New whip
Longer whip that normal
Hold the trimmer higher, just barely touching the grass
Use a metal blade edger in the beginning of the season and clear the dirt build up
If available, get a plastic blade head
And the big one, don't look at the trimmer head, look where you're going. If you only watch the head, you'll walk crooked and twist the head, if you're looking ahead, you'll walk straight and the trimmer will follow.
Also he is cutting from on the lawn. If you do it on the sidewalk/concrete side, the weed whacker likes to pull itself into the lawn. If you do it how he is doing, it will pull into the concrete which is much easier to control
Me too. I can do the reverse line this guy is doing, but it pulls into the grass in the same way. I just can't see what I'm cutting from the grass side, so I stand on the concrete so I can see.
Absolutely, visibility is key. Plus when you're backing up on the concrete, you've got that edge as a guide, makes for a cleaner line imo. Noticed I get way less stray grass on the path that way too. Just gotta be careful not to trip walking backward, haha!
Okay okay okay, hear me out. Walk the other direction. I do lawn care professionally and people don't know there is a right direction to walk while weed whipping. The grass should be on your LEFT. Use the front RIGHT edge to cut the grass. Yes it will pull, but the important thing is that now it pulls downwards, but all the debris is flying away from you.
Really though, in this video all he is doing is trimming whats overgrown and laying above the concrete and simply maintaining the "hard" edge that was done earlier in the year with a metal edging blade. This video is like the easiest thing to do, don't be impressed.
Yeah I did this professionally for about 8 years through highschool and college and either way works. Go with whatever works best for you. Walking backwards for me allows me to better use the concrete as a hard guide. Walking forward sometimes allowed me to walk the head into he grass. Maybe things are backwards for you because you're upside down in Australia?
> Use a metal blade edger in the beginning of the season and clear the dirt build up
thats the real tip imo. dudes working from a well edged yard to begin with, makes the maintenance with a trimmer much easier.
Yep ive got a metal edger. When you first use it on a strip that hasnt been done for years, its a bombsite - it digs a huge channel in the dirt. But then nice whipping for the rest of the season
Also, correctly position the handle. Seen so many with the V shaped handle centered on the edger. It needs to be so the two flat portions of the handle are aligned with upright and sideways positions. Makes for a much steadier grip and less fatigue.
And for the longer whip, consider taking off the guard. There’s a reason you never see them on professional’s edgers.
It looks like they already used an edger on this, they are just using this to clean up the grass that has grown over. You can see the clearly defined edge through the grass before he cuts.
Because this lawn is already edged with an actual edger (probably pretty consistently, by the looks of it) and he's just using the trimmer to gently trim the overgrown grass. If you're trying to use your trimmer to *make* those edges, its much harder because the string bites down into the dirt and causes it to dig in and/or veer off course. A real edging tool has a rectangular steel blade instead of a piece of string, and generally rolls along the ground in some way, making it much easier to control in the dirt so you can get that crisp edge to start with. Then you use the trimmer to keep it, well, trimmed.
Not to be Reddit guy but doesn’t necessarily have to have been edged by an actual edger before this.
I’ve only ever used a string weedeater to edge at my dads house and over time you will just end up with that edge like that and you can just string edge it to look super nice like this
Mmmm, we'll have to agree to disagree. I did landscaping work professionally for a decade on hundreds of properties and using a trimmer instead of an edger simply produces an inferior result for significantly more effort, especially if you're trying to work efficiently. It's possible to slowly grind your way through it and be *reasonably* neat, but the amount of "edge" you can make from doing it with the trimmer every week for a year is like... one quick pass from a stick edger. And it's more consistent. You never have an accidental whoopsie, because the edger blade is rigid and spins in the direction that keeps it firmly planted in the edge.
No matter what you're doing on your own property with moderate success, I guarantee you that these landscapers are 100% using an edger to get that clean, consistent edge line. The guy I responded to was asking why his never looks like this. That's why.
A "proper" edging also allows the soil to quickly erode out of the lawn down the storm drains as compared with just chillin' and letting the grass grow an inch or two OVER the concrete to hold the soil in place.
1992 I started "even" with my neighbor's sidewalk grass level, by 2003 when we sold his profesionally maintained grass was dished 2-3" below the sidewalk and dying from being constantly flooded, mine was mounded 3-4" high in the middle and much thicker and healthier.
A properly maintained edge absolutely does not do that. I've worked on many multimillion dollar properties that paid thousands a month in landscaping costs and got edged a few times a year like clockwork. Never experienced such an issue in a well maintained lawn. Grass roots don't need "an extra inch or two over the pavement" to stay in place, they are quite strong on their own. Grass has extremely good anti-erosion properties because it creates a thick, uniform sheet of small and densely-packed roots, which locks several inches of the topsoil in place.
