I’ve been whacking weeds by hand for many years. You can see when I made a super weed whacker at https://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2016/8/whacky. But now I’ve developed “golf elbow”, which is quite painful, from all the years of manual weed whacking. About a month ago or so I bought a STIHL FSA 90R commercial grade battery powered weed whacker. We have very tough weeds and I knew I needed a commercial weed whacker to do the job. The FSA 90R came with 0.95 inch diameter orange string (shown below), and the first “tough” weed I tried to whack with it broke the string. The tough weed simply laughed at me. “Hahahahaha! You with your wimpy, weakling whacker can’t touch me!” I took the head apart, got more string out and tried whacking some weeny weeds, which it worked pretty well on. Over the past month, I’ve been whacking weeny weeds, which we have lots of, while the tough weeds laughed at me. I finally ran out of the orange string.
I did a bit of research and found the Oregon 22-895 Magnum Gatorline .095 inch trimmer line was highly rated as really touch line for really tough weeds. 22-895 Magnum Gatorline is square, which somehow makes more resistant to breaking. I found the best deal was a large spool with 600 feet of of line. I loaded my spool with the 22-895 Magnum Gatorline, and went out and whacked that sassy tough weed that’s been laughing at me for the past month. I’m happy to report, the weed is not laughing any longer, because the weed and all its buddies are no more. The 22-895 Magnum Gatorline ripped through them like they were butter.
Today I set out whacking all the weeds out of the irrigation ditches. The FSA 90R with the 22-895 Magnum Gatorline and I had to work really hard, but after six hours and 4 recharges on the battery, I got the ditches whacked and weed free.
Even with the new equipment, weed whacking still looks like a lot of work!
Sorry about the golf elbow… The sky was incredible and then it cleared…
Hi Susan. Yes it’s still a lot of work, but much easier on the elbow.
Weed hacking is a lot of work, sigh 🙂
It is. Thanks, Harry.
Deeply impressed! Timely post too as we have dastardly weeds too. We use metal blades on our strimmers but they are unforgiving to fences. I’m looking into changing one head out for a line feed and will use the stuff you suggest if we can find it. Thanks!
Hi Couriers. Good luck on finding quality gaterline.
🥀🌚
Thanks.
This made me giggle… the title and you!
Hi Nancy. I’m happy you got a chuckle out of it.
I can see why you would need a heavy duty weed whacker Tim, lots of weeds!
Hi Tiffany. Lots and lots of heavy duty weeds.
Those weeds never stood a chance!
They put up a good fight. Thanks, Teri!
A new type of super hero…. Weedman!! You go! I asked Norm what that small tree was in the back yard? He said it was a weed. They can be quite the healthy things.
You have a weed tree? They can get that way. thanks, Resa!
Yeah. Who knew?
We have an FSA 85. Sounds like we could use an upgrade.
Hi Lavinia. The 90 R is a good one.
Make sure you wear ear muffs! 🙂
Hi Julie. It’s battery powered, so it’s very quiet.
Mine is petrol powered and so darn noisy!
Maybe it’s time to go battery powered.