Corded electric string trimmers metaphor for our society, New model feeds string too fast, Modified older trimmer to use plastic blade, Old trimmer still works

This article is a bit of an allegory (you remember Moby Dick), a story within a story.

It is about rigging one of my string trimmers to function closer to what I desire.

The rest of the story is why am I doing this.

The concept is not my original idea. I read about something similar a few years ago.

First of all, thank God, I do not need a trimmer that often. But my lawnmower conked out at the end of last season and I wanted to take my time and research prior to a purchase. This took longer than projected and led to my decision to go ahead with electric lawn mowing technology and ultimately build my own.

I tried ordering a part for the last trimmer that I recalled feeding string correctly. The part from Ace hardware did not look like the photo.

I tried one last time at the old fashioned real hardware store and they could not help so this afternoon I rigged the old Toro trimmer with a plastic blade I made from scratch attached to an old Schwinn tire repair can lid and bolted to the trimmer.

It is still raining cats and dogs so I will have to wait to test it.

The rest of the story is about our throw away society and the frustrations of living in it.

I will not write much because it can only sound like whining.

The internet is great but companies come and go and sometimes parts that you would expect to be readily available are not.

And the so called “improved technology”, auto string feed does not work as promised or is intentionally designed to sell more string.

Preaching to the choir so nuff said.

The old Homelite trimmer still works.

R. E. Cycle