Colbyt wrote:


Mike, it depends on what you are trimming and your skill level at not
hitting stuff. Each little string with this replacement head is cut to 8-9"
so when it breaks shorter than 4" it is time to replace it.

I will use yesterday as an example. I went to a rental house I own which
has chain link fence. The fence rows had not been trimmed in for a couple
of years and the orchard grass was about a foot high, a few weeds and young
Chinese honeysuckles mixed into the mess. While doing 2 sides of about 200
foot of fence I went through 30-40 strings because I kept hitting the damn
fence. At bad as that sounds I was only there about an hour. Chain link
fence is the worst thing in the world to weed eat around.

With the bump and go crap I would have been there all afternoon.

That was a bad day so I stopped at Lowes and bought a new roll, 155 feet
for $8 before I went to the next house. That roll will make 206 precut
strings.

I went to another house and did the whole back yard while never replacing a
single string. Around my own yard I seldom break more than one or two per
trimming session and that is usually when I am edging along the drive or
walk. On pure grass the .095 string lasts a long time

Colbyt


It takes me back...

In the 1970s I bought the first string trimmer I saw. It was invaluable
in maintaining an old cemetery with 250 headstones. In 1982 I began
trimming half a mile of electric fence, perhaps weekly, using a similar
lightweight trimmer. I couldn't stand straight using that trimmer, and
bending that long was fatiguing.

So I got a 17-pound Hoffco from Troybuilt. It had a shoulder strap and
two wide handlebars like a motorcycle. I could stand straight and cut
for hours without fatigue. After 13 years of hard use, the carburetor
quit working. I didn't fix it because an aunt gave me a Hoffco of the
same model that she'd owned 11 years but now found too heavy. I've used
that for 14 years and it still runs fine.

To me, two wide handlebars are important. I've tried models with only
one wide handlebar or none, and I found them fatiguing and control poor.
For heavy cutting such as a hillside covered with briers, it came
with a head that holds 3 plastic blades or 3 doubled heavy lines. Most
of the time, I use .095 line from the spool head.

The lines don't break because they exit between posts of aluminum tubing
about 3/8" in diameter, with gives them a big radius to bend around.
The head is a simple design. The spool is mashed between rubber
washers. You snip off the frayed ends of the lines, loosen the screw
cap, pull out the amount of line you want, and tighten.

This allows you to set the length to cut any size swath from 8 to 17".
A bigger swath is more destructive due to higher tip speed, but a
smaller swath allows better control and is less destructive to the line.

I trim a lot of chain-link fence. If I'm running my usual swath, I'll
have to stop and snip split ends shortly after I start on the fence.
Then I can probably do hundreds of feet of fence with no further
splitting. The secret is to control tip speed by the use of the
throttle and a smaller swath, perhaps 11".

I've read that Hoffco invented the string trimmer in the 1940s. I wish
they still made them. A few months ago I downloaded a 2009 guide from
Tulsa Small Engine Warehouse showing which of their 12 favorite trimmer
heads they recommended for each of perhaps 1000 trimmer models. No
Troybuilts are listed, but my antique Hoffco is.