American Lawn Mower 1304-14 Review

(Rated: 3.4 / 5) Review by Frank Lowery
Noise
Ease of Assembly
Maneuverability
Balance And Handling
Cut Quality
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There are some surprising advantages to owning a property with a very small yard. You get to enjoy the benefits of having a lawn – you can host cookouts and enjoy the summer weekends with your family outdoors – but at the same time you do not have to put a lot of effort into keeping it looking great. Aside from occasionally seeding bare patches, there is very little you have to do to maintain a small lawn, and you rarely have to weed or fertilize a small lawn to keep it looking good. Aside from that, all that’s left is cutting the gras when it gets too long. And to do that, you don’t need a particularly big or powerful mower to get the job done reliably and efficiently. As a result, you have the convenient option of turning to a small manual reel mower like the American Lawn Mower 1304-14.

Review Summary

The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is a basic manual reel mower with a 14 inch wide cutting reel and an overall footprint that is just 23 x 8 x 13 inches. This makes it the perfect mower for very small yards, in which you don’t really need to get a power rotary mower or even a manual reel mower with a very wide cutting reel. Instead, you can enjoy the maneuverability and ease of finding storage space for it and still get smaller jobs done quickly and efficiently. The mower only weighs 21 pounds, which is extremely lightweight and means that anyone from teenagers to senior citizens should be able to operate it easily.

There are a number of other great features on the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 that make it perfect for yards with very small lawns. It has five durable steel blades on the cutting reel, which is mounted on a 3-spider ball bearing assembly for greater ease of use. It has big wheels made of durable materials, and it is competitively priced. I’ll discuss all of these in the Pros section. In the Cons section, I’ll talk about the limitations this mower has in detail. And before I wrap up, I’ll explain why I think the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is a great value for the homeowner with a tiny lawn.

Specifications

The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is a manual reel mower with overall dimensions of 23 x 8 x 13 inches and a cutting reel that is 14 inches wide. The cutting reel has five hardened steel blades, and it is mounted on a 3-spider assembly that makes it easier to get the blade spinning quickly.

The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 has a traditional T-handle, and it uses a standard cutting system, in which the cutting reel makes contact with the rear blades. The cutting reel can be adjusted from 1 to 1 3/4 inches. The mower weighs 21 pounds. A rear grass catcher is optional. There is a 90 day limited warranty on the mower.

Description

The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is a manual reel mower designed to provide the most efficient lawn care experience to homeowners with very small yards while providing significant savings. This mower is quieter, smaller, and more lightweight than rotary power mowers as well as most manual reel mowers. As a result, it is perfect for lawns with very small dimensions that do not require a lot of power or big cutting swaths to get the job done right.

The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 has a fourteen inch wide cutting deck, which is wide enough to keep small lawns looking great, but does not require a large overall footprint to support it. As a result the overall dimensions of the mower are just 23 x 8 x 13 inches, which makes it compact enough that you can easily tuck it away in just about any corner of your garage or tool shed. It also means it will be easy to maneuver it into tighter corners of your yard with no problem. And the mower weighs just 21 pounds, which makes it lightweight enough for just about anyone to use it easily.

The cutting reel on the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 has five durable blades made of hardened steel to ensure they will consistently provide quality cuts to the lawn without requiring sharpening too often. The reel is mounted on a 3-spider ball bearing assembly. This is designed to reduce friction, which makes it easier to get the cutting reel spinning quickly and keeps it spinning longer.

The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is one of the most inexpensive manual reel mowers you can find on the market today. Along with the fact that it will never need gas or electricity to power it, and only needs periodic sharpening to keep it operating smoothly, this mower’s price tag makes it a savings machine. Overall this is a solid mower at a great price.

Pros

If you have the kind of lawn the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 was designed for, you will find that it has a lot of excellent features that will help make keeping your yard looking great a hassle-free experience. The mower is compact and weighs just 21 pounds. The cutting reel has five durable blades on a mounting designed to reduce friction. It has big, durable wheels for better stability. And it has an extremely affordable price tag.