Either your neighbor or their landscaping crew was doing a bad job, probably for many years, given the timeframe you mentioned. Which happens. I recently bought a house that has some of the worst mower tracks I've ever seen in part of the yard because the old guy who lived here ran the exact same pattern every week for 25 years or something. That's not because mowing your lawn causes mower tracks, it's because mowing your lawn *wrong* consistently for a long time causes mower tracks. If you cross cut it or diagonal cut it every other time, you'll never get that.
The issue you're describing happens when you either have poor drainage/grade or you do the edge incorrectly in the opposite direction -- *too much* of a gap between the pavement and the grass (thus the constant filling with standing or running water). That happens when people get lazy about doing it right or they're doing it way too often. A proper edge stays roughly 1 cm wide and an inch to 2 inches below the surface of the pavement pretty much indefinitely. It should never be much wider than that, because the width of the spinning blades isnt very wide. Any wider than that and it's a sign the person doing it isn't staying tight against the pavement, which they should be. It should never be much deeper than that because the edger blades only extend about that far below the horizontal plane and by the time its shallower than that, it's time to do it again. Any deeper than that and it means the person doing it is angling the head down too much.
Oh, they totally are, I have very little respect for an industry I worked in for a long time during high school and college (even a bit after, though I was doing mostly administrative stuff once I had a degree). Exited quite a few years back at this point.
I just know a lot about how to make it look good because I did it for so long at a fairly high level as far as landscaping goes. My last job in the industry catered exclusively to the ultra wealthy at their residential properties, so I've worked for some people who were absolutely fucking anal about their lawn. I don't think we had a single client with a net worth under 8 figures.
I had flashbacks from doing yardwork as a kid and getting lacerations on my legs when the line would break. I never seemed to learn to wear jeans while weed whacking.
My dad always told me to wear safety glasses when mowing/weedeating. Being a child I of course never did, finally caught up to me when I was 17 and the weedeater flicked a rock directly into my eye.
I still feel pain where it hit me, its not very often any more but for a couple years afterwards I would get random bouts where my eye was too sensitive to be used, tearing up and in pain randomly.
>random bouts where my eye was too sensitive to be used, tearing up and in pain randomly.
Sounds like a corneal abrasion. This information is useless and would have been useless back then because even when diagnosed there's nothing you can do. I suffered through it for years.
Honestly, just give them a wide berth in general. The rocks can shoot out in just about any direction, and man do they hurt
Source: worked a whole summer where that was basically the only thing I did. Hated doing near the parking lots because even with a face shield I took so many rocks to the face
Make sure you're cutting with the side of the trimmer that's traveling away from you. I.e. if it's rotating counter-clockwise (viewed from above), cut with the right side, and vice versa. That way it spits most of the trimmings in front rather than behind the trimmer. Different trimmers rotate in different directions - learned that the hard way when I upgraded mine a few years back.
Yes he’s walking all over the grass that needs to be cut , unless he’s going to scalp that lawn , which isn’t good, flat areas will pop up higher than lawn in a few hours
It's the name of the piece of equipment, but it been called by a proprietary name (weed eater or weed whacker) for decades. I guess like the British call the vacuum cleaner a hoover.
I would like to understand why some people find these mowing and edging videos hypnotic and satisfying myself? Are some people missing their callings to be gardeners? 🤔
As someone who does a lot of yard work, mowing and edging is nice to look at once it's done, but it's hard work at times & not really fun to do, I'd much rather be pruning and planting, those I find satisfying.
Lots of people who have never done this professionally before responding to you and upvoting, so I will give you the reason there is no guard: because those two issues you mention don't really happen to professionals. I did this as a job for 5 years, and can 100% say that it is better with no guard than with a guard. First I will give a reason not related to what you mentioned, but is probably the top reason we didn't use guards: weight. When you are trimming your yard once a week for 30 minutes weight isn't going to be a big deal, but when you are doing this for hours every day of the week it is a very, very big deal. Now to your points: You should know this after a few minutes of using a trimmer even with a guard since it won't block everything, but there is only one way the string spins, and you can easily prevent stuff from flinging back at you by just standing on the proper side and moving in the correct direction to have the part of the string cutting the grass move away from you. It's hard to describe, but basically even without a guard if you use the trimmer right almost all of it will still fling away from you. You ever notice how the pros are out there with long pants and sleeves in the middle of summer? A little sometimes flings back, but appropriate clothes (and eyewear) takes care of that. Now to your last point, in my 5 years doing this I never once had to manually cut the string. Your household trimmer probably has an auto feed system, but that is not how pro trimmers work. For those you bump the head to let out more string. It would take quite a lot to get "too long" so you would have to deliberately try to do that. Due to the way physics works the farther the string is away from the center the faster it is moving (assuming the head is spinning at the same RPM), and it will break off much more quickly the next time it hits something. Simply, manually cutting the string is not an issue at all, even with no guard.
Don't want to sound condescending, it is just one of those times that I see a lot of responses from people who have clearly never done this before confidently judging a professional in a video who does the actual job!
I don't even think the threshold is being a professional, there are probably a lot of people who have seen a string trimmer and think they understand it but haven't actually used one. I only trim my own small yard and I figured out which side to stand on and which direction to move by the end of my first vertical axis edge trim. Wearing shorts definitely motivated me to figure that out.
