then you know, recertify the technician. So we did that for a number of years. So that started back in 1982.

Trent Manning: 13:47

So was that like a one day

Jim Nedin: 13:49

Yeah, like one, one day. Right. Yep. So one long day. Exactly.

Trent Manning: 13:56

yeah, long day. Yeah. no,

Jim Nedin: 13:57

And then, and then I got involved with them doing like small engine. Repair and so on and so forth and cutting units as well. So I would just take an arsenal of stuff with me and pallets of cutting units and engines half torn down and whatever. So we got into a whole lot of that hands on kind of stuff. And it kind of, you know, was more about the technician at that point in time and kind of getting away from the spray application. So it was more. More of the mechanics of how things worked.

Trent Manning: 14:31

Yeah, who were you working for at that time?

Jim Nedin: 14:34

I was working for a distributor in Pittsburgh called E. H. Griffith. It was a Toro distributor. So I spent 22 years there as their service manager. And so it came out of, from being a superintendent. And I joined that team under a little bit of false pretenses actually. Back then there wasn’t any type of I mean, there wasn’t the internet, there wasn’t cell phones, anything like that, right? So I was I was a superintendent in the eastern Pennsylvania and my wife didn’t like it out in the country so much. More

Trent Manning: 15:12

Oh, okay.

Jim Nedin: 15:14

So always pestering me to get back into the city but I loved what I was doing. And so a salesman, who actually is one of my great mentors named Merrill Smith from E. H. Griffith would call on me. And we would get to talking and he would say, You know, hey, the service manager is going to retire from EH Griffith at some point, you might want to consider that. And I’m like, well, why would I want to do that? I’m a superintendent. He says, well, you know, I know, you know, you’re working on a mechanical engineering degree. I know you have a business degree, and all these different things. So he kept, you know, after me about that. So I applied for the job. And first I made the mistake of telling my wife. And she says, you’re going to take that job. And I said, I haven’t even applied for it. I don’t even know if, you know, I’m eligible. But at any rate, I took the job. But in my mind, I thought, if I get back into Pittsburgh area, working at a distributorship, I can then connect with superintendents and understand what’s going on in that market and then I can find a superintendent’s job.

Trent Manning: 16:22

Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 16:23

however, 22 years later, I was still in the same seat. But I, I enjoyed it. So I started to do some videos. The distributor that I worked for also was a Panasonic distributor. So they had you know, the cam, the camcorders and all those things. So we started to do in house training for customers on, on video, you know, how to. How to change a throttle cable on a greensmaller, how to change a steering cable. I don’t know if you remember the good old greensmallers that had the steering cables down through the tubes and arm and all those kind of things. So, we were doing those kind of things and like when a customer would call and be perplexed or whatever, you know, just send them, send them a VCR. Send them a tape.

Trent Manning: 17:13

Wow. Okay.

Jim Nedin: 17:14

yeah. So

Trent Manning: 17:15

I mean, y’all were way ahead of your time

Jim Nedin: 17:18

I guess,

Trent Manning: 17:19

you know.

Jim Nedin: 17:19

So, Rich Smith at Toro, he was the training manager at Toro. I would go to their, you know, seminars every year and so on and so forth. And we got to talking about that and he’s like, Wow, would you want to come up and start to do some videos for us, some training videos? So, well, let me see if that, that could work through the distributorship. And of course it could work. So, I did that. I, you know, visited a few times. Now all of a sudden, you know, I’m going to be hired. I’m going to be farmed out from the distributor land to Toro. As far as a trainer and a field operations manager. I was the first field operations manager that Toro hired. And that was in the mid 90s. Now, kind of fast forward here a little bit. But So my position was that to go out and help customers with product, help distributors, train distributors, train customers, and also there was a business element to that, too, to help our distributors service departments become more diverse. Business like as far as now today they have what they call SRTs, which are standard repair times which automotive it came from automotive so that if you were a customer for distributor in Colorado, let’s say, and it took an hour to do something and they charged you for an hour. Right. And now you, you as a superintendent moved to another part of the country and you went to a tour distributor and the same job they’re charging you three hours to do. Right. So the standard repair time says, no, this is what it takes. And this is what you need to charge. If you, it’s taking you three hours to do an hour job, you need to be better trained, you need to have better tools, you need to have a better environment, whatever it might be to get yourself up to that standard. So that’s, so Altura distributors utilize SRTs now, as far as the standard repair times. So it’s fair for the customer then, you know what I

Trent Manning: 19:34

Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 19:34

And it helps the distributor improve because then they will achieve, you know, better marks, if, if you will, by doing, doing a better job and, you know, be trained better so there’s less comebacks and so on and so forth. So I got into the business element as well. So I did a lot of work with Toro service business.

Trent Manning: 20:01

Are they still doing that with distributors?

Jim Nedin: 20:05

I am. I work with one distributor. I had three, four distributors that I had in my own business. So I I’m a, still a vendor contractor of Toro, meaning that, you know, they, they can, they can hire me to do things. And sometimes they do. And I was a consultant for three Toro distributorships from 2003 to 2010, somewhere in there. And so now I have, I have one that’s in the northeastern part of the U. S. But I, I have a, an annual contract. So I do training with those folks ride along with the sales guys, do business service business with those folks so in 2003, I started my own consulting business. With the blessing of, of Toro and it happened to be with three Toro distributors. Now, with that, with those contracts, if you will, I still had the option of doing my own thing with private golf courses. So I still work with private golf courses you know, typically, you know, I’ll have a half a dozen golf courses that I’ll visit every year in the summer, you know, for a day or two. That sort of thing and just kind of brush up on things and help if there’s a new technician on board, you know, maybe I’ll spend more time, a few more days, those kind of things. So I do still travel quite a bit. I was in Victoria and Vancouver, Canada for several trips this past summer and, I was in Victoria for their annual conference just in December, and then I was there last December as well. So I, I still, you know, the age of 72, I still, still get around.

Trent Manning: 21:59

No, that’s good. That’s awesome. That’s good stuff and I’m sure it’s rewarding getting to Help other individuals out.

Jim Nedin: 22:09

well, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of younger technicians in the marketplace today. And I’m, I’m, I’m happy and privileged to. To, to be able to help them, you know, when I get a call from the superintendent and that I don’t even know and say, and he says, you know, I, I, you know, heard you were training these technicians at this association or whatever the case might be would you be interested in wherever I might be coming down to Florida or, or, you know, California or wherever to, to spend a few days you know, And, you know, if it fits my schedule and I’m up to it, absolutely. So.

Trent Manning: 22:57

Yeah, no, that’s awesome. Yeah. A lot of fun for sure. What’s your favorite tool? You got a favorite tool.

Jim Nedin: 23:05

My favorite tool, I, I think there’s a couple of them. One, one is a depth gauge, a Vermeer caliper, if you know what that is, a digital Vermeer caliper. And the other is a torque wrench.

Trent Manning: 23:20

Oh, okay.

Jim Nedin: 23:21

because it, you know, and I, and I really drive this home when in my training, like when a hands on portion, like a lot of times I’ll do like a day formal classroom, and then the next day will be all hands on at, in shop. You know, make sure that they have cutting units or sprayers or aerators or whatever the case might be to to really get, get our hands dirty, if you But I and people are always kind of amazed at me because I, I pull these torque specs out of the top, off the top of my head, you know, but. You know, it’s just, I’ve been doing it so long. It’s kind of like, everything has a torque spec. I mean, when you build or design or manufacture something, it has a torque spec. And so, you know, a bed knife screw at 220 inch pounds is, is, that’s torque for a specific reason. Or, you know, 100 inch pounds if it’s John Deere or Jacobson. It’s torque for a specific reason. And so, if you’re doing it Six burps on your air gun. I have no idea what that is. Or you’re still using the hammer and the chisel to, or hammer and the center punch

Trent Manning: 24:32

Uhhuh. Yep.

Jim Nedin: 24:33

the bed knife screw up. I have no idea what that is. But, you know, the bed knives are so thin today that, that you’ve got to be pretty accurate and consistent with the torquing of those screws. So that you don’t wind up causing some distress to the bed knife in some way that, that you didn’t expect. You know, so you know, whenever you start to have noises and different things like that coming off of the reel and the bed knife, whenever they’re, they’re intersecting, then you get the harmonics, and harmonics causes vibration, vibration sometimes causes expansion, and, and now you have a rifled reel or a bed knife. So that’s why I believe in torquing you know, everything has a torque spec. So

Trent Manning: 25:18

Okay. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that.

Jim Nedin: 25:20

that’s why it’s, that’s my favorite tool, you know inch pound, foot pound. The depth gauge is my favorite tool because it’s a simple, easy way to measure the diameter of a reel, So, I mean, if you think about it let’s say a five inch reel, now Toro makes their reels that 5 inches and 60 thousandths. A little bit over, right? But, if you take a 5 inch reel, to, to understand the diameter of that reel, you have to know the axle size, right? The shaft size. So Toro, over the years, has made well, they made four different shaft sizes over the years. They made a, Typically a 1 18 inch shaft. That was a solid shaft on the greens mowers. And then they made a 1 14 inch shaft. That was very short lived. That was like with 70 inch pros and 84 pros. Probably haven’t even heard of those. But then they made the 1 38 shaft. Which was a hollow shaft and today they make a 1 5 16th inch shaft. That’s the one that’s machined on the ends

Trent Manning: 26:28

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 26:29

The last the last quadrant is machined. So that’s one in 5 16 So if you if you do the decimal, you know, that’ll take

Trent Manning: 26:38

I’m writing this down,

Jim Nedin: 26:40

five divided into sixteen I’ll give you the metric or the decibel, right? So so John Deere uses a 1 inch shaft and Jacobson uses a 15 16, 15 16 inch shaft, right? 15 16.