1. Compact and lightweight : The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 has an overall footprint of just 23 x 8 x 13 inches, which makes it one of the most compact manual reel mowers out there. This means it will be easier to find storage space for it in your garage or tool shed. Because of its size, the mower is also much easier to maneuver in and out of tight spaces in your yard. And at just 21 pounds, it’s light enough that anyone will find it easy to use.
2. Five durable blades mounted on a 3-spider assembly : The cutting reel on the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 has five durable blades made of hardened steel to ensure they can consistently provide superior cutting ability without needing to be sharpened very often. And the reel is mounted on a convenient 3-spider ball bearing assembly designed to reduce friction and make it easier to get the cutting reel spinning quickly and keep it spinning longer. That means you can get an even cut with less effort.
3. 10 inch composite wheels : The wheels on the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 are a full ten inches tall and have deeply treaded rims. That means they will be less prone to slippage, as the treads improve traction, and more stable on uneven ground because of their size. And unlike a lot of other mowers, which have wheels made of cheap, flimsy single polymers, the wheels on the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 are made of durable composite materials that hold up to wear and tear.
4. Perfect for cutting very small lawns : When you have a very small lawn, there really isn’t any point to buying a power rotary lawn mower or even a manual reel mower with an overly large cutting reel and bulky footprint. These mowers will only end up costing a lot more money, and because they aren’t designed for small spaces, they’ll be difficult to use. The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is small enough that it’s easy to use but still has a wide enough cutting reel to efficiently cut very small lawns.
5. Extremely competitive price : The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is very affordable. Not only does it have an initial purchase price that is much lower than just about anything else on the market, it does not cut corners in terms of craftsmanship or design to provide that. In addition, the mower will never need any gas or electricity to get it started, and it will require only minimal maintenance – occasional sharpening – to keep it running well. Because of that it practically pays for itself.

If you have the kind of lawn the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is designed to take care of, you will quickly discover that it offers a lot of advantages. Any one of these features would make it preferable for managing a very small lawn, but taken together, they make it the kind of efficient, sleek machine that you need for this kind of yard. Not only is it well designed, compact, and easy to use, it’s also very affordable, and will save you a lot of money over the years.

Cons

Due to the fact that the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 was designed with a very specific type of lawn in mind, there are a number of limitations as to its performance. It is not designed to handle any but the very smallest lawns efficiently, so if you have a larger lawn, you may be stymied by some of its drawbacks. Let’s take a look at each of these limitations in some detail.

1. The cutting reel is only 14 inches wide : Because it’s designed for very small lawns, the cutting reel on the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is very narrow. That means that while it will be able to handle postage stamp lawns very efficiently, as soon as you start to scale that area up, it invariably loses performance. The mower should not be used to cut larger lawns, because it is going to use too many passes and take far too long to finish the job.
2. May not cut taller grass easily : This tends to be a fairly common problem on manual reel mowers, even if they do have multiple cutting blades and spider ball bearing assemblies. And because the cutting height options on the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 range from just 1 to 1 3/4 inches, the problem is exacerbated here. Grass that is any taller than about three or four inches may pose significant problems for this mower. As a result, you may have to cut your lawn more often.
3. Can struggle with tougher varieties of grass : In areas of the US where tougher varieties of grass such as St. Augustine or Bermuda grass are grown, the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 may encounter difficulties. Again, this is an issue that is endemic to manual reel mowers, but it’s still worth mentioning. The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 will be able to get through these varieties, but it may take a few more passes to finish the job.
4. The wheels are a lot wider than the cutting reel : The wheels on the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 are 23 inches apart at the widest point, while the cutting reel itself is only 14 inches wide. As a result, you will have to do some overlapping from one row to the next, and if your yard abuts any walls or fences, you will have to do some edging when you are finished mowing. While this is not a huge performance issue, it can still present some frustration.
5. The reel gets stuck on debris easily : If the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 runs over even smaller twigs or pieces of bark, the cutting reel tends to get jammed. While this is a simple matter of removing the offending piece of detritus from the reel, if you happen to have a yard that is shaded by trees, you may have a lot of debris, and having to do this repeatedly can get old pretty quickly. But if your yard is generally free of debris, this shouldn’t pose too much of a problem.

