In article ,
Another John writes:
Yes, yes, yes: I know that Google Is My Friend, but my real friend is
the DIY Wiki, which [hopefully] distils the best of advice. And this
one doesn't appear there yet, as far as I can see...

I have two Bosch hedge trimmers, a couple of years old now, and they are
getting worn, gunged, and less sharp. (One is mains, one is
rechargeable BTW.)

I'd like to separate the blades, rub them down a bit, and remove the
gunge that has [probably] accrued over the years in the blade
assemblies. However, I'm very leery of doing this unless I can be sure
to put them back together exactly right. Otherwise, they'll end up
worse than they started out.

Is there a recommended procedure for sharpening and renovating a hedge
trimmer?

My Stihl ones says to clean the blade with resin solvent.
The only resin solvent I've found is their own, which is rather
expensive, and no one seems to stock it. I have cleaned with
WD40 instead (relying on the solvent part), but it doesn't
seem to work very well at dissolving resin, and it probably
works too well at removing any lubricant and rust protection,
so I probably won't continue using that.

I bought a can of silicone spray lubricant to try. I used it
for a few other things, and managed to misplace it before
getting around to trying it on the hedgecutter blades.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]