Posts Tagged ‘manual mower’

Qualcast Panther Mower

Have you ever wondered about all the time and hassle it takes to set up your lawnmower before you cut the grass? I used to use a very expensive Hayter mower which needed pretty much a full service before it would start each time. Even then you were in danger of dislocating your shoulder trying to start it with the cord!
Well there is an alternative and it’s called the Qualcast Panther mower.

This alternative is a cylinder hand mower which has a central cylinder with 4 cutting blades. These provide a 30cm cutting width which although is not huge is perfectly adequate for small to medium type lawns.  So ok if you have a couple of acres of lawn to mow it’s not going to suit, but lets face it most of our lawns are much smaller than that,

Let’s have a look at some of the advantages – well for start it has very high geared wheels, this makes it extremely easy to push,   You can literally pick the Qualcast Pather mower up in one hand and start mowing the lawn.

Although you have no engine or motor to supplement your effort it’s not actually that difficult to mow your lawn with the Qualcast Panther.   I certainly find it much easier than the vast majority of Flymos especially when  they have their grass boxes attached.

You change the height of the cut using a nut and bolt on the mower,  it’s variable between 12 and 40mm in length.  If you can see it also has a roller which gives a striping effect to the cut.  The stripes are not too bad but don’t expect anything like a petrol cylinder lawn mower could produce.

So it’s easy to use, healthy for you giving a small workout.  It’s also obviously the best option for the environment as the only power is being supplied by you.  It actually makes mowing a little more relaxing as well mainly due to the relative peace and quiet.

The Qualcast Panther does have a grass collecting box of 20 liters although I have to say this is probably the weakest part of this mower.  The box collects a lot of the grass but it does drop quite a lot as well, it also isn’t able to squash the cuttings together like some mowers like the Bosch Rotak 40 for instance – so you’ll have more visits to empty the collector.

Another thing worth considering is that this mower is actually very simple, there’s not very much on it to go wrong.  I’ve had one for ten years and apart from looking after the blades it needs no real maintenance.   There are very small drawbacks to this mower – it struggles with damp grass, the cut is not quite as good as many electric mowers (but I still think better than most Flymos!) and it doesn’t quite catch all the clippings.  It’s also pretty cheap and is often on Amazon for between £30 and £40.

But as an environmentally friendly way to cut the grass and give yourself a bit of exercise then you won’t do much better than the Qualcast Panther Mower.