All things considered, I do not think that any of these Cons pose the kind of serious design or performance issues that would draw a negative review for the American Lawn Mower 1304-14. At the same time, I think it is important to be aware of the limitations on this machine, and be sure you are purchasing it for the kind of job it is intended to do. I would not recommend buying this mower if you have a medium sized lawn or bigger.

Product Comparison

Pros and Cons lists are an excellent way to get acquainted with the features a particular product has to offer, but they provide a somewhat myopic view. They’re best when used in tandem with a detailed product comparison that provides a snapshot of what a given lawn mower’s competitors have to offer. The following table compares the product specs of the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 with those of the Greenworks 25062 and the Great States 815-18.

	American Lawn Mower 1304-14	Greenworks 25062	Great States 815-18
Cutting Width	14-inch	18-inch	18-inch
Mower Type	Manual Push	Manual Push	Manual Push
Handle	T-handle	Cushion Grip	Cushion Grip
Cutting System	Standard (contact)	Standard (contact)	Standard (contact)
Blades	3-spider 5-blade	5 blades	4-spider 5-blade
Cutting Height	1- to 1-3/4-inch	1-3/4- to 2-3/4-inch	1/2- to 2-3/4-inch
Weight	21 pounds	37 pounds	27 pounds
Grass Catcher	Optional	Included	Optional
Warranty	90 days	4 years	2 years

As you can see, the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is the smallest of the three mowers in terms of reel width, but it has the same number of blades on its cutting reel as the other two mowers. It’s also considerably lighter than the other two mowers, which will make it a lot easier to maneuver around the yard. What this shows is that the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 has comparable quality to the other two mowers, but is designed for a much smaller yard.

Conclusion

The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is designed with a very particular type of lawn in mind, and that’s a small one. As a result, there are a number of features the mower provides that make it very well equipped to do this type of job. On the other hand, it also has a number of limitations. Let’s take another look at the Pros and Cons this mower offers.

Conclusion Pros

1. Compact and lightweight.
2. Five durable blades mounted on a 3-spider assembly.
3. 10 inch composite wheels.
4. Perfect for cutting very small lawns.
5. Extremely competitive price.

The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 has a very compact footprint and weighs just 21 pounds, which makes it easy to store and use. It has durable blades mounted on a reduced friction cutting reel for easier use. Its wheels are big and durable for better stability and traction. This mower is just right for a very small lawn, and it is priced to save you money.

Conclusion Cons

1. The cutting reel is only 14 inches wide.
2. May not cut taller grass easily.
3. Can struggle with tougher varieties of grass.
4. The wheels are a lot wider than the cutting reel.
5. The reel gets stuck on debris easily.

The first thing you’ll notice on the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is that it has a very narrow cutting reel. It also may have difficulty with tall grass and tougher varieties of grass. It may require you to do a lot of edging, and it gets stuck on debris easily. But if you have the right kind of yard, I don’t think these limitations will pose serious problems.

Final Word

When you have a very small lawn in your yard, there is no reason to shell out a lot of money on bulky reel mowers or expensive power mowers. Instead, what I recommend is finding a small, lightweight manual reel mower that is designed specifically with your kind of yard in mind. These mowers are much quieter and easier to use than bigger mowers, and they can save you a lot of money as well. The American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is built to handle very small lawns quickly and efficiently. It doesn’t have a massive footprint or weigh a lot, so it will be easy to store and maneuver around the yard. It never needs gas or electricity to run it, which will save you money in the long run. Its cutting reel has five durable steel blades that will deliver quality cutting performance over the long term without needing to be sharpened often. Overall this is a great little mower at an affordable price.

Best Price

If you haven’t noticed yet, the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 is a very affordably priced manual reel mower. Up front, the purchase price on this mower is one of the most inexpensive you can find anywhere today. In the long run, because you will never have to spend a dime on gas or electricity to keep it running, and because the only maintenance it needs is periodic sharpening of the durable blades, the mower practically pays for itself. If you have a very small yard, there is no call to spend a lot of money on a bigger mower or a power rotary mower, especially when you can get the job done for a lot less with a compact reel mower like this one.