Scott's 20" Classic Reel Mower Handle Replacement

The Scott's 20" Classic Reel Mower is a great little energy saving machine. (And you get free exercise using it!) The weak link seems to be the handle, though. I bought mine in May of 2006, and I really like using it, but several years ago the handle started giving out.

I could not find any place online to buy a replacement handle, so I kept it working in a wobbly sort of way by reinforcing it with lots of hose clamps. The problem seems to be that the handle is made of a lot of small parts so they can fit into a relatively small shipping carton. These are all bolted together, and the joints weaken and get progressively looser over time as you use the mower.

Last May, the handle became completely unusable, as no amount of hose clamps could keep it together.






After searching in vain again on the Internet, I decided to make my own replacement handle.














A 10-foot piece of 3/4" EMT  from Home Depot for about $3.70 provided the raw material.

 I used a conduit bender and a tubing cutter to bend and cut the EMT to length. Even if you have to buy the bender, it's still a lot cheaper than buying a new mower










To flatten the ends and drill the holes you need a few more tools. I also used a bench-vise (not pictured) to help smooth out the flattened ends.




A grinder is handy to round the flattened ends of the EMT, but you could get by with a hack saw and a file.

I thought that by leaving the ends a few inches too wide, the spring-tension would be all that was needed to hold the ends of the handle securely in place once it was fitted over the retaining studs.

The spring-tension from the extra-wide fit helped to make the handle fit nicely and not rattle, but after a little use, I found that the E-clip retainers were still needed. The ends could still pop off if the mower bumped into some obstruction or was turned too quickly.

At the time of this posting, I've been using the new handle for 3 months, and it is working fine.