Originally published at: This dad's lawn-mowing hack is both hilarious and genius | Boing Boing
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Work smarter, not harder
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He learned that from the crop circle aliens.
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For maximum efficiency, the circumference of the pole should be equal to (or, for a margin, a bit less than) the cutting diameter of the mower. For a 22" mower blade this means the diameter of the pole should be less than 22/pi ~= 7 inches. (Hey! Which is the inverse of that pi approximation that everyone learns!)
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I don’t have an instagram account, so I don’t know if this is the same video or just a similar one.
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I know I’ve seen this on a cartoon, just wish I could remember which one.
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Pin cannot be to thick
Why not? Don’t you want to be sure not to overlap the pathing too much, to save time and gasoline? 
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Yeah, when I saw the post’s title, this is exactly the “hack” that came to mind.
I guess at some point, everything old is new again!
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This Shaun the Sheep episode has a sequence very much like that, but with a goat. (The goat’s name is "Mower Mouth )
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If you know where to look on Google Earth, you can find, on the beautiful rolling chalk hills of the Wiltshire Downs, a handsome woodland just nearing maturity. Acres of conifers mixed with beech and birch, elm and sycamore. All overgrown with wildflowers, with a sunny clearing at the centre.
It looks quite natural. But, if you’re able to observe from a sufficiently elevated viewpoint, you’d see the shape of a perfect spiral. You could probably work out exactly where the drum barrel stood, and where the rope was attached.
My dad was a brilliant guy.
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This is exactly how we used to make crop circles in the 1990s with two people and a rope. One person is the post, the other is the mower.
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Cool! Sounds like something to memorialize worth a drone pic.
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I got this from a book I read as a kid. Danny Dunn, or Encyclopedia Brown, or something.
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Yup, I once bought twenty years of old Popular Mechanics at a garage sale. Identical concept shown back in the 1960s. BTW, sometimes the lawnmower goes rogue and takes off at an angle…
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I remember seeing that when it was new, mid-60s I think. Never could talk Dad into it, though – he had shelled out for a riding mower, and intended to get full value out of it.
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Alvin Fernald, who was the central character in a lot of great books by Clifford B. Hicks, did this.
There was even a Disney film about Alvin that included this hack.
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I tied up a go trigger… but did not go as straight as one would hope…
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Yeah - fine for those lazy enough to buy self-propelled mowers in the first place…
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Let the cat drive.
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