Can anyone recommend a lawn spreader?

Mrs HF has gone off to have lunch with her gardening cronies and left me to do the autumn gardening chores.  I had an inkling this might happen as for days now she had been leaving "The New Lawn Expert" book laying about where I might stumble across it.   Still being asked to fertilise the lawn unsupervised marked a remarkable uptick in the trust she placed in me so I don't want to mess it up.

The last time I was entrusted to do this was the only time we had entered our garden in the village open gardens day.   I had been given strict instructions on how to use the spreader but as usual I left things a little late a so in order to save time I thought I could just spread it by hand.  Carefully calculating the required amount for the area I evenly broadcast the fertiliser on the lawn by hand.  We had worked like dervishes to spruce up the garden which I must say looked perfection without a weed in sight.

I was pleased that I had managed to spread the fertilizer so evenly but come the morning of the big day we awoke to find the lawn had broken out in a rash of brown arc shaped lines.  My suggestion that we could still claim this as a triumph by passing it off as a neuvo trend in lawn design met with a fierce look.

Any tips on how to spread evenly will be greatly appreciated.

Here's a couple of photos of preparations and as I'd rather take some pictures than get stuck into gardening, to make up for my dismal attempts to submit a photo of a Dahlia for Yabba, here is a photo of the last lingering blooms of a dahlia before the frost finally claims them.






She's just got back better go now.

HF

Some of the domestic spreaders can be a bit of a pain to get the right g/M2 spread.
When I need to calibrate a different product to a particular spreader, I have a clean sheet of cardboard 1mtr square that I lay on a paved or tarmacked area (not the lawn to be treated). I then guess the correct setting, sally forth across the cardboard and then sweep up the product on the cardboard and weight it, I then adjust the setting as required.
It can take a couple of go's to get it right, and a slight waste if you don't manage to pick up all the product, but better that than a dead lawn or wrong advice given.

I haven't weed-and-feed-ed my lawn since I put the pond in but when I did I used a spreader like the one in the left of your pic.

Although it was designed specifically for the product I used it with (Levingtons, I think) I'm pretty sure it underdosed the grass, although it did deliver it pretty evenly.

I would do something based on what you and Gwiz have suggested HF - measure the area (or an easy-to-measure part of the area), treat it, and weigh the amount of product you have used; you will then have a fair idea of whether it is dosing correctly (in your case, dosing twice would be just about spot on.)