String Trimmer
Courtesy: sacks08 via Flickr
Every year when you haul your trimmer out of storage, you hope that it starts up and everything works the same as when you put it away. Often, it’s not that easy. In a recent column, Denny Bonavita, of The Courier Express out of DuBois, Pennsylvania, writes of dealing with balky trimmers for years, until he found one that he really liked. Unfortunately, after storing it over the winter, he broke it out the next spring only to find the trimmer line breaking much more often than it should.
After plenty of frustration – which we have all experienced when it comes to lawn work – he contacted a representative of Stihl. The representative told him that, instead of throwing out the fairly new spool, and instead of spending all day fuming, he should merely soak the spool of trimmer line in water. After a soak of a few hours, Bonavita took the line out to trim with, and found it worked perfectly.
So why was this happening? Your trimmer line is almost always made out of nylon, similar to fishing line. Fishing lines will break when they are left to dry out – as will your trimmer line. This is because nylon is a somewhat porous material, and when it dries out, it will become brittle and easy to break. As it can sit in dry areas for years – warehouses, stores, and then your garage or shed – the trimmer line continues to dry out.
Wayne Lemmond, the representative from Stihl, goes on to recommend that trimmer line be soaked overnight before use, or if possible, kept in a bucket of water when not in use. This will ensure that the line is ready for use when you need it, and you won’t spend half of the day cursing your trimmer, and then the other half going out to buy new trimmer line.