Trent Manning: 26:55

Oh, I didn’t know that

Jim Nedin: 26:56

So,

Trent Manning: 26:57

getting all kind of specs here.

Jim Nedin: 26:59

yeah, if you know the shaft sizes, then you, you just take your depth gauge and go, go from the tip of the blade down to the shaft. Multiply that by two, add the shaft back in, gives you the size of the, of the reel. And also to, to measure a tapered reel very quickly and easily, you do that same thing. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll drop the, the digital depth gauge in zero dot whenever it touches on the shaft, and then go over to the other side and see if it’s positive or not, negative, right? So that’ll tell you what way that, that reel is tapered. So.

Trent Manning: 27:37

okay. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 27:38

Yeah, so it’s just simple and easy. You can do it, you know, you don’t have to take anything apart. Pretty much quick, done, and dirty. So I’ve used that for years and years and years. You know, just, just the KISS principle, right? Keep it simple.

Trent Manning: 27:53

keep it simple. So does Toro start out with an inch and three eighths shaft and then they machine it down to the inch and five sixteenths to get their datum?

Jim Nedin: 28:03

It’s machined on the ends. Yeah, it’s just, it’s still, it’s still the the hollow shaft. The deep groove on the left hand side stands for left hand internal threads. And no groove on the other side stands for right hand internal threads. So, whenever you’re putting a a fixture or an attachment on I always point out that that deep groove means it’s left handed thread internally.

Trent Manning: 28:29

Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s.

Jim Nedin: 28:32

they went to the hollow shaft. One, it lightened the reel up. As far as the reel itself. And two the older shafts, the originals were, you know, were solid shafts, so they had to come up with a way to, to come up with an adapter to go on the solid shaft outer thread to, to put a, drive a belt or something

Trent Manning: 28:56

Right, right, right.

Jim Nedin: 28:57

yeah, for, you know, groomers or, or rear roller brushes, those kind of things,

Trent Manning: 29:03

Okay. Yeah. No, that’s yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah I’d seen the groove on one side and not on the other, but I had no idea Why they were doing that. Yeah, Okay. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. What other kind of trade secrets that you can let out of the bag here

Jim Nedin: 29:23

Well

Trent Manning: 29:24

that? I mean, that’s. And I’m sure it’s not a trade secret. It looks like that’s something that they would let end users know.

Jim Nedin: 29:34

Right, right. Well, I mean, I think anything like that you can Probably find somewhere in the archives or somewhere, you know, if you search it out enough, but since I’ve been so intimately involved with Toro, I know that you had Jerry Gohmann on, I think it was maybe your last time. Very dear friend of mine. Great

Trent Manning: 29:53

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Back in September or his episode released in September. Yeah. He was great. I love

Jim Nedin: 30:00

Yeah. He’s just always so casual and just so bright, you know so I’ve always enjoyed working with Jerry. But, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s just so many things that, that I was, I listened intently to his, his podcast with you. And you know, he’s, he’s always so smooth, you know, and always so accurate. It yeah, you know, we started talking about like different bed knives and different things like that. That always find it really interesting. You know, so. Jacobson, they make one extended bed knife. It’s 80 thousandths 80 thousandths longer, if you will the cutting edge is to the center line. And John Deere makes two. They make one at 40 and one at 80. So and Toro only makes one. And, and that’s that’s 200 thousandths. So if we look at the, the, the. That in degrees Jacobson has one, which is two degrees, which is 80 thousandths. John Deere has two. Which is 2 degrees and 4 degrees, and then Toro makes only 1, 5 degrees. So people always kind of say, well, why does Toro only make 1? Well, the Attitude spacers like Attitude, but the, the spacers that change the behind the center line in the back on the DPA cutting units are equal to 2 and a half degrees. So every time you insert a spacer, it either increases or decreases The behind the center line by two and a half degrees. So by using one bed knife at five degrees, and then using a complementary number of spacers, you can get there by going two and a half degrees at a clip. You know what I’m saying?

Trent Manning: 32:00

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 32:02

So the spacers are two and a half, the bed knife’s five. So,

Trent Manning: 32:07

Very. Yeah. And so I’m sure this is out here somewhere, but where could an individual find this information?

Jim Nedin: 32:18

I mean, it, it certainly should be available in a manual. And

Trent Manning: 32:23

It should be, but I don’t,

Jim Nedin: 32:25

operator’s manual.

Trent Manning: 32:27

I’ve looked and looked, and I’ve not been successful at finding this

Jim Nedin: 32:32

you know me being so close to engineering all the time and working with engineering and having some great guys like Jerry Goldman and so on, Scott Kaufman, I think Jerry mentioned Scott Coffin. Scott Coffin is a designer of, of cutting units. Really, really good guy. But also, you know, since I’m independent, I know John Deere and I know Jacobson as well. I know some of those engineers and so on and But, you know, when I do get cut, I still bleed red. So, but, that’s me. But my objective has always been when working with private golf courses, my objective is to help you do the best that you can with what you’ve got. I don’t care

Trent Manning: 33:11

Oh, for

Jim Nedin: 33:12

red,

Trent Manning: 33:12

Right,

Jim Nedin: 33:13

purple, white, whatever. It doesn’t matter. You know, it’s to help you do the best. So, so having said that, it’s always been good to be connected. With the industry and the people that work within the industry, you know, whether Aside that kind of thing.

Trent Manning: 33:30

Right, right, right.

Jim Nedin: 33:31

So but having said that I’ve done a lot of calculations and measurements on my own over the years, of course because I was a field guy, right? So You know just always kind of Kid the guys in experimental and so forth. They would be doing a lot of things on CAD and so forth and, and have them look like the cutting units cutting grass and so on. I said, that’s a nice cartoon. You got to come with me, you know. And so, the real world,

Trent Manning: 34:00

Huh.

Jim Nedin: 34:01

And, and, and they would, they would, you know, I had a lot of times I had Engineers come, come with me on the road and then we do some discovery and so on. But so the things that you’re asking me they should be available and maybe they’re deep within the archives of somewhere. But those spacers, yeah, that’s, that’s half of what the extended bedknife is. So the extended bedknife actually came about from European market, over in the European market where Where greens are very, very like in England where it’s always humid or not humid, but moist and, and, you know, kind of damp a lot of gouging and so on and so forth. So that, that five degree extended bed knife actually started over there and it kind of migrated, migrated into The, you know, the use over in the U. S. and whenever this flex cutting unit came out, we started to have issues with the flexes as far as them being too aggressive and gouging and so on. So

Trent Manning: 35:07

Hold up on that. On the first flex, did it have the aggressive bed bar? Before it was painted

Jim Nedin: 35:15

so here’s, here’s how that, here’s how that, here’s, you know, the aggressive bed bar is it’s probably still out there. I think it’s still being sold, but it’s going to be obsoleted. Because of the spacers. So the aggressive bed bar the standard bed bar, let’s see, There was only one bed bar, so it was a standard bed bar, right?

Trent Manning: 35:39

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 35:40

And, so, the, the, in 2006 came out with an aggressive bed bar, and it was painted black. And the black bed bar had a chamfer in the left ear of, of the of the adjuster, so that you knew that it was an aggressive bed bar. The aggressive bed bar is exactly, exactly 100 thousandths, the, the bed knife screws are pulled back 100 thousandths further back than the standard bed bar. So that’s two and a half degrees. So the spacers do exactly the same thing as putting an exgressive bed bar on and readjusting the spacers to X, right? Or using an extended bed knife and then putting spacers in. So you can get there. In a much simpler fashion, a much less expensive fashion because of next aggressive bed bars, probably 300, 400

Trent Manning: 36:44

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 36:44

Is 2025, whatever the case might

Trent Manning: 36:47

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 36:48

And so you can put an extended bed knife on and then change it up with the spacers which, you know, takes that 5 degrees and cuts it in half. So we find many different purposes but we used to use the, what we used to do is use the aggressive bed bar with an extended bed knife. So a cutting unit basically All cutting units, Greensmart cutting units, out of the factory, they use a benchmark of 125, 000th height of cut. So, their measurements were that bed knife cutting edge is, your aggression fork, where that measures that. So the bottom of the bed knife may or may not equal where that cutting unit edge is. Okay,

Trent Manning: 37:36

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 37:37

like if I take a John Deere, and I set it up to four and a half degrees. I will not get a four and a half degrees differential from the bottom of the bend knife to the roller plane. In other words, if I put, if I put the digital protractor on the bottom of the bend knife and don’t move the cutting unit, and now take it and take a measurement and then put it on the roller plane and take that measurement, basically what you’re doing with your aggressive fork, right? So, but we’re using the bottom of the bend knife. So I’ll get a different, I’ll get a different measurement. That four and a half degrees behind the center line may measure eight degrees on the bottom of the bed knife. So I, so that’s null and void. However, Toro’s products with their DPA cutting units I used the aggression fork when I was in Victoria, Canada.

