Refitting lightweight string trimmer

I’ll describe what I did, first then give the backstory on it.

We have a small Toro string trimmer. Along with a scythe, grass shears, and a gas-powered brush-cutter/weed-whacker, it enables us to manage feral grass and weeds on certain areas of our land.

I gave up recurrently re-winding the monofilament plastic .065” “cord” (first pic) around the reel, and instead rigged it with one piece of .095” steel-core cord (which I use in the gas-powered whacker). I’d cut this piece to about 9” long then (with some effort) tied a knot in one end, and threaded the segment through the hole in the reel casing (2nd & 3rd pics). The need for the reel and the casing cap is eliminated. While the machine functions, centrifugal force keep the cutting cord in place. Now the cord doesn’t break all the time when put to task, and no more fouling!


My motivation: This is a small, battery-powered motorized grass-managing tool my wife can use with ease. It’s lightweight enough that my wife can handle it comfortably and deftly.  It cost about $160, but is cheaply made by comparison with the professional-model Shindaiwa brush-cutter/weed-whacker I use for challenging areas. The Toro’s cord-feeding mechanism gradually wore to the point that the small-gauge filament was fouling around the shaft that spins the reel that feeds it out. This would drag the machine to a complete stop, and restoring things to working order sometimes took a half hour.

The steel-core cord is quite durable.

This is a great post!

I have a DeWalt string trimmer and every time I have to lengthen the string, I think about those bits of plastic out in my environment. It's been gnawing at me for years and I've just decided to change something. So I was wondering if the string head could be replaced with like a circular saw blade or something. So I discovered there's a whole class of brushcutters that look like that. But this solution seems pretty nifty. You've had a year to work with it now, how has it been?