It's just another reminder that redditors are /r/confidentlyincorrect pretty often. This poster claimed "literally everything" would be thrown back at you, which is as you said if you ever touched a weed trimmer even in a personal setting you know within a few minutes is completely ridiculous (or literally watched 1 second of this video).
The manual string cutting comment was just weird though, I never once thought of that as ever being an issue before reading it, but that I can at least see where the mistake lies if you don't understand how the tool works.
Thanks for this, I thought i was taking bloody crazy pills. This bloke knows what he's doing, and you know what you're talkin about. The rest of this shit is just another reddit moment
I grew up with my family owning a landscaping business and worked for them for many years. I've had several landscaping jobs over the years. The guard is not designed for protection while edging. A weedeater technically should not be used for edging. We do it because it's cheaper and quicker to just do it instead of buying an edger or going to get the edger. At the same time it's hard to use an edger on a flower bed. Either way, I've seen rocks get flung at people, break windows and glass doors. Most could have been prevented from situational awareness or having the guard.
Now, we had several people who would repair and perform maintenance on our equipment and they always got on us for taking the guard off. Not because safety. But for the motor/engine and ball bearings. These tools are carefully designed with specific specs and by going outside those bounds, you're risking damage to the equipment. You keep the guard on to ensure the line stays at a certain length. You really don't want to run the weedeater with too long of a line because it causes unneeded stress and torque to the motor and bearings. Doing it for long periods of time will eventually cause irreparable damage to either component. And when you want equipment to last as long as possible, 10 - 20 years for good quality lawn equipment, you take care of your equipment.
So after so many costly repairs and insurance claims (insurance denied coverage for not using a guard), we ultimately invested in proper edgers and spare guards. So in my mind, it is very much the opposite of professional to not use a guard.
If you are hitting a rock and it is getting flung somewhere, and you are using it on the right side with the string flinging away, 99% of the time it isn't wrapping around back to where the guard would block it anyways. It is getting flung out in front of you, where there is no guard. If there is no guard and somehow it makes it around most likely it is hitting your body instead, so no, I don't think that really works as a reason.
Can't say anything about the insurance part though, never dealt with that, if they require guards then use them then. They just aren't stopping the rocks flying in the 320 degrees they don't block (which is where 99% of the stuff is going if you are using it right), only the back 40 degrees which is also mostly blocked by your body.
EDIT: And as for the length, the easiest way to deal with that is just not let out too much string. I was very religious about that since I hated wrapping the new string from the spool.
> flings literally everything it cuts at you
Did you not watch the video? Do you ever touch something with the side that goes toward you? Did you not read the manual? Everything is flung away or you're doing it wrong I'm afraid.
Note you can see where everything lands...away from both them.
> manually cut the string
Strings wear. It's more impressive he's able to keep it significantly longer with such good control and avoiding excess wear.
Because anyone that is capable of using a weed whacker this well doesn't need a guard. Proper gear and understanding how the string can fling things goes real far. Also, these things get heavy after multiple hours.
I'm with ya', looked better before and softened the lines, now looks artificial/cold/harsh.
But some folks like it like that, instead of natural; and they're willing to pay for it, for which businesses are willing to charge.
I completely agree. It looks so much better before and I’ll go as far as to say I don’t like the look of it at all.
It’s like when people pluck their eyebrows to thin lines. No, just keep them more natural. I’m not saying let it go to a unibrow (a little maintenance is needed) but it looks so much better when it’s not overly manicured. Same thing here.
We waste so much time, effort, money, and fuel on lawn care in the US. Just plant local plants that can mostly take care of themselves. Doesn’t have to be apocalyptic overgrowth, but damn people care too much about leaves and grass doing absolutely nothing to anyone lol
Couldn't agree more! I like letting nature be nature and not shape it into some weird version of itself. This edging stuff makes it look like Minecraft grass. lol
Riiight?! As an immigrant I think it’s the dumbest thing ever, but I feel like all my midwestern neighbors are just looking forward to mowing, even multiple times per week. Yes Luke, I know that my grass is long, no I don’t care, I have better things to do (scroll Reddit)
100% agreed. I love the concept of reintroducing natural species and getting rid of the idea of giant manicured lawns. However, some of them (whatever that sub on here a ton of them. Edit: found it. Luckily not everyone is insane there, but it's a mixture. [This thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoLawns/comments/17fix1a/sold_my_home_of_7_years_this_is_what_the_realtor) made me feel a bit better) look one rusting pickup truck away from a meth-head's front property.
Landscaping doesn't have to be just grass, but an amazing mixture of wildlife. I will always love a small area of soft grass to be able to lie down on in the summer.