Trent Manning: 38:35

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 38:36

And I used it on a Toro Greensmar. And so whenever we take 125 thousandths as a benchmark, basically, if I’m using a micro Greensmar bed knife, and I draw it up to where it’s going to make light contact with a new reel, Right? And I go across the roller plane, don’t move the cutting unit, and take a measurement with the digital protractor. And then drop that digital protractor, the zero dot, drop it then on the bottom of the bedknife. I will yield somewhere around, it’ll be four and a half degrees.

Trent Manning: 39:19

Yep.

Jim Nedin: 39:20

And that’s standard. However, the bottom of that bedknife Equals the distance behind the center line. That, that holds true. So whenever I used your aggression fork, I did that same thing. And it was probably within, I think it was like 4. 65. And when I did it across the bed knife, it was like 4. 6. So it Extremely close. It was not even worth talking about.

Trent Manning: 39:56

Huh.

Jim Nedin: 39:57

And so. What we always say is, when you’re going to do that, if you do that with the Toro, you want to use a new, new bedknife. Because as the bedknife wears, it’s going to change its angle from the bottom. The aggressiveness is not going to change. But the bottom of the bedknife is going to arc a little differently as it’s needing to touch the reel. So Whenever you are going to use that as a measurement. So that that’s something that we’ve kind of touted for years. The bottom of the bed knife is equal to the distance behind the center line using a new bed knife. So with a micro, so I was, I was very excited to see that, that the numbers that I drew up from the aggression fork and the Toro principle were just, they weren’t even worth talking about. They were so close.

Trent Manning: 40:49

no, that is awesome. Yeah. Yeah, So cool. And I do think what,

Jim Nedin: 40:55

different manufacturers, will not, that cannot be applied

Trent Manning: 40:59

right,

Jim Nedin: 40:59

bottom of the bed. I’m giving you the accurate measurement from the distance behind the center

Trent Manning: 41:05

Yeah. Yeah. And then I think the other confusing thing that people, a lot of people don’t understand is, you know, I think a lot of us, including me were taught that you measure your attitude. Just like we were talking about. So, your base plane on the rollers being zero and measure the angle of the bed knife and that’s our attitude and if that gets more aggressive, our cut is more aggressive and if it gets less aggressive, our cuts less aggressive and that’s not always true and I think it’s really misleading too when you add an extended bed knife. Because just for instance, on the Toro with a standard bed bar and you’re four and a half degrees behind center line, but you put on the extended knife and you’re actually in front of center by a little bit, but your attitude doesn’t change that much.

Jim Nedin: 42:12

right. The base, the bottom of the bed knife stays the same. Okay, but you’re, so with the Toro bed knife, they use the exact same bed knife, whether it’s extended or standard. They just push the holes back in the bed knife by two hundred thousands. It’s like 191, 000, so I always say 200, just keep it simple. But so that’s 5 degrees. So we’re pushing now the bed knife ahead by 5 degrees. So that, that kind of creates a can of worms how you, how you grind that bed knife as well. Because you can’t use the standard. Early days, and I still use this, the front of the bent knife is 15, the top of the bent knife is 5. Just keep it simple. I know that they give you this matrix, it’s like 14 plus 2 minus 3, whatever. It’s like, forget about it. 15 in the front. And it’s five on the top. However, when you use an extended bed knife, because now you pushed the cutting edge ahead, but you didn’t move the circle on the reel, you now need to make that steeper. So that’s between seven and nine degrees. Toro says seven I mean a little bit heavier. Because if you do grind that at five degrees, the top of that bed knife, it will cut, it will cut paper. or grass for a day or two, but now the reel hones itself into the center of the top land rather than contacting the, the point, if you will, or the, you know, the cutting edge. So that’s why you have to grind that a little bit steeper. So there’s, you know, as you kind of chase, chase that bed knife back and forth, those kind of things. What we do find is if whenever you have an aggressive bed knife. It tends to gouge a little bit more because as the Rio is pulling up more aggressively on the grass, the opposite reaction is it pulls the cutting unit down. So whenever you’re getting into softer turf wet turf, those kind of things where you can get some gouging the cutting unit on set down, if it’s a triplex or somebody, on a walker is dropping a cutting unit pretty abruptly. It kind of bites and then after a foot or so it kind of relieves itself and you don’t see that, but you get that initial bite because it’s pulling the cutting unit down because you’re pulling up on so much grass. And so, that’s where the extended bed knife came, came about as far as pushing that cutting edge closer to the bottom of the reel. So for instance, if you, if you take If you take a DPA cutting unit, let’s say today, and you take it out of the box, and you measure it, and it says four and a half, okay, degrees, and you find that whenever you drop that cutting unit in turf, whatever your species is, or however firm your turf is, or not firm, and you get a gouge. Our recommendation is, and it always has been, put an extended bed knife on, but then insert One spacer. So now we took that from four and a half and we shoved it down to negative half, And now we put a spacer and it pulled it right back to like two.

Trent Manning: 45:43

Ah,

Jim Nedin: 45:44

darn near split the

Trent Manning: 45:47

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 45:47

of that.

Trent Manning: 45:48

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 45:49

pretty much voila, the, the, the gouging is gone, right?

Trent Manning: 45:55

yeah. Yeah, No, that is awesome. And I. really wish, you know, this was published everywhere. You know, and all the operators manuals, this is really good stuff. And thank you so much for sharing it.

Jim Nedin: 46:12

well, that’s

Trent Manning: 46:13

Yeah, this is, Yeah really good. I do. I want to tell a quick story because that made me think of it. A friend of mine, he’s Toro and triplex and greens and standard, you know, setups of four and a half degrees behind or whatever. And he got, and I don’t remember exactly if he got it from the distributor or not. He ended up with a new mower and it had the spacers on the back. And he also, this club collects a clipping volume and this was their first mow of the season. So in the spring on bent grass, and they got almost double the amount of clippings with the spacers added. And this was a mistake. They didn’t mean to do that. He just didn’t, you know, set them the same height. They’re both at one 40 or whatever it was. They send them out and they’re like, Hey, why is this smaller getting almost twice the amount of clippings? And that’s what it was. Yeah. I just thought it was, yeah, super

Jim Nedin: 47:23

aggressive. So it’s

Trent Manning: 47:25

Yeah. Cause it, Yeah, it was more aggressive. It was getting more clippings and

Jim Nedin: 47:30

right, You know that as we kind of look at that and the attitude changes the, the, the circle of the real or the real itself goes deeper into the profile and starts to cut on an upward sweep. And that’s where that’s where it tends to. Really pulling a lot more grass or Cut a little bit lower because it’s really pulling itself down. It’s not, it’s not as smooth on the turf. It starts to cut the grass, the grass blade on a bias rather than more blunt. Because it’s pulling it into the bed knife on an upward sweep rather than kind of cutting it square. So it’s, it and that’s where you get into the different shadings of sunlight and so on and so forth that can really affect the grass. That’s what we used to get into if you take a full size reel versus a worn reel that you’ll get more grass in the basket with a full size reel than a worn reel, even though they’re set at the same height of cut. It’s because that reel is what we call blade path. It has its ability to reach out a lot further and start to play or, process that uncut grass. So it starts to work on that grass to stand as much of it up as possible. And it does a better job than a reel that’s worn because it can’t reach out as far because it’s a smaller diameter. The radius is, is tighter, right? So, but you’re going at the same rate of speed if it’s triplex. So another quick story is kind of funny. Back in the day Whenever I was, working at the distributorship and a customer would send in a cutting unit that maybe had a broken reel blade or something and didn’t have time to repair it or whatever. We’d always measure the reel size immediately before we’d do anything else. And we’d call the customer and say, hey, this reel is darn near shot, came off your triplex. We put a new reel in it, it’s gonna cut different. It’s just because, one, it weighs more. Right? It weighs more. Like, for instance, you take an 8 bladed reel compared to an 11 bladed reel compared to a 14 bladed reel. There’s about a 3 pound difference between an 8 and an 11 and a 3 pound difference between an 11 and a 14. So, you know, you have to kind of manage all that when you’re adjusting heights and so on and so forth to understand that. But we say it’s going to cut different because it’s going to be a larger diameter reel. And just so you know. And I actually had a technician say to me, Can you take that new reel and grind her down to the size of that worn reel? And I was like, oh my god, you gotta be kidding me. But I said, look, it’s September, you know, deal with it. And in the wintertime you can change your reels out or we can help you out with that, however you want to do that. But yeah, I mean it, you know, back in the days when we used sticks and stones to fix things we didn’t. really think about that. But I’ve always been kind of curious about things. My father, you know, again, being a mechanical engineer and having a full blown shop with milling machines and lathes and all kind of He always taught me, you know, to really, really research and process, take a step back. He’d always say, you know, if you’re troubled about something, you go to bed at night. Wake up the next morning, you’re driving to work or whatever, you go, I ain’t got the answer to that. And he said, the reason for that is your mind never sleeps. Your mind is always processing. It’s always working. So, and, and that’s happened to me so many times over the years. You know, I’d be, go to bed perplexed about something and wake up in the morning and go, Wow, I, I bet if I try that, that’s going to take care of it. And a lot of times it does, you know. And I’m sure that’s happened to you and

Trent Manning: 51:23

Oh Yeah..Yeah. Sometimes in the middle of the night. Wake up and say, why didn’t I think of that yesterday?

