As seen on TV, and it really, really works
Posted by Rich on 12 Jul 2010 at 09:48 am | Tagged as: Gardening, General
String trimmers/weed wackers. Anyone elses blood starting to boil over the though of it?
Mine is a dual string, or dual pain in the a$$ model. Not only do you have to wind 2 spools, but holding the first in place while threading the seconds, then getting the spool inside the housing. Ugh.
Weeds at the farm were so overgrown, it was time to break it out. I must have been avoiding this task, as it was the first time this year it was fired up. Iowa farm land….yes…you know we can grow weeds. Many were chest high and an inch thick. Trying to cut through this ended up re-feeding broken string, or detangling the innards, or relieving pinches that cause the string not to feed, about every 3 minutes. Then of course, emptied a full spool with 1/3 (the easy 1/3) of the work done. I’ve tried different thicknesses and different shapes. My hatred of this thing caused me to rush to the hardware store and look for an aftermarket replacement.
Whirling blades crossed my mind, but wasn’t too keen on the idea. I know there was some other sort with string like bits that hung from the center. What I found, and bought was the Weed Warrior. This was a center black hub, that held bits of red string. Just string, not propriety replacement bits. Interesting. The attachment points are mini-hubs that have dual holes. You fold a bit of string and slide through. The gimmick here was that the string would pivot back and not break. You ended up with 4 pairs of line sticking out.
I first noticed that RPM was a little down. It kept whacking away and I never had to thump the thing on the ground to get length. I did the deep and think weeds, many finger/thumb thick woody weeds all along 1/2 the corn crib before I wore anything out. It seemed that I lost 2 stings in a pair, but thought I could finish with just the 2 but they seemed to fling out on the next attack. Still, I went through 6x what a spool did before replacing. It did come with a replaccement set of strings, and I do have a big roll on standby. I finished the crib, did all the gardens, 1/2 the shed, and around the barn. I also cleared rings around all the new trees and the remaining strings looked hardly used. It took a little finesse to saw through larger weeds, and needed different strategies on large walls of weeds and grass.
No spools, no refilling, no tangles, easy replacements. WIN. The only thing it did not like was any ditch-weed over 8-10″ tall. It got far too tough and would tangle it up. Hemp is obviously a very strong fiber and grows well. Why are we so dumb not to be using this stuff again?
I might like edging again. PS. the corn crib looks 5 feet taller and a lot nicer again.