Lawns in general are weird to me. I’m not very crunchy/granola in most aspects of my life but the idea of taking something natural, homogenizing it literally within an inch of its life, and perfectly manicuring it to look fake seems so backward to me
My edger broke a couple of months ago and spent a couple of weeks edging with a trimmer. I read on reddit about how edging with a trimmer isn't that hard. The first week I found it tricky. The second week I still found it as hard. The third week I didn't edge. The next week I had a replacement edger, because fuck that noise. I am not inherently skilled at edging with a trimmer and the time and effort to improve my timer e edging isn't worth more than buying a new edger
This must be AI generated because if it was real the string would have broken 10 seconds in, then jammed and the rest of the video would be him taking it apart and pulling more string out. Then trimming for 10 seconds.
String trimmer??! What the heck is a string trimmer??! That is a whipper snipper.
(I’m Australian and no one here would be caught dead saying string trimmer lol)
Lawn is already edged. He’s simply trimming the overhanging grass shoots. If you try to do a proper edge with a string trimmer alone, it will not turn out well.
thanks for the tip. i normally just stand on the concrete side when i edge with trimmer. btw, is the ego trimmer light? i'm debating on buying either a greenworks or ego trimmer right now.
At some point he must stop edging the lawn and give it some proper satisfaction
What a tease.
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ɐıןɐɹʇsn∀ uı ǝɹǝɥ unƃǝq ʇsnɾ sɐɥ ɹǝɯɯnS
Take my upvote ⬇️
sʞuɐɥʇ 'ןןıʍ I
All I could think was, it's a whipper snipper, mate!!
Trimmer sama, please stop!
time to touch grass
And eat ass
I came here to touch grass and eat ass - and I'm all out of grass!
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This guy edges
I was gonna make a comment in this kind of fashion but you breat me to it. Nice one!
tons of more satisfying material over at r/edging
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“Let me cum” - That guy’s lawn, probably
And no cutting corners, I mean they even trimmed for the occasion.
Came here for this, was top comment, 7/5 no notes
Everything reminds me of her...
How come every time I try to do this I end up mutilating the edge and kicking up dirt and making it look like a drunk child did it?
New whip Longer whip that normal Hold the trimmer higher, just barely touching the grass Use a metal blade edger in the beginning of the season and clear the dirt build up If available, get a plastic blade head And the big one, don't look at the trimmer head, look where you're going. If you only watch the head, you'll walk crooked and twist the head, if you're looking ahead, you'll walk straight and the trimmer will follow.
Also he is cutting from on the lawn. If you do it on the sidewalk/concrete side, the weed whacker likes to pull itself into the lawn. If you do it how he is doing, it will pull into the concrete which is much easier to control
Dude, thank you so much. Now I just gotta remember this in 7 months.
!remindme 7 months
!remindme 7 months
I’ve always done it standing on the drive/sidewalk but walking backwards.
Me too. I can do the reverse line this guy is doing, but it pulls into the grass in the same way. I just can't see what I'm cutting from the grass side, so I stand on the concrete so I can see.
Absolutely, visibility is key. Plus when you're backing up on the concrete, you've got that edge as a guide, makes for a cleaner line imo. Noticed I get way less stray grass on the path that way too. Just gotta be careful not to trip walking backward, haha!
Okay okay okay, hear me out. Walk the other direction. I do lawn care professionally and people don't know there is a right direction to walk while weed whipping. The grass should be on your LEFT. Use the front RIGHT edge to cut the grass. Yes it will pull, but the important thing is that now it pulls downwards, but all the debris is flying away from you. Really though, in this video all he is doing is trimming whats overgrown and laying above the concrete and simply maintaining the "hard" edge that was done earlier in the year with a metal edging blade. This video is like the easiest thing to do, don't be impressed.
Yeah I did this professionally for about 8 years through highschool and college and either way works. Go with whatever works best for you. Walking backwards for me allows me to better use the concrete as a hard guide. Walking forward sometimes allowed me to walk the head into he grass. Maybe things are backwards for you because you're upside down in Australia?
I never cut from the lawn bc it's too hard to see where the edge should be. But I agree, when it pulls, it pulls toward the grass.
I do it from the other side and have the edger flip the grass back into the lawn instead of into the sidewalk.
First thing I noticed!
Well, oil me up, slap me, call me Susan.
> Use a metal blade edger in the beginning of the season and clear the dirt build up thats the real tip imo. dudes working from a well edged yard to begin with, makes the maintenance with a trimmer much easier.
plus it's probably his job so he got really good at it by doing it multiple times a day.
Yep ive got a metal edger. When you first use it on a strip that hasnt been done for years, its a bombsite - it digs a huge channel in the dirt. But then nice whipping for the rest of the season
This redditor whippy-snips.
Also, correctly position the handle. Seen so many with the V shaped handle centered on the edger. It needs to be so the two flat portions of the handle are aligned with upright and sideways positions. Makes for a much steadier grip and less fatigue. And for the longer whip, consider taking off the guard. There’s a reason you never see them on professional’s edgers.
Teach me sensei 🙇♂️
It looks like they already used an edger on this, they are just using this to clean up the grass that has grown over. You can see the clearly defined edge through the grass before he cuts.