Jim Nedin: 51:30

I know. Yeah,

Trent Manning: 51:31

Whatever it is. No, that is, that’s awesome.

Jim Nedin: 51:34

Yeah.

Trent Manning: 51:34

Supercharged course maintenance with Task Tracker, the leading golf course maintenance software in the industry. Built for precision and efficiency, Task Tracker simplifies daily operations, optimizes water usage, and keeps your team on track. With real time updates and streamlined workflows, It’s the essential tool for modern superintendents. Learn more at www. clubessentials. com backslash task tracker. Let’s get back to the episode. That’s good. So I want to stay on this topic. And I remember this was quite some time ago and it’s one of your slides and your presentation about a real becoming more aggressive when it wears. So when the real diameter gets smaller, that it actually gets more aggressive.

Jim Nedin: 52:33

that that it all depends on what type of real it is. So, and it all depends on the manufacturer of the real. All right. So the standard cutting unit that adjusts from the front. Whenever the reel wears, the bed knife becomes more aggressive. Now, how does that happen? Well, when you take a 5 inch reel, brand new, you adjust it up to its cut paper or whatever your, whatever your measurement is for, for quality of cut, and you have it set, let’s say, at 125 thousandths, an eighth of an inch.​The reel, when it’s totally shot, is four and a half inches. So it’s a quarter of an inch it came off of the radius, right?

Trent Manning: 53:23

Yep.

Jim Nedin: 53:24

Right? So, if you never, ever adjusted the height, you would now be cutting at three eighths of an inch.

Trent Manning: 53:33

Yep.

Jim Nedin: 53:34

Right? So, as the reel wears, you’re constantly bringing the front of the cutting unit down. So, as you’re bringing the front of the cutting unit down, the cutting edge of that bed knife is moving back further and further and further. Thus, therefore, it gets more aggressive because it’s, we’re working on a circle, right? So further and further back. So, what we’ve done a lot of calculations in, in field work when I started working with Toro as a field operations manager. Part of my detail was done in Florida. And it was at the Y World of Sports and the five golf courses that they had down in Florida. So, Toro did a lot of work with, with Disney and a lot of the product was Toro product. So they actually, we had a like a little condo down there that we would go down and, and different, different people would be in at different times. But I spent a lot of time down there. And So that’s where we, we started to really look at at when reels wear, the aggressiveness, the gouging, and so on. Because in Bermuda, typically the blade is green one third of the way down. So whenever it gouges and so on, like 419 or whatever, you really see it, right? Zoys is a little different, green all the way down. And single strand grass, like bent grass, and even though bent grass is, It’s a warm season grass, more tolerated in cooler seasons, the climates you know, it’s green all the way down to the, to the crown. So having said that, we started to really, really look at the aggressiveness of a cutting unit and, and the way things work and, and wear. So having said that, that’s on the standard cutting unit. The way that works is it gets more aggressive as the rail gets smaller because you’re lowering the front on to match the height of cut that you originally had or, or desired with a rear height of cut, like a. A a QA5 John Deere, they lower in the back, right? So that reel becomes less aggressive as it wears. So with John Deere, you have what they call eccentrics, right? They’re little eccentric shoes on the bed bar that you flip. And when you flip that, it pulls the bed bar back half the distance. So it gives you another shot at using that reel until the reel’s worn down to four and a half inches.

Trent Manning: 56:10

Mhm.

Jim Nedin: 56:11

Now with the DPA cutting unit, And the DPA cutting unit, Jerry Gohman, has a patent on that.

Trent Manning: 56:19

Mhm.

Jim Nedin: 56:19

that never moves. And the way that is designed is, it is the relationship where the axis of the bed bar is and the extension of the high adjustment arms. that go up to, you know, the little clickers. That whenever that reel starts to wear, that bed knife cutting edge is actually pushed forward. It’s up and forward slightly. But now you readjust the cutting unit by lowering it down. So it chases it right back to where it was. So that constantly is Teeter totter in a little bit forward when she wears, and then you’re lowering it back down to the height that you, you desired. So it, it pretty much keeps it in alignment pretty much through the life of the real. So that, that’s something that, that has really proven out and, and it works very, very well

Trent Manning: 57:14

No, it’s yeah, that was incredible that they were able to figure that out.

Jim Nedin: 57:21

Yeah.

Trent Manning: 57:22

And so since they figured that out and the behind center distance doesn’t change much, if any, throughout the life of the real. Does the real steel, the after cut appearance look different because

Jim Nedin: 57:40

it does. Because of the blade path has changed, right? The diameter of the reel, the ability for that reel to reach out. And gather more grass than the smaller diameter reel. So typically you’ll get a little lighter. Green out of it, a little lighter hue out of it. So let me, let me tell you a quick story. Hazeltine, I think it was the year 2000, they had PGA there. Jim Nichol was superintendent there at the time. And I showed up on a Monday and he knew me. And it’s, it’s in Minnesota, of course. And he said, you come with me. So I went with him, took me out to number 12 green. He said, and they were using flexes, and flex 21s, right? They’re not 2120s or any of the newer style, but these are original models, flex 21s. And he says to me, I don’t know what that is, but every pass back and forth is light on one side of the path of the cutting unit and darker on the other. He said, that’s gotta be gone by Thursday, because we go live TV, back nine, Thursday. So I went back to the shop. And spoke with the equipment manager, and I pulled out my Vermeer caliper, and every cutting unit, every cutting unit, from the left side to the right side, the, the trailing edge of the reel, was 40 thousandths larger than the you know, the leading edge of the reel. Now 40 thousands. That’s diameters. But my, my, my depth gauge was only reading 20 thousands, which you’d, you’d kind of almost dismiss, right? But you’ve gotta add that back in. You’ve gotta multiply that by two. So it’s 40 thousands on the diameter of that reel. So what that was causing is on that reel itself, and it was two different diameters. The blade path was different from the left side of that reel to the right side of that reel. Even though the height was set exactly the same, The blade path was different. So, the reel had more ability to take in more grass on the larger size, side of that reel than the smaller side of that reel. So, and they just ground all the reels, and they ground them tip to tip, tip to tip. You know, they, they didn’t have a relief grinder, just spin, tip to

Trent Manning: 1:00:16

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:00:17

And so, we went about, you know, first it was in disbelief. And I said, we need to true these up. So I used the depth gauge. 40 thousand, 20 thousandths air gap on one side of the stone. Touched on the other side. Brought both dowels up until it ground the whole way across. And then took it out and mowed. Jim was happy. It was a happy day. So we had to re grind all the rips. All the cutting units. And they were just done like the week before. But that’s where the tip to tip can get you into trouble. If you’re mowing at three eighths of an inch or even a quarter of an inch, you’ll probably never see it. But when you’re mowing at 85 or 90 thousandths, or 100 thousandths. So basically, that started me down a path of research. I’ve done a lot of research in the field over the years, and started me down a path that basically if we look at a reel, it’s 20 thousandths out or more at 100 thousandths or lower. You will see it. So that’s kind of the rule of thumb. So I bring up one of my slides such as that, you

Trent Manning: 1:01:26

I don’t, can, will you say that again?

Jim Nedin: 1:01:29

So if you’re looking at a reel that is out more than 20 thousandths left to right, okay,

Trent Manning: 1:01:37

Yep.

Jim Nedin: 1:01:38

at 100 thousandths or lower, you will see it. You will see a difference in the color of green across each path, each pass. left to right. Now if it’s higher, you’re not going to notice it. So the lower you go, the, the more sensitive things become, right?

Trent Manning: 1:01:57

Right, right, right,

Jim Nedin: 1:01:58

yeah, so that’s some of the research that I’ve done, you know, done tons of research and on, on a lot of different things. So ask away.

Trent Manning: 1:02:08

Yeah, no, I know. I wish I knew all the research you’ve done. So I would know better questions to

Jim Nedin: 1:02:15

Oh, no, it’s

Trent Manning: 1:02:16

you know?

Jim Nedin: 1:02:16

can stumble, stumble around here a little bit. That’s okay.

Trent Manning: 1:02:20

yeah. Because I don’t that’s something Since the aggression fork, and measuring behind center distance, and those things, I mean, I’ve learned, I feel like I’ve learned more about cutting units in the last year than I have in the first 27 years of my career. And, I mean, it’s just amazing.

Jim Nedin: 1:02:41

yeah, just one thing leads to another, you know, and that’s why I say, you know, you know the very first thing that you need to do with a cutting unit is make sure that it’s cylindrical. The real is cylindrical before you do anything else. Because, one as far as the taper on the reel is so important whenever you’re at, at micro heights. Very, very important, so it takes the guesswork out, right? So, we have specs. So, you want to make sure that the, the reel is within spec, which is cylindrical. You can’t, you can’t, use a parallel plate, table, or roller check, whatever you want to use to square the rollers off, unless the reel is cylindrical. You can’t parallel a roller on a tapered reel

Trent Manning: 1:03:28

Right,

Jim Nedin: 1:03:29

because you’re going off the reel itself, right? You’re only using the bed knife as a prop to make sure that you’re going straight across that circle from left to right. That’s what the bed knife’s doing for you. But the diameter of the reel left to right is so important. reel’s tapered, yeah, we can cheat and Whatever, put a shim underneath one side of the rear roller, the fixed roller. But, that’s not really getting you anywhere. Right? You still take that cutting unit and put it on a perfectly level surface. After you adjust the height, it’s going to rock and roll on you. Right? It’s going to tip one side or the other.

