Bob F wrote:
[....]
I apologize if this has been brought up before, but its new
to me. My neighbor just discovered that you can do a
great job of sharpening lawn mower blades with those
cheap hand held knife sharpeners...the ones that wrap
around your hand and you draw your knife through it.
They cost around 5:00 bucks, but they do a great job
on the blades

Whenever I've sharpened blades, they need a LOT more than a "hand" sharpening.
The ends of the blade get pretty beat up.

http://personalpages.bellsouth.net/t...er/blades.html

with the typical price for blade sharpening holding around 5 dollars
a blade and with my deck array of 3 blades I knew I was going to
develop a means of doing the task myself.

http://personalpages.bellsouth.net/t...-workshop.html

with this setup I can sharpen the set in under 15 minutes, including
removal and reinstallation. the cost savings has been nothing more
than stellar.

invest in tools, they have this neat way of providing a financial return.