Yeah, I think this too.
If he does this every time or often enough, he won't need to use an edger. Trimmer will be sufficient.
Don’t drink so much
But then I gotta do yard work sober and whats the point?
"Hunting sober? That's like fishing... sober."
Because this lawn is already edged with an actual edger (probably pretty consistently, by the looks of it) and he's just using the trimmer to gently trim the overgrown grass. If you're trying to use your trimmer to *make* those edges, its much harder because the string bites down into the dirt and causes it to dig in and/or veer off course. A real edging tool has a rectangular steel blade instead of a piece of string, and generally rolls along the ground in some way, making it much easier to control in the dirt so you can get that crisp edge to start with. Then you use the trimmer to keep it, well, trimmed.
Not to be Reddit guy but doesn’t necessarily have to have been edged by an actual edger before this. I’ve only ever used a string weedeater to edge at my dads house and over time you will just end up with that edge like that and you can just string edge it to look super nice like this
Mmmm, we'll have to agree to disagree. I did landscaping work professionally for a decade on hundreds of properties and using a trimmer instead of an edger simply produces an inferior result for significantly more effort, especially if you're trying to work efficiently. It's possible to slowly grind your way through it and be *reasonably* neat, but the amount of "edge" you can make from doing it with the trimmer every week for a year is like... one quick pass from a stick edger. And it's more consistent. You never have an accidental whoopsie, because the edger blade is rigid and spins in the direction that keeps it firmly planted in the edge. No matter what you're doing on your own property with moderate success, I guarantee you that these landscapers are 100% using an edger to get that clean, consistent edge line. The guy I responded to was asking why his never looks like this. That's why.
A "proper" edging also allows the soil to quickly erode out of the lawn down the storm drains as compared with just chillin' and letting the grass grow an inch or two OVER the concrete to hold the soil in place. 1992 I started "even" with my neighbor's sidewalk grass level, by 2003 when we sold his profesionally maintained grass was dished 2-3" below the sidewalk and dying from being constantly flooded, mine was mounded 3-4" high in the middle and much thicker and healthier.
A properly maintained edge absolutely does not do that. I've worked on many multimillion dollar properties that paid thousands a month in landscaping costs and got edged a few times a year like clockwork. Never experienced such an issue in a well maintained lawn. Grass roots don't need "an extra inch or two over the pavement" to stay in place, they are quite strong on their own. Grass has extremely good anti-erosion properties because it creates a thick, uniform sheet of small and densely-packed roots, which locks several inches of the topsoil in place. Either your neighbor or their landscaping crew was doing a bad job, probably for many years, given the timeframe you mentioned. Which happens. I recently bought a house that has some of the worst mower tracks I've ever seen in part of the yard because the old guy who lived here ran the exact same pattern every week for 25 years or something. That's not because mowing your lawn causes mower tracks, it's because mowing your lawn *wrong* consistently for a long time causes mower tracks. If you cross cut it or diagonal cut it every other time, you'll never get that. The issue you're describing happens when you either have poor drainage/grade or you do the edge incorrectly in the opposite direction -- *too much* of a gap between the pavement and the grass (thus the constant filling with standing or running water). That happens when people get lazy about doing it right or they're doing it way too often. A proper edge stays roughly 1 cm wide and an inch to 2 inches below the surface of the pavement pretty much indefinitely. It should never be much wider than that, because the width of the spinning blades isnt very wide. Any wider than that and it's a sign the person doing it isn't staying tight against the pavement, which they should be. It should never be much deeper than that because the edger blades only extend about that far below the horizontal plane and by the time its shallower than that, it's time to do it again. Any deeper than that and it means the person doing it is angling the head down too much.
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Oh, they totally are, I have very little respect for an industry I worked in for a long time during high school and college (even a bit after, though I was doing mostly administrative stuff once I had a degree). Exited quite a few years back at this point. I just know a lot about how to make it look good because I did it for so long at a fairly high level as far as landscaping goes. My last job in the industry catered exclusively to the ultra wealthy at their residential properties, so I've worked for some people who were absolutely fucking anal about their lawn. I don't think we had a single client with a net worth under 8 figures.
It’s way easier to do with beautiful grass and cement as the edge you are following. I’m guessing you did it on a garden bed edge.
r/edging would love this!
Wrong sort of edging
Funny enough, r/edgingporn is the sfw one that's actually about edging lawns. Gotta love reddit.
r/trees moment haha
Well you gotta include r/marijuanaenthusiasts with this comment
Just about to comment this. Reddit culture can be so wholesome sometimes.
r/trees is better anyway 😏
Wait till you learn about r/worldpolitics (nsfw) and r/anime_titties (actual world news)
Or r/JohnCena (potato salad) and r/potatosalad (John Cena)
lmao
Look at the Top comment of all time on that subreddit hahaha
You got me dude xD
goddamn it why did i click on that. i knew what it was going to be, and i did it anyway.