Trent Manning: 1:04:05

What’s been your experience on the DPA and it being square? So, if the real cylindrical is the frame, have you seen frames get out very often? Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:04:19

often. So there is a tolerance with that. It, you know, it’s within two thousandths, should be within two thousandths as far as the plow bolts, what we call plow bolts, that fit in from the frame into the, you know, inner, the backing plate. So those you almost have to drive in, they’re really form fitted, so to speak. So those should be about no more than two thousandths out. So whenever you now, everything is clean and you, you take the rear roller and you fasten it to that frame. That rear roller should pretty much parallel what the axis of the reel is doing, right? So, so the differential is if the reel’s coned. So if the reel’s coned. Now Toro did come up with a couple of things that I wasn’t real keen on. One, shim to put between the roller, the rear frame and the roller bracket. And they came out with an eccentric to put on one side. In my opinion, if you have to use those things, something’s drastically wrong. You know? So let’s find out what the root cause is before we try to put a band aid on something that we really don’t know. What’s going on? Did you drop it off the workbench? Well, that’s probably a given then, right?

Trent Manning: 1:05:41

Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:05:42

twisting. So maybe you have to go to that extreme, but at the same time, you know, the cutting units are are very well fitted. And, and I always tell folks too, you know, we have all these springs and so on and so forth on the cutting units, right? We have the little coil spring in the back that that with that big flat washer we run it down to a collapse as a spring and back it off a half a turn. It’s not, it’s not scientific. We just do it so that, that has that, what that does, it stops the bed knife from being pushed up into the reel. Whenever the bed knife is going over a high spot. So if that, if that, if you don’t have that tension on that coil spring correct, then the bed knife is going to push up into the reel and it’s going to rifle. Right? It’s going to cause too much friction. If you have it too tight, I’ve been to shops where they take an impact and they blow that spring apart. It’s kind of like, what did you think that spring was for?

Trent Manning: 1:06:47

Right, right. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:06:48

what are you trying to do here? But, you know, so we get into more scientific things as far as whenever we look at the little clicks on, on the the adjuster itself. So that, that adjuster is seven tenths of one thousandths, all So Toro, for the last number of years, since about 2016, I think, has provided a two thousandths feeler’s gauge, a two thousandths shim. It’s four inches long, about an inch wide, and is two thousandths of an inch thick. So, It’s always been this big question about what is light contact. You can never really achieve it sufficiently with 4 bolt cutting units. You know, the ones that, you know, we had

Trent Manning: 1:07:35

huh. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:07:36

that you tightened up, loosened. However, with the DPA cutting unit, it kind of, it works like this. If you take that 002 fielder’s gauge and just kind of swipe it between the reel and the bed knife, and get the same amount of friction or, or, or drag from left to right side, we could then say that we have a parallel of two thousandths across that real embed knife. So each click is seven tenths of one thousandths. So if I click it one time on left and right, I’ll still get free spin. Only one seven tenths. If I click it twice, that’s one point four thousandths. I may have a little whisper here and there. Whatever. Right, but if I click it three times, that’s 2. hundred thousandths tighter than 2 thousandths. That’s the definition of light contact.

Trent Manning: 1:08:34

So, one tenth

Jim Nedin: 1:08:36

Yeah,

Trent Manning: 1:08:37

is light contact.

Jim Nedin: 1:08:38

yeah,

Trent Manning: 1:08:39

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:08:40

Super super, you know, so it’s just one little degree. Now if you’re, that’s with a 5 inch reel, with a 7 inch diameter reel, It changes a bit. It’s only two clicks. Because the arm is so much higher. If you go three clicks, you’ve over tightened it. So with the seven inch diameter reel that you use down in the south, right? two clicks. So you’re going to use that same two thousandths feelers gauge, but you’re only going to go two clicks, not three. Five inch diameter reel, three clicks. Seven inch diameter reel, two clicks.

Trent Manning: 1:09:16

That’s a new one too, for me. I knew about the three clicks, but I didn’t know that on the seven inch reel.

Jim Nedin: 1:09:23

Yeah.

Trent Manning: 1:09:24

But yeah, I mean, that makes sense. Cool stuff, man. Cool. Cool.

Jim Nedin: 1:09:29

Crazy stuff.

Trent Manning: 1:09:30

Yeah, it is. And yes, it’s exciting

Jim Nedin: 1:09:33

you know, we, I went into this whole, this whole study of backlapping. And I don’t know if you believe in

Trent Manning: 1:09:42

yeah, let’s do it. This is the next thing we need to talk about. I love it. You’re

Jim Nedin: 1:09:46

Probably many people out there that don’t believe in backlap. I always say, go talk to your grass, right? Talk to the grass. You know, because the grass ain’t happy, ain’t anybody happy. The superintendent’s blaming it on the technician right off the bat, right? So, but go talk to your grass. And so I always say to technicians, if you don’t have a prism or a high powered microscope Now, I, I have a 200 powered digital microscope that I, I’ve used for years. And I hook up to my laptop and so But lately, I just use my high definition phone. And I always use the same amount of depth. So I’ll take a piece of 2×4 and I’ll put, just lay my phone on the 2×4 and then I’ll snap a picture of the turf. So it’s always the same distance away from the turf at the same power

Trent Manning: 1:10:39

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 1:10:41

And then you, I can transport that anywhere, right, off my phone. So but I used to go through this whole thing of hooking up my microscope out on the green and, and with my laptop and all that. So, but, but things get simpler. We learn a little bit along the way. But, when we talk about back lapping, I did this study over in Hawaii. I was over there for two weeks working, and people said, Oh yeah, I bet you were. Well, I was. Every day. I was on a different island. You know, I was on a lot of different golf courses. And, we were looking at quality of cut, and they, they have what they call kukuya over there, which is very, very tough to cut. Very, very tough. And So, there’s cuckooia greens, and what we had were mowers that were just sharpened, and then we had mowers that had some hours on them, like 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours, 8 hours, 10 hours, those kind of And, so we, we took mowers just sharpened, and we took it out, we mowed, and what, what I always do is take a blue dot of paint, so that I’m taking the picture in the exact same spot every day. So, if you ever wanted to do a test, after you sharpen a mower, you can go ahead on certain greens, go ahead and take, put a blue dot at different spots, and just ID those greens, ID those spots, and then take a picture every day, and whenever you see something change as far as the quality of cut. That’s microscopic, right? That’s probably still not seen by standing up and looking down at the turf. But microscopically, things are changing. So let me, let me help you understand that a little bit

Trent Manning: 1:12:32

Okay. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:12:33

So whenever we cut grass, at any point in time, you cut a branch off a tree, any you know, anything in that world produces hydrogen peroxide. And hydrogen peroxide rushes to that wound to seal and heal. When I was a kid and I would get a cut or something, my mom would take hydrogen peroxide and pour it on that cut and it would foam up like crazy because it’s shooting oxygen to that area. Now, plants are very, very smart, right? So, if my mom put the hydrogen peroxide on today and said, ah, it worked pretty good, let’s put it on tomorrow and the next day, it would become infected. I’d have to go to the doctor, get a you know, something to, to take care of that. But plants are very smart. They, they, they exchange with the hydrogen peroxide whenever they’re wounded one time. It doesn’t know if it did, the cut is clean, crystal clear, or ragged. So we talk about clean cutting or shredding, right? So shredding begins microscopically. And that’s why I use A high powered phone to see what’s going on. So, over in Hawaii, we did that same practice, and we found that after about 10 hours of mowing, we started to see shredding with the plants. And that was adjusting properly, but it was about 10 hours of mowing. Microscopically, started seeing shredding. So, we took, and we backlapped for one minute, went back out, and mowed. Shredding was gone. So it gives the plant a better accuracy or, or better as far as utilizing that hydrogen peroxide that’s presented to the wound so it seals and heals versus, you know, keep mowing until it doesn’t want to cut paper. 30, 40, 50 hours past the time that that plant has saw some shredding or wounding. So I would say, go talk to your turf. proper tools. So if that sets you up into a world of backlapping once a week for one or two minutes, and your disease rate goes down tremendously over the year, and everybody’s happier, including the grass, right? Not do it? But, you know,

Trent Manning: 1:15:13

why not?

Jim Nedin: 1:15:13

so, but if you’re happy with what you’ve got, and nobody’s complaining, and no one’s ever challenged you, Then continue to do what you’re doing. You know, it’s funny, I worked 17 masters down at Augusta, They backlap their greensmowers every time they go out.

Trent Manning: 1:15:37

Yep.

