I noticed from reading the Lawn Mowing thread that tpozywio started that many people mentioned not knowing how properly adjust the screws to align the blades on their reel mowers.
Others disliked the reel mowers because they had ones that could not cut their grass very well (probably in part because they were using ones with misaligned blades). Admittedly, a reel mower will never cut as much grass in a single pass as a motorized gas-powered one, however if the blades are aligned properly on the reel mower, it is a close alternative.
Personally, I had a hard time with this as well last year and searched the web for a good guide. Sources always talk about how important and sensitive the procedure is but never show you how to do it very well.
Sadly websites and how to videos either (1) glossed over important details of the process never fully explaining it or (2) there was good information, but it was always buried in dry black-and-white technical document that was hard to understand and decipher.
So I compiled this guide from my own notes and photos that represents my best understanding on how to do this procedure on a reel mower. It is based on a Scotts Classic 20 inch model (Scotts 2000-20 model).
I am not expert on this, I just spend a couple days observing how the mower worked and experimented with it until I got it cutting much better.
Hopefully, this link below will work for sharing (it may be a slow download, i.e 1 or 2 minutes):
https://rapidshare.com/files/1277333569/Reel%20mower%20blade%20alignment%20guide.pdfI first tried using Google docs to share it but for some reason Google Docs just butchered the document and the colors were really messed up.