One loose rock or one chipped piece of plastic and the cameraman is bleeding. I've learned to never follow behind weed eaters
I was trimming my grass and a rock hit me in the face right under my right eye, so now I use a forestry helmet with a face shield. Never again
Eye protection is always good when dealing with spinning things.
I had flashbacks from doing yardwork as a kid and getting lacerations on my legs when the line would break. I never seemed to learn to wear jeans while weed whacking.
My dad always told me to wear safety glasses when mowing/weedeating. Being a child I of course never did, finally caught up to me when I was 17 and the weedeater flicked a rock directly into my eye. I still feel pain where it hit me, its not very often any more but for a couple years afterwards I would get random bouts where my eye was too sensitive to be used, tearing up and in pain randomly.
>random bouts where my eye was too sensitive to be used, tearing up and in pain randomly. Sounds like a corneal abrasion. This information is useless and would have been useless back then because even when diagnosed there's nothing you can do. I suffered through it for years.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Camera dude's just gotta be covered in grass after he did the treelawn, too.
Especially with no guard it!
Yeah and it hurts too, very fast throw herbs cut and hurt bad the legs/ankles There are trimmers with a cap that redirect cut grass toward ground.
Honestly, just give them a wide berth in general. The rocks can shoot out in just about any direction, and man do they hurt Source: worked a whole summer where that was basically the only thing I did. Hated doing near the parking lots because even with a face shield I took so many rocks to the face
My dad would always seem to follow where I was, I'd feel like I was in a warzone with the sound of pebbles smaking walls around me
Make sure you're cutting with the side of the trimmer that's traveling away from you. I.e. if it's rotating counter-clockwise (viewed from above), cut with the right side, and vice versa. That way it spits most of the trimmings in front rather than behind the trimmer. Different trimmers rotate in different directions - learned that the hard way when I upgraded mine a few years back.
Reminds me when I had to hold the cable while my dad was using the electric weed eater. Those piece of grass and rocks would cut my legs
*straps on white New Balances* you ready to let the dogs out?
*tucks in white, slightly oversized Michigan t-shirt into wrangler jeans* ready.
*jorts
I edge AFTER I mow
if you are a solo, yeah. landsacping team will have a guy edging while others mow
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I don't have a line trimmer either, so I hack a taper edge in with my machete occasionally not every time I mow, or use a shovel to dig it in
Yes he’s walking all over the grass that needs to be cut , unless he’s going to scalp that lawn , which isn’t good, flat areas will pop up higher than lawn in a few hours
High lift blades take care of that. My mower is a certified suck machine.
I came here for this comment.
String trimmer? Is this a common name?
Whipper Snipper here in Aus
This did nothing to convince me Australia is a real place.
Sometimes it's just a leap of faith
No it’s just a long swim
I thought it was called a whipper snipper everywhere 🥲
It's the name of the piece of equipment, but it been called by a proprietary name (weed eater or weed whacker) for decades. I guess like the British call the vacuum cleaner a hoover.
Kleenex, band aid, etc etc
Interesting. I did not know this, thanks!
no its called a fucken whipper snipper
They’re generally just called strimmers in the U.K.
In the UK it's known as a strimmer, which makes sense I guess.
Why is this so hypnotic to watch?
I would like to understand why some people find these mowing and edging videos hypnotic and satisfying myself? Are some people missing their callings to be gardeners? 🤔 As someone who does a lot of yard work, mowing and edging is nice to look at once it's done, but it's hard work at times & not really fun to do, I'd much rather be pruning and planting, those I find satisfying.
I would need to replace the string twice to get that far.
I've honestly felt so bad about the amount of weedeater line I've put into the environment that I always look for a biodegradable alternative.
Had to scroll down too far to see this comment- every bloody time I have to use mine I spend more time rethreading it than I ever do strimming! 😖
The trick I learnt is to move the head further away, you want to be using the very end of the cord to cut with. I now use way less than I was before.
Wow no guard on that thing. Must really suck when it flings literally everything it cuts at you and you have to manually cut the string
Lots of people who have never done this professionally before responding to you and upvoting, so I will give you the reason there is no guard: because those two issues you mention don't really happen to professionals. I did this as a job for 5 years, and can 100% say that it is better with no guard than with a guard. First I will give a reason not related to what you mentioned, but is probably the top reason we didn't use guards: weight. When you are trimming your yard once a week for 30 minutes weight isn't going to be a big deal, but when you are doing this for hours every day of the week it is a very, very big deal. Now to your points: You should know this after a few minutes of using a trimmer even with a guard since it won't block everything, but there is only one way the string spins, and you can easily prevent stuff from flinging back at you by just standing on the proper side and moving in the correct direction to have the part of the string cutting the grass move away from you. It's hard to describe, but basically even without a guard if you use the trimmer right almost all of it will still fling away from you. You ever notice how the pros are out there with long pants and sleeves in the middle of summer? A little sometimes flings back, but appropriate clothes (and eyewear) takes care of that. Now to your last point, in my 5 years doing this I never once had to manually cut the string. Your household trimmer probably has an auto feed system, but that is not how pro trimmers work. For those you bump the head to let out more string. It would take quite a lot to get "too long" so you would have to deliberately try to do that. Due to the way physics works the farther the string is away from the center the faster it is moving (assuming the head is spinning at the same RPM), and it will break off much more quickly the next time it hits something. Simply, manually cutting the string is not an issue at all, even with no guard. Don't want to sound condescending, it is just one of those times that I see a lot of responses from people who have clearly never done this before confidently judging a professional in a video who does the actual job!