Jim Nedin: 1:15:38

during the tournament in the morning, we had 54 walkers, and I was the guy that did the backlapping, right? And some had auto backlap, some, but, you know, some had to use the little fully backlapping machine or Simplex or whatever they had. In the evening, we had 18 mowers that went out because they were just mowing greens. I’d still backlap. So, we used 120 grit. I had a 5 gallon bucket. So, all that backlapping for 7 days. At the end of that week, that long week, still had an inch or two of back lapping compound in the bottom of that bucket. Because you just dip in and you rake it across a couple of times. You keep the brush on the reel so that the aggra so that it’s aggravating the cutting edge. It’s kind of like, I don’t know if you’ve ever back lapped valves on an engine.

Trent Manning: 1:16:40

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:16:41

on an engine, right, you put the compound on the seat or on the valve itself. And you take your tool and you go back and forth with it. It gets quiet. You pick it up and you drop it again. You don’t add more compound. And that’s where keeping the brush on the reel to keep the grit to the cutting edge, that’s when it does the backlapping. And that’s why you only need to backlap one or two minutes. And if you use any more than two dips on a reel, that, that’s overdoing it.

Trent Manning: 1:17:12

Right. Yeah. Just wasteful.

Jim Nedin: 1:17:15

and back in the day, Augusta National had express tool grinders. So they didn’t, they didn’t relief grind. They spun ground, but they still backlapped every single day. Fairway mowers, they backlapped two to three times a week. the tournament, it was three times a week. But every day, they backlapped mowers. It’s just their process. And, you know, keeps the, the disease pressure down. Because, you know, we’re, we’re allowing that hydrogen peroxide to do its job.

Trent Manning: 1:17:50

So one to two minutes,

Jim Nedin: 1:17:53

Yeah, one to two minutes. But keep the brush applied. Keep the

Trent Manning: 1:17:56

right? Keep the rush on there. I do think that is one of, and this is my personal opinion, but I do think back lapping is misunderstood. I think you’ve done an excellent job of explaining It

Jim Nedin: 1:18:10

Yeah, it’s not to re sharpen, not to re sharpen a reel. One of the big things that we found with back lapping, because people would say, you know, it seems like it cuts okay in the shop and you get it out. You’ve got to remove the burr from the front edge of that back, from that bed knife. And I use a bed knife buddy. And I think AccuProducts makes that bed knife buddy. Are you familiar with that, the

Trent Manning: 1:18:36

Yeah. Yep. I

Jim Nedin: 1:18:37

Yeah, I don’t care if you use now my bed knife buddy I’ve had probably for 8 or 10 years, I’ve never changed the file.

Trent Manning: 1:18:44

No way. Really?

Jim Nedin: 1:18:46

use it to sharpen anything. I use it to take the burr off. A bunch of files, I’ll sell them to you.

Trent Manning: 1:18:51

No, that’s

Jim Nedin: 1:18:52

You know, I’ve never, I’ve never changed the file because I don’t use it to sharpen anything. I use it to take the burr off. One or two swipes across and we’re done. And now you adjust, so you’re adjusting. Light contact metal to metal, not light contact metal of the reel to a burr. So, what we learned when I was at Toro is if you just backlapped an adjusted reel on a fairway mower, let’s say, and went out within probably one or two fairways, you had to readjust. Because the burr has now worn off, and now you have a gap, and now you’re getting that shredding rather than cutting cleanly. So, why not do it while it’s in the shop? And you wind up getting nine fairways out of it, you know, before you need to readjust, those kind of things. You know, the other thing is, too, it’s so crazy, when I was a kid, we used gang mowers to mow fairways, right? Gang mowers picked, cut the grass, threw it out the back, we’re done. That was it. We’re done. Right? We sharpened the gang mowers maybe twice a year, once a year for sure. Lasted a whole year. And people would say, now we’re using these lightweight mowers and we have to grind them all the time. Why is that? You know, so I asked a question. Do you forward throw? Yeah. Do you catch? No. It’s, it’s, it’s way too much. Too much labor. All right. So you’re recutting that grass, depending on how far it’s throwing it, five to 15 times. So you’ve got 5 to 15 times more reel wear on those two components, the bed knife and the reel, than you had with the good old fashioned gang mower that threw it out the back.

Trent Manning: 1:20:36

That’s interesting. And I’ve never thought about that. like that and we use a Toro gang mower 1988 model to my rough. That’s our primary rough mower. We got a couple 3100s to do the trim work

Jim Nedin: 1:20:52

Yeah, so you have the old reel master, huh? Your old reel

Trent Manning: 1:20:55

master and I am proud I converted it electric over hydraulic valve so the operator doesn’t have to, you know, reach behind the tractor and, you know, raising lower cutting units. But, like you said, I grind it once a year, in the winter, and I don’t touch it again. And we do have a really good operator, and he knows how to keep the cutting units adjusted, and it cuts.

Jim Nedin: 1:21:23

Yeah.

Trent Manning: 1:21:24

All summer long.

Jim Nedin: 1:21:25

Yeah. The other thing is with, with cutting units, like if you have a, A 5 Plex fairway mower, and you open up the rear doors, right? So you’re discharging to the back. I’ve always gotten comments from customers, and I’ll know where they’re going with it as soon as they make the statement. And they’ll say to me, These rear cutting units are a pain. I’ve got to adjust them like twice as much as the front ones. They wear down a lot quicker. And I’ll say, Are you operating your fairway mower with the doors open? That you’re just throwing it to the back. yeah, well, the front cutters are cutting the grass once, the rear cutters are re cutting that grass 5 to 15 times. Why they’re wearing out so much faster and they need to be adjusted constantly. You

Trent Manning: 1:22:19

Yep.

Jim Nedin: 1:22:20

so let’s do it to all of them if we’re going to do it, you know, throw forward. Yeah, so there’s just some, some things that we ran into whenever we started with a lightweight mowing that we never, you know, anticipated. So there were back in the 70s there were just a boatload of people that were manufacturing their own lightweight mowers out of greens mowers and add an extra cutting units to them. And some were. Some were pretty unique in, in the way they were, they were trying to do it. But it’s pretty wild.

Trent Manning: 1:22:56

Well, Yeah. I remember having a 5100. This was late nineties. It was that one. Was that one of the first

Jim Nedin: 1:23:05

223 was, 223, yeah. So it was a series 2, series 2 size mower with a 23 horsepower engine. That’s where it came from, 223. And

Trent Manning: 1:23:16

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 1:23:17

then the 5100 was like a 223. Then I can’t remember if we put turbocharged on that or not. But then it came out with a 5200, which was a little different predecessor. Then it came out with a 5300 that had a turbocharged engine on it. And all those kind of things. So, yeah, a lot of history there.

Trent Manning: 1:23:38

Yep. Fun times.

Jim Nedin: 1:23:40

Stuff.

Trent Manning: 1:23:41

yep. Yeah. And I remember if we got. Very much rain mowing four 19 Bermuda that we couldn’t use the 5,100,

Jim Nedin: 1:23:53

No,

Trent Manning: 1:23:53

If we missed three days or

Jim Nedin: 1:23:55

Yeah. Well, see, the problem is there again. Like, whenever you’re in warm season grass, like Bermuda, even zoysia, zoysia you can kind of meet, well, zoysia’s tough. Zoysia’s very tough. You know when I started playing with zoysia, as far as the density of zoysia, when you’re mowing on zoysia, the guys are constantly, Playing with the steering wheel trying to keep it on track because the cutting unit is floating across the zoysia. When you’re on a golf cart on zoysia, it feels like you’re on, you’re on ice, right? So it’s so dense, but so with the five inch diameter reel, you don’t quite have the torque that you need that the seven inch diameter reel provides. Plus the larger reel gives you better blade path. It reaches out further. It starts to work on that complexity of the 419, right? It’s a, it’s a very complex grass versus a single strand, cool season grass bluegrass. Rye, rye grass, you know, different species like that compared to ones that look like little Christmas trees, right? So, you’re 419. So, it’s very complex. So, it has, so the, the heavier mower weighs 147 pounds versus 117. Plus the, the ability for that reel to reach out much further and start to play in the grass and, and, and process that grass. is, is a benefit, a huge benefit, plus the torque of it being able to cut through that. That’s why you had to mow so much more often with the 5 bladed 5100, or 5

Trent Manning: 1:25:35

Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:25:36

reel. It just didn’t have the capacity to, to really work that Bermuda, you know.

Trent Manning: 1:25:42

Well, our our other fairway mower at the time was a four 50 D.

Jim Nedin: 1:25:47

oh yeah,

Trent Manning: 1:25:48

And it did have the capacity to to mow the, thick stuff.

Jim Nedin: 1:25:53

the nightmare and a half as far as the reel adjusting down to the bed.

Trent Manning: 1:25:58

yes yeah. And that center cutting unit, adjusting the center cutting unit. Oh, Yeah, nightmares.

Jim Nedin: 1:26:05

crazy

Trent Manning: 1:26:06

Tonight, Yeah, thinking about

Jim Nedin: 1:26:08

of history there.

Trent Manning: 1:26:09

Yeah, Yeah. Well, one question I just thought of. What about top face relief angle? Is there any magic there other than what the manufacturer recommends?

