(More on the) Reel Mower

Hey. This page is more than 8 years old! The content here is probably outdated, so bear that in mind. If this post is part of a series, there may be a more recent post that supersedes this one.


We were visiting a friend. They are managing an accommodation property out near Murawai. There was lots of old rusty agricultural hardware littered around the place. One that caught my eye was an old mower – it had a similar (albeit wider) helical reel as the one I used for the base of a lamp.

Anyhow. Nice to know where it probably came from, right? The “Cleveland” was an iconic push mower by Masport. They had a couple of different models, if you look on the Masport 100-year anniversary website. Images below are courtesy of that website. Aside from making a case for reel mowers as the “Rolls Royce” (piggy-backing another company’s history – is that allowed?) of mowers, there is a good case put forward for the reintroduction of a more innocent use of quotation marks, I reckon. Ha ha! Bring back the Quotation mark: Coca “Cola”, Google “Search”. Hum?

This is the Masport “Heavy Duty” (Does that mean it wasn’t REALLY that heavy duty???). My lamp’s reel is 12″, so if this is what the measurements refer to, mine did not come this model…but similar specs I suspect.

The “Lawn Sprite” looks lethal. It looks like the lamp reel came off the hand-push, lightweight “Service” model, bottom right.