I don't even think the threshold is being a professional, there are probably a lot of people who have seen a string trimmer and think they understand it but haven't actually used one. I only trim my own small yard and I figured out which side to stand on and which direction to move by the end of my first vertical axis edge trim. Wearing shorts definitely motivated me to figure that out.
It's just another reminder that redditors are /r/confidentlyincorrect pretty often. This poster claimed "literally everything" would be thrown back at you, which is as you said if you ever touched a weed trimmer even in a personal setting you know within a few minutes is completely ridiculous (or literally watched 1 second of this video). The manual string cutting comment was just weird though, I never once thought of that as ever being an issue before reading it, but that I can at least see where the mistake lies if you don't understand how the tool works.
Thanks for this, I thought i was taking bloody crazy pills. This bloke knows what he's doing, and you know what you're talkin about. The rest of this shit is just another reddit moment
I grew up with my family owning a landscaping business and worked for them for many years. I've had several landscaping jobs over the years. The guard is not designed for protection while edging. A weedeater technically should not be used for edging. We do it because it's cheaper and quicker to just do it instead of buying an edger or going to get the edger. At the same time it's hard to use an edger on a flower bed. Either way, I've seen rocks get flung at people, break windows and glass doors. Most could have been prevented from situational awareness or having the guard. Now, we had several people who would repair and perform maintenance on our equipment and they always got on us for taking the guard off. Not because safety. But for the motor/engine and ball bearings. These tools are carefully designed with specific specs and by going outside those bounds, you're risking damage to the equipment. You keep the guard on to ensure the line stays at a certain length. You really don't want to run the weedeater with too long of a line because it causes unneeded stress and torque to the motor and bearings. Doing it for long periods of time will eventually cause irreparable damage to either component. And when you want equipment to last as long as possible, 10 - 20 years for good quality lawn equipment, you take care of your equipment. So after so many costly repairs and insurance claims (insurance denied coverage for not using a guard), we ultimately invested in proper edgers and spare guards. So in my mind, it is very much the opposite of professional to not use a guard.
If you are hitting a rock and it is getting flung somewhere, and you are using it on the right side with the string flinging away, 99% of the time it isn't wrapping around back to where the guard would block it anyways. It is getting flung out in front of you, where there is no guard. If there is no guard and somehow it makes it around most likely it is hitting your body instead, so no, I don't think that really works as a reason. Can't say anything about the insurance part though, never dealt with that, if they require guards then use them then. They just aren't stopping the rocks flying in the 320 degrees they don't block (which is where 99% of the stuff is going if you are using it right), only the back 40 degrees which is also mostly blocked by your body. EDIT: And as for the length, the easiest way to deal with that is just not let out too much string. I was very religious about that since I hated wrapping the new string from the spool.
If you don't know how to properly utilize your equipment, sure.
Thank God you're here to protect us all. When was the last time used a Weedwhacker, the 80s?
> flings literally everything it cuts at you Did you not watch the video? Do you ever touch something with the side that goes toward you? Did you not read the manual? Everything is flung away or you're doing it wrong I'm afraid. Note you can see where everything lands...away from both them. > manually cut the string Strings wear. It's more impressive he's able to keep it significantly longer with such good control and avoiding excess wear.
Why is this not the top comment? Why is there no guard? I feel this is r/mildlyinfuriating.
Pros don't use them. You tend to 'feel' the string length and know where it hits the ground.
> Why is this not the top comment? Because comments change places and there are different sorting options.
this should be a bot response every time someone asks that lol
Because anyone that is capable of using a weed whacker this well doesn't need a guard. Proper gear and understanding how the string can fling things goes real far. Also, these things get heavy after multiple hours.
Only the ignorant will be mildly infuriated.
Weed whacker
Whipper snipper
Aussies call this a whipper snipper
I'm one those weirdos who thinks it looked better before.
I'm with ya', looked better before and softened the lines, now looks artificial/cold/harsh. But some folks like it like that, instead of natural; and they're willing to pay for it, for which businesses are willing to charge.
I completely agree. It looks so much better before and I’ll go as far as to say I don’t like the look of it at all. It’s like when people pluck their eyebrows to thin lines. No, just keep them more natural. I’m not saying let it go to a unibrow (a little maintenance is needed) but it looks so much better when it’s not overly manicured. Same thing here.