Jim Nedin: 1:26:26

Well, what I always recommend is this it all depends on what we’re, we’re speaking to, but on a fairway mower, for instance. Toro come, came out with a number of years ago originally the 5410s 5510s, 5610s, they all had bed knives on with the inserts as far as the, you know, the EdgeMax inserts. And we adjusted, we ground those to 5 and 5. 5 in the front, 5 on the top. And so in 2016, I think it was, Toro changed the top angle to 5 on the front. and 10 on the top. So, and that was to give it better discharge. In other words, so that it released the grass quicker, no drag of that grass on the bed knife. You know, just minor things, but it helped. So they went across the board, 5 on the front, 10 on the top. No matter what fairway knife you look at, it is 10 on the top, 5 on the front. So that’s good. But the problem is that if you have to regrind that knife, And you regrind the top to 10 again, you will be deep into the gauntlet. You will be deep into the gauntlet. You throw the knife away. So my recommendation is the second time you grind it, you grind 5 on the top, not 10. 5 on the top, 5 in the front. Because the original the original adjustment was 5. The original measurement or the way we adjusted that. The grind was 5 and 5. So, if you’re gonna get, if you want to get a second chance with that bed knife, the second chance is reduce the top angle from 10 to 5. Maintain that 5 in the front. So, like if we look at greensmores with 15 degrees in the front, and a fairway mower with only 5 degrees in the front, with 15 degrees in the front with a greensmore that we’re mowing at an eighth of an inch or lower, We want to get that bed knife out of the way as quick as possible, so that it’s not causing any disruption to the plant as it’s trying to be taken into the reel. So if we box that, but we want five degrees on the front, the bottom edge of that bed knife push some of that grass over that’s kind of leaning away from the reel and it wouldn’t have a chance to get caught. So we try to get that away as quick as possible. With a fairway mower, we, we have some body there, but we’re cutting higher too. We’re cutting three eighths of an inch or half inch or whatever. So so we can have a little more. A little more body there with that bed knife so it doesn’t have to be as steep. And again, we’re trying to hold that, that hardened edge in there as well. Cause that’s silver soldered in, that, that D2 steel. That, that makes the EdgeMax bed knife, that’s silver soldered in there. So we don’t want to thin that out by having too steep of angles. And now it winds up winding itself out of there. Get worn down, that kind of thing.

Trent Manning: 1:29:40

It seems like, I’m sorry, this is just the way my brain works. I jump around a lot. Do you think we get less rifling now than we used to? I don’t think rifling is as much of a problem as it used to be.

Jim Nedin: 1:29:55

Yeah, I think I don’t think that rifling is as big an issue. I think if, if anything people have begun, become a little bit gun shy of over tightening the reel on the bed night. So that’s why there’s some exact measurements for that with the Toro product, with the, the clickers, you know, that kind of thing. But all that has to work very fluidly, right? I mean, I’ve been out in California where they’re using reclaimed water and they’re adjusting their DPA cutting units with the reel to bed knife adjustment with a breaker bar

Trent Manning: 1:30:33

Wow,

Jim Nedin: 1:30:34

get them to move, right? And we’d have to dismantle them completely. And you have this dissimilar metals, right? You have aluminum, you have brass, and you have an alloy that all this is making like battery. You know, corrosion compound inside of the, inside of the adjuster. So I literally had to drive them out with like a two pound sledgehammer and an awl. And just clean them up, put them back together. So I do like to see those come apart once a year and put just a touch of anises in, in the mechanism. Because it has to work very fluidly, right? It has to send, send that click all the way down to the cutting edge of the

Trent Manning: 1:31:14

Yeah, right, right.

Jim Nedin: 1:31:17

And that’s where we get into Torquing the bed knife the bed knife axis bolts correctly. Like with a fairway mower, they should be 30 foot pounds. A greens mower, they should be 20 foot pounds. That nut should never be tight. And as a matter of fact, Early on, we, on the Flex 21s, we had a steel washer and a plastic washer inserted between the bed bar and the frame on both sides. And that was sometimes inconsistent. Some were tight, some were loose. And if you got ones that were tight, you usually went and pried to get it in there. And what would happen is it would wind up flexing the bed bar. And so now you grind it real, you grind the bed knife. On your precision grinders, you put it together and it doesn’t cut in the middle or it doesn’t cut on the ends. So, we went through this campaign of, one, originally engineering said get rid of all the internal washers. And us guys in the field said, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. We get rid of all the washers, customers are going to see this huge old gap and they’re going to want to tighten it down. To get rid of that gap and they’re going to want to break things. They said, okay, well let’s just leave the plastic washers in. And so, it’s just kind of a mental thing, but they don’t really do anything. But, you know, just put them in there and they’ll take up some space. So today, anytime I see a DPA cutting unit with a steel and a plastic washer internal, I always throw the steel washer away,

Trent Manning: 1:32:52

Okay. That’s good to know too.

Jim Nedin: 1:32:54

in that. Now, the reason that we’re using the nuts on the outside, that we have a steel washer and a plastic washer, and we have the nuts on the outside, we always say, at the end of the day, you want to be able to turn those steel washers, right? So, what we’re trying to accomplish by that, is if we look at the forks of the bed bar coming up through the adjusters, that what we call a double D looks like a double D, that black double D that the forks go around, right? If that is misadjusted, leaning one side to the other, what it’ll do is that fork will now press against that double D adjuster. And because of the length of that fork, it becomes a mechanical advantage. And whenever you assemble that and it’s in that condition, it causes a bed bar to bow one way or the other. So all we’re trying to do is drag that bed bar from one side to the other to get the double D’s so that there’s play. In the double D’s, so you can flop those double D’s in between the forks. And that’s where you’re going to snug up the nuts so that you can still turn the steel washers but not be able to move the bed bar left or right. So that, that is, that is a very, very important adjustment. And I often find people that complain that it’s not cutting in the middle or whatever after I adjusted the, that that bed bar. is shifted to one side or the other to an extreme and is causing the fork. To lay heavy on one side of that double D adjuster where the clickers are up top and now causing the bed bar to bow one way or the other. The same, the same thing applies if you tighten those nuts down too tight. It can cause some disruption with the plane of the bed bar. So that’s why we’re always looking for that, that sweet spot if you will. You want to drag that bed bar to the point where the Where the double D’s up top, where the, where the forks go through, have the, a little flip flop that they’re not rubbing on one side or the other. And we want to make sure that the nuts are tight enough, but yet loose enough. to where that you can go ahead and turn that steel washer. But first, we want to make sure that the bolts are torqued to the 20 or 30 foot pounds.

Trent Manning: 1:35:25

Okay. Yeah,

Jim Nedin: 1:35:27

want to use, you want to make sure you use anti seize. I’ve been to so many facilities that are very upset because they had to buy a brand new bed bar. Because they’ve run that bolt in and out X number of times. And with cast iron, if you don’t lose, use a lubricant of some kind. Cast iron, microparticles of cast iron flake off the threads every time you tighten it. So eventually it strips out. So I said, you know, I asked what kind of lubricant, what are you talking about? Put together dry, I don’t want any, any lubricant on my turf. No, a little bit of anti seize. You know, allows the, the friction to be less and now we don’t have microparticles of cast iron flaking off.

Trent Manning: 1:36:15

Right. Right. No, that’s yeah, that’s excellent. Yeah, I had a customer when I worked for Jerry Pate, he said, I grind these reels and the bed knives. I’ll put them together and they cut great in the middle. I can’t ever get them to cut on the ends. I said, how tight do you tighten the jam nuts? Oh, I run it in with a half inch impact.

Jim Nedin: 1:36:34

Oh,

Trent Manning: 1:36:36

Okay let’s back off on that and see how it cuts and you know, sure enough, that was it. But again, you know, just not looking in the operator’s manual. Because I know that information in the operator’s

Jim Nedin: 1:36:49

Yeah, a lot of the information that I, I bring up as well is in the, in, in, in the operator’s manuals. And perhaps some of it isn’t, it’s just kind of trial and error in the field and, and doing it over and over and over again for as long as I’ve been doing it, that

Trent Manning: 1:37:05

Huh. Yeah,

Jim Nedin: 1:37:06

but

Trent Manning: 1:37:07

Well, maybe when I get to 62 years, I’ll have half your knowledge. That’s all I can hope

Jim Nedin: 1:37:13

I’m sure you’ll surpass me. You know, today, today is, it’s pretty amazing with the kids, you know, but they, they’re still looking for an app for everything. You know, sometimes you just got to get down and do it, you know, it’s got to be an app for that, you know, it’s

Trent Manning: 1:37:27

Right, right,

Jim Nedin: 1:37:27

I’ve created a lot of apps, a lot of calibration apps for sprayers and in different things and for clip rates and for blade path and looking at, you know, whenever we talk about the diameter of the real, there’s what we call a tip speed that’s involved, right? So the tip speed. So, for instance, if we’re looking at a rotary blade, right? Yeah. And if you have a 27 inch rotary blade, and that rotary blade is running at 18, 000 feet per minute. And we talk feet per minute because if it picks something up and hails it across the room, how fast and how far is it going to throw it? equals 200 mile an hour. So, 27 inch blade spinning at 2500 RPM equals 200 mile an hour,

