Mowing the lawn’s just another boring chore that keeps you off the bike in the summer months, right?
Not any more. Grazor, a new invention by the design and innovation agency, Seymourpowell, is a self-powered ride-on lawnmower that not only cuts the lawn, but also allows the user to improve their health with some useful aerobic exercise.
Still only a concept sadly, Grazor is not yet in production. It combines a recumbent bicycle with a front mounted cylinder mower for a lawnmower that looks familiar, but is completely redesigned.
The cutting reel is innovative, with aluminium 'spiders' acting as the framework for flexible steel blades - a similar construction to a razor blade - hence the name.
By rotating past a fixed blade at the bottom, the razors act in a scissor motion to cut the grass.
The reel assembly is easily lifted to manoeuvre over gravel, and cutting height is adjustable.
The front mounted pedals provide the drive, down through a five speech hub gear box for all types of terrain.
Pedalling backwards allows the user to reverse, but a freewheel function allows for downhill coasting too.
Traditional push-along mowers suffer a power inefficiency, the company says, due to the variable of the friction in the ground. But the connection between the pedal and the cutting reel in this design minimises that loss.
Broad, light wheels help tackle any sort of lawn, with grips near the user’s hips for steering, along with gear controls. It’s all topped off with a lightweight carbon composite chassis.
If that doesn’t want to get you out in the garden, we don’t know what will.
After an unpromising start, having to be bribed by her parents to learn to ride without stabilisers, Sarah became rather keener on cycling in her university years, and was eventually persuaded to upgrade to proper road cycling by the prospect of a shiny red Italian bike, which she promptly destroyed by trapping a pair of knickers in the rear derailleur. Sarah writes about about cycling every weekend on road.cc.