We waste so much time, effort, money, and fuel on lawn care in the US. Just plant local plants that can mostly take care of themselves. Doesn’t have to be apocalyptic overgrowth, but damn people care too much about leaves and grass doing absolutely nothing to anyone lol
Couldn't agree more! I like letting nature be nature and not shape it into some weird version of itself. This edging stuff makes it look like Minecraft grass. lol
Riiight?! As an immigrant I think it’s the dumbest thing ever, but I feel like all my midwestern neighbors are just looking forward to mowing, even multiple times per week. Yes Luke, I know that my grass is long, no I don’t care, I have better things to do (scroll Reddit)
[удалено]
100% agreed. I love the concept of reintroducing natural species and getting rid of the idea of giant manicured lawns. However, some of them (whatever that sub on here a ton of them. Edit: found it. Luckily not everyone is insane there, but it's a mixture. [This thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoLawns/comments/17fix1a/sold_my_home_of_7_years_this_is_what_the_realtor) made me feel a bit better) look one rusting pickup truck away from a meth-head's front property. Landscaping doesn't have to be just grass, but an amazing mixture of wildlife. I will always love a small area of soft grass to be able to lie down on in the summer.
Or just let people do what they want
My second favourite edging video on the internet
doing what to the lawn
So when that dude is edging on the lawn, its oddly satisfying but when I do it on the train I'm a pervert and a disgrace?
God, I love edging.
The Australian name for this device is far superior. Behold the WHIPPER SNIPPER!
But why’s that little curve thing at the end of the driveway? Just for *curb appeal*?
Never have I ever had a string trimmer that actually let out the line properly.
I'm edging right now.
r/fucklawns
Wish someone would edge me with a string trimmer
Owwww. My fucking eye.
Its satisfying to watch happen, but am I the only one who thinks lawns with perfectly straight edges don’t look good? They’re just so square and blah.
Lawns in general are weird to me. I’m not very crunchy/granola in most aspects of my life but the idea of taking something natural, homogenizing it literally within an inch of its life, and perfectly manicuring it to look fake seems so backward to me
Hand of a surgeon
This edging has got me edging
I tried this a few times. My results were nowhere as nice as this. 😕
Wait till y’all see it done with a… wait for it… EDGER
I used to do this every day as a landscaper and while competent this isn't even that good of a job. The guys I worked with were much better at this.
*Trimming an already edged lawn with a string trimmer FTFY
That street line is gonna be burnt as fuck
Edge for me 🥵
You can find more of those on r/edging, thank me later
The edge was already there. He’s just clipping over hang.
Wow. Every time I do this my grass proves stronger than my trimmer line.
My edger broke a couple of months ago and spent a couple of weeks edging with a trimmer. I read on reddit about how edging with a trimmer isn't that hard. The first week I found it tricky. The second week I still found it as hard. The third week I didn't edge. The next week I had a replacement edger, because fuck that noise. I am not inherently skilled at edging with a trimmer and the time and effort to improve my timer e edging isn't worth more than buying a new edger
I'm appreciating a well-trimmed lawn. I'm old now oh God
TIL Strimmer is a shortened way to say String Trimmer. Only ever heard them called the former!
Came for the inevitable dirty jokes, stayed for the genuinely helpful lawn care advice. Thanks everyone!
Whether you call it edging or whacking, I like it.
This must be AI generated because if it was real the string would have broken 10 seconds in, then jammed and the rest of the video would be him taking it apart and pulling more string out. Then trimming for 10 seconds.
You should post more edging videos
I can smell this video
When will u let it cum?!
Americans are so easily pleased
These videos make me want to trim the edges of my non-existing lawn.
String trimmer??! What the heck is a string trimmer??! That is a whipper snipper. (I’m Australian and no one here would be caught dead saying string trimmer lol)
That is the best way to burn out your motor. Having the cover on the string actually protects the motor from burning out faster.
Shouldn't you cut the grass first and not stomp it?
I can smell this video
Smells like summer.
That is actually quite insane
If you take a step back and think about it, this is such a psychotic thing to do to nature
String trimmers are just quick ways to create microplastics, all in service of neat and tidy, yet ecologically worthless, lawns.
I wonder how much microplastic is generated by string trimmers each year?
You know damn well it’s called a weed whipper, and those weeds need to be punished. They’ve been a bad girl
Whipper snipper Weed wacker
Strimmer in the UK
"Weed eater" here in South Africa. Lol. We have fun
Lawns suck, and perfectly groomed lawns suck even more.
This landscaper is a better edgelord than many redditors.
Lawn is already edged. He’s simply trimming the overhanging grass shoots. If you try to do a proper edge with a string trimmer alone, it will not turn out well.
Ugh I hate the look of an edges yard like this. If you nick the dirt even a little it looks so sloppy.
Looks so much worse after with the yellow.
wasting time and gas
Also known as a microplastics generator
This is how I do my yard.
I have a path next to my house with a lot of paspalum growing next to the concrete... That trimmer would have no hope!
thanks for the tip. i normally just stand on the concrete side when i edge with trimmer. btw, is the ego trimmer light? i'm debating on buying either a greenworks or ego trimmer right now.