Trent Manning: 1:38:21

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 1:38:23

tip speed. If I take a, if I take a 21 inch blade on a 21 inch mower and run the engine at 3200 RPM, That equals 200 mile an hour. So the long, the, the larger the diameter, the slower the RPM, to equal a shorter, a smaller diameter, will have more RPM to get to that same point. So whenever we’re looking at a reel, that has tip speed differential of one side that’s larger than the other, right, it’s ability to transfer that, it’s trying to run at two different, it’s almost like. If you take a roller and you go into a turn with a cutting unit, right? The inside of that roller is trying to go faster, or, or, the inside of that roller is trying to go slower. The outside of that roller is trying to go faster. And that’s why they came up with the split rollers and so on Because it’s constantly fighting, now it’s causing some aggravation to the turf. And aggravation to the cutting unit itself, right? It wants to go straight. So whenever we’re looking at a blade path and The differential in tip speed with the same RPM, we’ve got a little differential going on there. So now it, it winds up resulting in the look of the turf, the turf being, you know, maybe a little more bruised than on the opposite side of that cutting unit. And some, some of it’s extreme. Some of it’s extreme. I had Tony Leonard who is the director of the, of the field for the, fields for the Eagles football team. I worked with, with them, with them for a year. So I worked with the NFL as well, Major League Baseball, on their fields and so on. And so one year Tony calls me up and he has he has 56 10s. Okay. Larger, the larger field homeowners. And he had them for probably three or four years. And he calls me up and he says, Dad O’Winter, Hey Jim, I just sharpened my reels and bed knives, and I got one up here on the table and I can’t, you know, he’s the director, he’s not super mechanically inclined, but his mechanics are working with him, and so we can’t get it to cut. He said it’ll cut on one side, but the other side, he said, I can’t even get it to pull up. He said, it’s not even close, maybe a sixteenth of an inch away. He said, I thought maybe his bed bar was damaged or whatever. I’ve got a brand new bed and I’ve put it in, brand new bed bar, same thing. And I said, did you drop it off the workbench or what? He goes, no, you don’t understand, I’ve got two mowers, I’ve got ten cutting units. They’re all doing the same thing. I’m like, oh my god. I said, okay. So, from where I live and where Philly where the I’m Philadelphia Eagles, about a hundred miles. So I said, tell you what, how about, you know, one day this week, whatever. I think it was, call me on a Monday, it’s Wednesday, I went out. So I pulled out my Vermeer caliper. On the radius, they were 50 thousandths differential from one side to the other. So the reel was a hundred thousandths smaller on the leading side compared to the following side. And then we’re doing the tip to tip. No relief grind, just tip to tip. And so I said, Tony. I said, these reels are so far out of spec. Well, what are we going to do? I said, well, here’s what we’re going to put it in a grinder. I’m going to give myself 50 thousandths air gap on this side. I’m going to touch the stone on this side. I’m going to turn the dials. And it’s going to grind a little bit. Nothing grind a little bit. Nothing. And eventually it’s going to grind a whole reel on. And we’re going to put her back together. And that’s what we did. We just dropped the bed knife right on the reel. Never even tightened up. You know, the, the forks and it cut the whole way across and he says, Well, it was an hour and a half. It took me to grind out that real an hour and a half

Trent Manning: 1:42:36

Oh, I bet. Yeah,

Jim Nedin: 1:42:37

or 11 blade. There were 11 blade, 7 inch diameter reels, right? He looks at me and he says, Well, you got 9 more to do. I said, No, I don’t. I sure hope you paid attention. I’m out of here. Yeah. Yeah.

Trent Manning: 1:42:51

Yeah, that is a

Jim Nedin: 1:42:53

lots of crazy stories, you know?

Trent Manning: 1:42:54

Yeah. That’s crazy. A hundred thousands out. That’s

Jim Nedin: 1:42:57

Yeah. Yeah. It was. Yeah. After 3 or 4 years of just. Yeah. You know, tip grinding, touch to touch, left to Never paying attention to it.

Trent Manning: 1:43:06

Wow. Yeah, that’s

Jim Nedin: 1:43:08

They got a different set of grinders today.

Trent Manning: 1:43:10

Okay.

Jim Nedin: 1:43:11

Yeah, green

Trent Manning: 1:43:12

doesn’t surprise me. Yeah. The green ones. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. yeah, No, that’s good. That’s good stuff. Yeah, I mean, I could go on all night. I think this is so good. It’s But

Jim Nedin: 1:43:25

you know,

Trent Manning: 1:43:26

well, no, I love it though. I do. I love it. I would like to do this again.

Jim Nedin: 1:43:32

Okay.

Trent Manning: 1:43:33

Give it, yeah, give it a month or two and I’ll I’ll probably come up with some more questions too. But yeah, I think, you know, we’re in an hour and 48 minutes

Jim Nedin: 1:43:43

Oh, is that right?

Trent Manning: 1:43:44

Yeah. So, I think this is plenty good. We’ll put a bow on this episode and yeah, reconvene again. But thank you so much. For being a guest and I would like to do some rapid fire real quick

Jim Nedin: 1:43:59

Sure.

Trent Manning: 1:44:03

What’s your favorite movie?

Jim Nedin: 1:44:05

My favorite movie is Christmas Vacation.

Trent Manning: 1:44:09

Ah I love it. Yeah, I just watched it,

Jim Nedin: 1:44:11

it every single year, every year, drop in another, you know, the cranks, watch that too, Christmas story, all those things, but

Trent Manning: 1:44:19

oh Yeah,

Jim Nedin: 1:44:20

laugh like it was the first time I ever saw it, every time I see it, it’s

Trent Manning: 1:44:24

I know it is yes it is a classic for sure what would be your last meal

Jim Nedin: 1:44:30

Chicken cacciatore.

Trent Manning: 1:44:32

Wow, all right,

Jim Nedin: 1:44:33

Yeah, my wife makes chicken cacciatore like you wouldn’t believe, I mean, every Christmas Eve, that’s what she makes me for dinner.

Trent Manning: 1:44:41

1. All right.

Jim Nedin: 1:44:42

Yeah, for 37 years. It’s it’s been good. Yeah.

Trent Manning: 1:44:45

That’s good. That’s good stuff. What are you most proud of besides your family?

Jim Nedin: 1:44:50

I would honestly say, I think, you know, the surprise to me whenever I got the Edwin Budding Award. You know, because I didn’t, you know, we just do what we do every day, right? And not really think about people recognizing what you do.

Trent Manning: 1:45:12

Yeah.

Jim Nedin: 1:45:12

so that, that was, that was a real thrill for me. Whenever GCSA called, you know,

Trent Manning: 1:45:18

yeah. No, that’s yeah. That’s awesome. And you deserve it too. I mean, just think about all you’ve done for this industry and all you’ve given back. And I know you’ve been down here to Georgia to speak for us and didn’t charge a dime. I mean, that goes a long way.

Jim Nedin: 1:45:35

yeah. Well, it’s, it is all been fun. I, I’ve done 102 major tournaments

Trent Manning: 1:45:41

Wow. Wow. That’s

Jim Nedin: 1:45:43

Hills, in 18 was my 100th. And John Jennings is the superintendent there. And, and the USGA. Kind of had a little recognition for me. I was shocked. I didn’t know that they kept all those records,

Trent Manning: 1:45:57

That’s awesome.

Jim Nedin: 1:45:58

I did two more after that. I did the BMW at Caves Valley and the Curtis Cup at Marion. And so John wants me to come back in 26 and do the next U. S. Open with him again up at Shinnecock. And I’ll probably be doing Caves this year as far as the BMW is back there again. So, but I’m slowing down, you know.

Trent Manning: 1:46:20

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I definitely, I hope to see you at Shinnecock.

Jim Nedin: 1:46:25

Oh, that’d be

Trent Manning: 1:46:26

yeah, I was talking to Rob Renner and he’s across the street, right?

Jim Nedin: 1:46:31

Yeah. Yeah.

Trent Manning: 1:46:32

and he’s like, you gotta come up for the tournament. I said, you let me know. I’m gonna try to come. I’m gonna

Jim Nedin: 1:46:38

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, a lot of it’s it’s, it’s a good time. I mean, you work your butt off, of course, you know,

Trent Manning: 1:46:44

Yeah. That’s, yeah, it’s worth it. I tell everybody I’ve always promote volunteering here on the podcast at tournaments. If you get a chance and you get way more out of it than you put in, Yeah. it’s a lot of work, but

Jim Nedin: 1:46:58

Yeah. I mean, you just you

Trent Manning: 1:47:00

the way.

Jim Nedin: 1:47:01

A lot of people you meet and you never know, you know, all of a sudden you’re, you’re, you’re in need or, or you get a call from someone. So it’s, it’s good. It’s a a very, very good community. You know, it’s a small knit community. You think about what we do.

Trent Manning: 1:47:19

huh. Yep. Oh

Jim Nedin: 1:47:21

you know, it’s all I know. It’s all I know.

Trent Manning: 1:47:24

Yeah. Well, we’re glad you’re a part of it for sure and thanks again for being on and we’ll be in touch soon.

Jim Nedin: 1:47:31

okay. Well, thank you. Take care.

Trent Manning: 1:47:39

thank you so much for listening to the Reel turf techs podcast. I hope you learned something today. Don’t forget to subscribe. If you have any topics you’d like to discuss, or you’d like to be a guest, find us on Twitter at Reel turf techs.