I’ve had a couple of these things over the years. Some electric, one battery powered, one gas.
These stupid things make me nuts. The line never feeds like it’s supposed to. Automatic feed by butt. Eventually I end up opening the spool and pulling some out manually. Time consuming. The ones where the line is supposed to feed when you bump it work like crud too. Plus, that spool cover is plastic. Bump it too often or too hard and it’s brokesville.
I had an electric one burst into flames right in my hands. 3 years old, loud buzz then POOF! Nothing like an electrical fire to make your day!
The battery on the rechargeable model didn’t last long enough to use on my yard. That was annoying!
And don’t get me started on how much I hate 2 cycle engines. Almost had a stroke trying to pull start one.
And can’t somebody make a decent metal blade instead of that stupid string line crap?
I didn’t have to deal with this bullshit when my kids still lived at home and I made them do the lawn!:mad:
I’ve been really happy with my Echo (2 stroke)! It starts right up EVERY TIME even the first trim after winter.
The string thing can get tricky. I’ve had decent luck with the current bump head I am using. I don’t have to take it apart that much but it does suck that you have to do that at all.
Trimming in general is hard work, though. It always makes me sweat like a pig. Doesn’t help that I have to put on my long pants and over-the-glasses goggles. I literally fill up the goggles with sweat. Yuck!
I just use my hands to pull up the grass around stuff. They start right up every time, never get dull, and do not annoy the neighbors. The soil here is very sandy though. I’d put mulch around trees and edges and just mow over them if I had real dirt.
Is there a difference between a weed wacker and an edge trimmer? I’ve never had an issue with my edge trimmer, and I’ve had it for a few years now. Haven’t changed the line yet. (I think it’s been about three years.) Love the thing. It seems to go through frickin’ anything I throw at it, as long as the battery has a good charge and I have it on the powerful setting.
I hate weed wackers too. I use an electric (rechargeable) grass trimmer. I do less damage to my shrubs and perennials and I don’t have to deal with the fecking string or feeder.
I got fed up with mine and bitched to an employee at Home Depot.
He showed me the kind where instead of a spool of flimsy filament, you cut two sections and insert them. I use VERY thick filament.
The two…I don’t know what to call them…“strands” stick out just like a regular weed whacker, but when they wear down, I have to remove them (with pliers) and put in new. I have a pretty good sized yard and one set will do my entire yard.
What pisses me off is that Home Depot will sell you thepart you need.
The problem is that they don’t actually carry them in stock, it’s a special order. So to hell with it, I resort to the pkbites method of pulling out the line by hand. Because I know that if I go through the trouble of special ordering the part, the trimmer will just explode into flames like the last one did.
My cord-powered electric string-trimmer is thirteen years old now, still going strong. Bump-feed mechanism mostly works fine; maybe once or twice a season I have to open it up and unbind the string by hand, but that’s tolerable.
The handle has a feature that allows you to rotate it 180 degrees so that the string spins in a vertical plane, making it work extremely well as an edger (in addition to the usual mode where the string spins in a horizontal plane for trimming around vertical objects like tree trunks and lamp posts).
I like it.
The threat of product liability lawsuits ensures that your “exposed circular saw on a stick” idea will never reach the market.
In the past ten years I’ve had four weed whippers. The only issues I ever had was having to manually pulling the string and the electric ones were kind of a pain (I couldn’t get everywhere I needed to in my yard, not enough extension cord).
My mother stole every single one.
She LOVES weed whippers. The hill at the cabin is too great to be able to use the mower, so she uses the whipper on it. I think she goes through at least one electric whipper a year.
I won’t discuss how many leaf blowers she’s taken from me, either. The woman is dangerous with yard power tools.
I’d always owned two stroke or corded electric trimmers, and hated their guts. The gas powered ones required too much TLC, and the electric ones were a giant pain in the ass thanks to the need to haul a 100’ cord around. I never ended up using them because they were such a pain.
Then I went out and bought a battery-powered one from the same line as all of my other 18v tools (Ryobi One+, in my case.) I already have a half dozen batteries of various capacities laying around in various states of readiness at any given time, so I’m not worried about running out of power. The line is a little weak - it’s .065" - but that’s not a problem if I actually keep on top of the trimming, and winding a new spool takes about 10 minutes.
Well worth the 80 bucks I spent, since I actually use the thing every time I mow now.
I’m not the biggest fan, for pretty much the reason the OP states. I thus will use a push mower as far as I can get away with it. I’ve gotten rid of tall weeds by just tilting the mower up and gradually lowering it.
Obviously, it doesn’t work for everything, but you’d be surprised.
The trimmer I bought a few years ago uses a short piece of thick line that is ridiculously easy to replace. I carry a couple in my pocket and replace as needed.
I bought the Craftsman power head and can use attachments from almost any brand. The trimmer attachment is a craftsman as well, I think.
Stihl electric line trimmer, relatively inexpensive at around $120 I think. Almost impossible to kill IMHO. I have desert landscaping, but the damn grass comes up thru the river rock etc. and WILL NOT DIE. So I am out there bumping the poor machine up and down and thru the rocks for hours at a time. My last one lasted 10 years-which I think is crazy good. Other than replacing the head a couple of times when my rock whacking wore it out, I never did a damn thing to it. I am not a fan of Stihl products for reasons that have nothing to do with the products themselves, but this is a damn fine tool.
Greenworks $115 battery powered trimmer. Ordered bulk Weed Eater line that fits and have never had any problems. Don’t store batteries in hot / cold temperatures. I think I’ve had to open the spool and reposition the line maybe once or twice. Otherwise, the automatic feed system has been flawless.
Never going back to gas. Ever. Even if this battery gets 4-5 years of use, that’s an excellet investment ratio.
They are annoying, but we have a chain-link fence in our backyard and it pretty much requires a weed-eater to trim around…and it eats up line 10 times faster than normal trimming.
I have a Husqvarna gas trimmer which works well, although I did pull off the stock “bump feed” head and replace it with an aftermarket head that others have mentioned – you either buy pre-cut pieces of line, or buy a big spool and cut your own pieces (that’s what I do)…then you throw some in your pocket, and when the line wears down you pull them out and slide the new ones in. It’s still a hassle, but less of a hassle than taking the bump-feed head apart all the time.
